A New Game Is On The Horizon – Code Name: West Wars

After a fair bit of experience making Alley Avenger, I’ve decided to a promising fresh project with a new genre. Strategy games! Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love Civilization 5. It’s a turn-based 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) that never gets boring! Building up cities, being diplomatic with neighbors, creating an epic military in the age-old struggle to be ruler of the world…it’s such a fun experience!

On that same note, I love mobile games. As a frequenter to /r/AndroidGaming, I found there to be a huge void where good strategy games should be. Many users have requested strategy games, to which the community would respond with options that were either horribly implemented (Civ Revolution 2), had unbearable controls (FreeCiv), or were actually promising Indie games that are perpetually in alpha. Every post that requested a good strategy game looked grim…the pickings were slim! (Did I just rhyme?)

Well, with that said, my next game was clear. I needed to attempt a strategy game…Code name: West War (literally, I’ve been writing the game code with this name 🙂 ). I haven’t gotten far, but I’ve already rallied another developer and fellow Civ 5 fan in my office to join my cause. We’ve already made a cardboard cutout “simplified” version of this in board-game-form and hashed out all the rules for Phase 1.

I won’t reveal much so far, but I WILL say that we’re aiming for the following:

• Turn-based hexagons, with a focus on hexagon development. Each hex will have 6 different resource triangles which can be built upon.
• Western setting.
• Entire game playable in portrait mode with just one thumb.
• Online play-with-your-friends.
• 99 cent price tag.

A few nice-to-haves (which we are giving serious consideration since the Unity engine supports a fairly painless way to do these):

• Google Cardboard / Occulus Rift support for hands-free virtual reality!
• Cross-platform play (PC, possibly Mac, possibly Web).

Below is a screenshot from current development on the progress I’ve done in the past couple of months. More to come in the future!

Alley Avenger is Live! Soft release available on the Google Play Store!

Finally! After much anticipation, Alley Avenger v1.2 is finally playable from the Google Play Store, and I’m excited! As a marketing strategy, I haven’t gone public with this yet, but it’s hard not to tell friends and family. Although it is now on the market, I’m considering this as a soft launch. The following features are available for the current release:

• 20 Playable Levels
• 2 Bosses (skull and tank)
• 5 Power-up/Abilities that can be purchased from the store
• Options to mute sound and music, as well as change the color of the current character
• Level Achievements – Finish a level without getting damage or destroy all objects
• Google Play Achievements – Unlock achievements from various accomplishments in game

Soon to come:

• Leaderboards (Google Play) – Compare number of Level Achievements with friends
• More Levels and Bosses
• More Abilities and Powerups
• Different Guns that have varying strengths and weaknesses
• Better graphics

Really looking forward to seeing how far this will go! Stay tuned!

Know your weaknesses – A good graphic designer goes a long way!

It’s often that I see this. Overly ambitious individuals diving into game design that lack either coding skills, designer skills, or both. In my experience and research, I’ve realized that the technical prowess that comes with coding games combined with the creative expertise of designing polished graphics are like Yin and Yang.

Knowing where you fall on this spectrum can really help. I personally identify as being more technical minded. I was capable of making graphics, and given a complex and detailed object I could copy it, but when it came to designing original content, I fell flat. Is this innate? Maybe. Perhaps if I spent more time in Illustrator, I might get to that level, but frankly…ain’t nobody got time for that! (at least I don’t). Besides, coding is more my thang anyway!

With that said, I was lucky enough to recently run into my friend Jon, who graduated with a degree in Graphic Design. He has some good ideas and has, thus far, increased the look of the game from a silly little learning project to something people might actually see as professionally done. Below are the before and after of the main game play:

     

Side note: On the topic of “knowing your limits”, possibly my favorite, and funniest, example I can think of is an often referenced post on Reddit where a woman talks about a dragon MMO she is working on.

Quote of the title:
Dear internet, I’m a 26 year old lady who’s been developing a science-based, 100% dragon MMO for the last two years. I’m finally making my beta-website now, and using my 3D work as a base to create my 50+ concept images. Wish me luck, Reddit; You’ll be the first to see the site when it’s finished.

Everything here screams inexperience, but hey, we all start somewhere! Read the top comment for a good reality check on the effort and experience needed to create an MMO.