Hey Guys check out the latest game Rebel Planet’s been doing (we’re also developing a soccer game).  There’s 2 videos be sure to watch them all, they both have great stuff!!

While I was visiting Savannah myself and Gil did a demo day of Axys and Light Rangers at a Family Christian bookstore, it was great!

Regards,

David

Hey Guys

I wanted to share with you an email I just drafted to Peter Churness, the content is really significant for us so I wanted to share it here.  I just came back from 5 weeks in the USA, visiting Brethren Entertainment’s studio in Seattle and attending the Christian Game Developers Conference Winter Retreat as the keynote speaker.  And what follows are the things the Lord has really impressed upon me during that time.

There are Christian games and successful Christian games, and there is actually a huge distinction between the two.  In my opinion Christian games in general are not fun games to play, if I want to go and play a fun game, I never think “I’ll go to the Christian book store to find a fun game”, I go to Target, or a game shop.  So in general Christian games don’t sell because people don’t buy them, therefore the ‘Christian games’ remain unsuccessful.

Then there are successful Christian games, in my opinion a successful Christian game needs to be a game that anybody would walk into Wal Mart and buy.  And to get into these channels the game needs to be fun.  And for the game to be fun the game needs to be designed a certain way.  The wrong way to design a game is to find fun gameplay, then water it down with a Christian message.  In my opinion, a Christian message directly opposes the game’s gameplay.  For example looking at Axys, Axys is a fun game, however the entire experience isn’t fun.  If you look at a game as a timeline of player experience, in Axys you have -fun-fun-fun-boring bible puzzles-fun-fun-frustrating task that is too hard-fun etc.  The moment the fun experience in the timeline is broken the entire experience for the player has been severely tampered with.  Now some people will enjoy these sorts of games but most wont.  I even dislike doing the bible puzzles.  And I threw it in there because I thought ‘Christians would love to have a biblical aspect to the game’, but I’m a Christian and I don’t love that sort of aspect to games.  Unless it is expressing the gospel in a fun experience which I the bible puzzles don’t do for me personally.

So this leads me to this conclusion, to make a successful Christian game you need to make a game like Narnia, or in our case Orion.  However to make a successful Christian game, because we are communicating such deep themes of the gospel and God, this needs to be done in a story context.  I believe it would be very difficult to put such a story or message into any game other than an adventure game and be successful with it.  The problem with that, is that adventure games of this nature require alot of resources and talent to make successfuly and in such a way that the actual gameplay experience = fun-fun-fun-fun.  And it can’t be done with a preachy message, it has to be done with non biblical language, like Narnia and Orion.

This leads me to another thought, we are under resourced and under experienced to make a game like Orion and make it successful.  We’ve jumped into the deep end of game development without never having succeeding in the shallow waters.  Which leads me to think if we are to do Orion and make it a successful Christian game, I think we need some experience and resources under our belt.  ie build up to it rather than jumping straight into it.

I have been working on a game since my trip in the USA, for about 4-5 weeks now.  And while there I started a new idea/concept with game development.  What was revealed to me was that too often we come up with ideas for a game’s theme, rather than an idea for the game’s gameplay.  The problem with this is that the gameplay is 100% of the fun experience (which in most circumstances is tainted by a Christian message).  So it got me thinking, I should test this theory, if I can make a game with just blocks, and make it a hugely fun experience, even for myself developing it, then that idea surely was going to be successful.  Within 2 days of developing I was having so much fun playing the game, it was unbelieveable, I have never had so much fun playing a game I have been developing for so long.

This confirmed, to make a successful game you do not need a theme, you don’t need resources, or huge ideas.  You just need fun gameplay.  I was so gobsmacked at the simplicity of it all I was amazed.  I went ahead and started thinking of ways of putting a Christian message into the game however that proved to directly oppose the game’s fun gameplay, and put a huge -annoyance- in the midst of the fun gameplay experience.  So I realised, I can’t make this game Christian, the genre of the game cannot be both a successful fun gameplay experience and a Christian game at the same time.

Peter this is amazing, I have actually completed the game, 5 week part time development cycle.  And the game is the most fun game I have ever developed.  Once I have refined it a bit more I am going to send it to you in a week or two.  Gil can testify to how much fun the game is.  The game had 3 hours of gameplay, the entire time I was on the phone to Gil learning his gameplay experience with it and making changes accordingly, after the conversation ended, and he had finished the game.  He kept playing the game for another 3 hours just wandering around blowing up enemies collecting items because it was so much fun.

Ross Leland said the following:
I like playing it more than World of Warcraft.

Thanks for reading guys!  I hope to make a youtube video soon as a development documentary of this game and title it ‘How to make fun games’.

David

During March-July 2007 we decided to recover from the loss of Wicked Mansion by using the left over resources to make a quick casual game. We managed to get the game ready in time for CGDC, however we ran into the exact same issue we ran into with Wicked Mansion, we had no money, we had no one willing to create models and animations for free. So all we had to use were the models and animations Eric Nadeau kindly passed to us from his ventures with Biyu Biyu Rocket. As good as the artist was who made the animations for free in his early years of experience, when he made them they weren’t made with a high level of quality, they were quite bad. So now we faced the problem of making enemies with personalities, attacks and defences completely based on one or two of these low quality animations they came with. We did a good job with what we had and they look alright. It severely limited us in making bosses, unique enemies and whole bunch of other things we would have liked to have done. So once the game hit completion there was a lack of desire to polish it or extend it from where it’s currently at now. From my point of view it’s a watered down game from it’s potential but fun none the less. Rather than having it sit around collecting dust we’ve released it for free, please enjoy

Download Monster Island

Yes there are bugs, some solutions are found in the readme.txt file.

David

PS: Don’t forget to check out David Stevenson’s interview, he is the voice of Axys and is now in a really awesome band named Manic Bloom.

It’s what I’ve been working on at the moment, check it out here.

Enjoy!

David