With a bit of paraphrasing to protect the guilty, these are all things that have been said to me while I was working on a game, usually on double shifts with way too much caffeine in the bloodstream.
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We want the design to strongly feature elements of successful games currently on the market."
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We've already negotiated shelf space with retailers. The game will be burned onto CDs by November, one way or another."
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The main thing is we have to meet Nintendo's quality standards. If we pass their QA, then we can ship it."
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If you can just spend a day working on this multiplayer feature, that gives us a great bullet point for the box."
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The dialogue is basically carved in stone. We can't change what the characters say without getting written permission from the content licensor."
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That seems like an interesting feature, but I can't picture how it would work because I haven't seen it in other games before. Maybe keep that idea for the next game when we have more time."
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That seems like an interesting feature, but we have to stick to the scope. Did you get a copy of the requirements doc?"
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We need you to stop working on the main part of the game and whip up a little demo for the publisher to show we've finished the artwork."
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It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to look not broken."
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As soon as we ship this damn thing, we can start work on the next one."
I've said some of these myself just last month. You'll hear them a lot more often working on mainstream commercial games than working on an indie title, where games are often a labor of love. As the years go by, my attitude has shifted more and more towards the assembly line mentality. Because it ensures that games get built to completion instead of languishing unfinished on developer's hard drives. But you always have to make a little time for love. You can't plan for it to happen. It will happen when good people are involved and the environment is right.
Frogs and Mice Dream Team Assembled
Frogs and Mice is the current title we're working on for Garage Games. The team has firmed up now. Mike and I are handling project management. Gerry Jo Jellestad is coding things up with help from Mike. Brett Boyette is doing art. Jon Sonnenberg, our musician for
DROD: The City Beneath is composing music. Michael Abbott is handling sound effects. I'm really happy with the level designers we have helping us--all vets from past releases. They are: Neil Frederick, Adam Peterson, Jacob Grinfeld, and Larry Murk.
Call to Action
Would you please, please, please vote for
DROD: The City Beneath in the GameTunnel poll? I would not bother you about just any old dumb poll on the internet. This one is actually a big deal due to its potential to bring us much-needed attention. The poll is actually considered a test of a game community's energy, so even if we are astroturfing here, it is entirely expected and encouraged by GameTunnel. I think we have the best community around with a lot of people that care a huge amount about DROD, so there's nothing artificial about representing that in a poll.
As I write this, we are in
second place with only a handful of votes needed to push into first past Amaranth's
Aveyond 2. Go check out the link to the poll below, and if DROD really is your favorite game on that list of candidates, I would love it if you'd put in one vote for us. It's necessary to go through a quick sign-up to vote, but GameTunnel won't spam you later. If they do, I will yell at Russell Carroll about it.
Vote for DROD: The City Beneath!
Sorry and sorry
Usually, we'd have a contest announcement here, and in fact, there is a contest going on that MeckMeck GRE put together that is really cool. But it's too late to join in on it, because I got this newsletter out late. My apologies to both you, the reader, and MeckMeck. I'll try to do better in January.
And we usually have a list of topic picks, but the guy that puts them together, Tim, is busy. I think a lot of people are pretty busy too with Christmassy stuff. So maybe you can forgive us.
Happy Mucklemas, my friends!
-Erik
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The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals |
twitch stream |
youtube archive (NSFW)
I actually jokingly suggested it when I e-mailed him about something else. 
