10 Juni 2018

I was inspired by the verse 1 Peter 2:21: ”To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”(NIV)

I heard a sermon yesterday about imitating Jesus and I got a game idea:

My game is about a person climbing a high mountain. To progress upwards the mounting you, the player, have to press certain keys to make the game character jump to the new position. Each new positions is marked by a symbol telling the player what key to press. This part connects with the bible verse: to imitate and follow in Jesus steps on order to succeed; reach to top of the mountain.

You have to press the keys in the right order or you will fall off the mountain. If you press a non existing position key you will also fall off the mountain. Because the game is always scrolling upwards the player must move constantly not to move off the screen.

I will probably make an easy level and a hard level. Easy meaning less moves to complete before finishing and a slower climbing speed. Harder meaning more moves to complete the game and higher climbing speed.

One fun part of the game is that I also want to train the brain signals from the left and right part of the brain. Therefore you have to use both left and right side of the keyboard and both left and right hand to be able to complete the game. It could also make some interesting coop with two players.

While the game is very simple, somehow it sounds like something i want to play right now. Perhaps exactly because of that, since I can already see it is going to be nice 10 minute distraction. Also, instantly when you said he is climbing up the mountain, it sounded like something interesting, something different from rest of the games where idea is to drive a car, kill zombies or any other regular stuff. Climbing up a mountain, that is not so usual topic in games, especially nowadays. In early 90s and before there was even mountain climbing simulator, and before that some where you were climbing up apartment building wall, but after that, I dont remember seeing this topic at all anymore.

Also, what comes to mountain climbing, it is also easy to have it parallel as reaching towards God, as you are reaching high.

I like the idea of following in Jesus' footsteps. I look forward to see what you come up with.

12 Juni 2018

I have created a scrolling cliff background and are now trying to create a fun game-mechanic. I have stumbled upon a problem: It is not that fun jumping from point A to B without some challenge. As can be seen in the image I have painted the key on the symbol because it was honestly to hard do quickly understand what the symbol meant and connect that to the key – I do not want to create an irritating game.

Perhaps I change the movement-mechanics and that add some obstacles that the player have to move around. Perhaps that more fun. It is also true that the will be obstacles in our Christians life hindering us to live out a godly life.

Every time you get to a symbol you get a star. So you can keep playing even if you miss a symbol - a change from the original idea -  but you wont get as many stars.

13 Juni 2018

After founding out it was kind of boring just pressing keys to jump up the mountain, I decided to implement something I have long wanted to try out – a quiz! It is interesting implementing a random quiz but the image I attach this post is from my Game Maker and the game can randomly show different questions and answers. Now I have to find out a way to stop already answered questions to re-appear and also I have to create a way to connect the buttons for every question to the right answer. It will be fun!

Anyway, my idea now is that the player have to answer questions right to be able to continue up the mountain to the top. I will have symbols of footsteps, that the player moves to, telling us to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. But you do not move the character directly, the character moves himself when you answer a question right.

Yeah, doing gameplay iterations is important. Looks like you're heading in a good direction. Can't wait to see more!

Just keep in mind that If i correctly remember, one of the speedgame winners (perhaps about year 2007) was done in only three days.

Great to hear! Can't wait to see what you come up with.

Hi everyone! I finished a simple game but I can not upload it ot the main feed. Anyway, you can find it here: https://isaiah222.itch.io/follower

26 Juni 2018

After long postponing the game production I in the early hours of the day – remember I have Swedish time – I started completing my game. With only a few hours left and a lot left to do I cut many corners. I used the graphic I had created earlier. I did not have time to create a character image so a blue boll was all I could do. I reused a song I made some years ago and did some easy programming. But I like the end result.

That was a fun game. I liked it. But I do have lots of improvements to suggest.

First of all, while the music was nice, i would have preferred you to use a music that had been about the length of the level, or at least getting to some meaningful part at end of level, and then can continue as game won music forward. Naturally this would also have needed one other thing done, which had been that music had restartted everytime you failed. I think that had been better solution than current music keeps continuously playing, although, due to the high tempo of the game, it might have resulted, especially at beginning to being even annoying beginning repeat.

This also gets me to another thing that bit bothered me. That you started the level right after you would die again. I would have preferred it to be so that the scrolling (and music) wouldnt start until you click a mouse button to bounce at somewhere, this would have resulted in player having time to think hes strategy.

Because game was so short, this worked as very fun game. I actually think that this is close to being a game worthy of a mobile release, with either cheap price, or i think it would be better as ad based game, with ad showing either at start of executing the program, or for example after every 20 games.

I would see there two different approaches. Either endless game with randomly generated steps and with those stops every now and then with bible message (like your end, except continues further), or having replanned levels that you get forward to. Or maybe levels plus endless mode even.

Now if going to randomly generated map, then make sure that there are similar options as in this current game where i notice at start that sometimes i bounced the ball of from the target, but it was still catched by some step below and i had a chance to still save the ball, although it needed bit difficult jump. That was a lot of fun.

But even more fun i had when i reached the top and realised you were meant to catch as many points as you can during the short journey instead of game continuing forever, like i thought from your description that it would.

And you had done some great planning on those steps, since it was a lot of fun trying to catch every step on the way, which i eventually did.

I think you should really consider working on this just a little more and release it as a mobile game to christian market. I think you could make some little money out of this, for I think you should specifically aim it at christian market, since there it would have a place to be. Of course another possibility is to make it more secular and try the ad based approach, who knows, maybe this would become the next flappy bird or something. It does have that potential.

What comes to graphics, I actually think the ball works better than having some actual character, unless the character is somewhat ball like in shape already, for i very much liked that the ball made this game much clearer. But indeed, i can see the appeal on character who could have even some animation to it making the game more funny, for example some muscular comic climber who jumps from one cliff to other with sound.

Otherwise the graphics were fine. I liked what i saw, but when thinking of commercial release, perhaps the mountain should be made bit better still. It could go as it is, especially to christian market, but it wouldnt hurt to have them look bit better still. They are not bad at all, just not commercial quality yet.

It was also fine idea for a mechanic on follow my footsteps, especially those footstep prints made it very clear that was the idea. But of course if i wouldnt know the passage in advance, i wouldnt get it. Regardless, it is difficult to figure out a mechanic from a passage, and while this might not be any kind of revelation from the passage, it was anyway a succesful implementation which clearly resembles the passage.

One thing that still comes to my mind. The end of game. I would have liked there to having been a possiblity to start the game again after completing the game, especially since the idea of the game was to get as high a score as you can. It was annoying i had to actually had to reload the game to try again.

All in all, very good game that i enjoyed a lot playing. It may be only average in many things, but sum of all those parts is very suitably done game. It is short enough to support the idea, and there is challenge enough to keep trying etc. Was lot of fun playing it and i can easily see that only with very little more work, this could already be released commercially for mobile/tablet market.

Isaiah222, I haven't heard from you about claiming your prize. Can you get in touch with me?