Adding research

Part of our job when putting together a game is to research all other titles that are similar that you would be competing against if your game went to the mass market. I've updated the design document on http://mockitup.net to include a research section after the competitive analysis. It's pretty plain right now and I honestly wouldn't consider those other games "competition". (This is a free game after all.) But the process is important.

That said, I should also note that we've played most of the games during our preproduction cycle. Some of them like Godzilla: Save the Earth, I wasn't able to locate until just recently. Locate is the wrong word.. "Locate for rental", or "locate cheap" are probably more apt. Students on a shoe-string budget can't really afford to pay much. But hey, actually playing a game for research is definitely one of the highlights of game design. Godzilla was.. hmm.. okay. But Hulk Ultimate Destruction was a really fun game. It was a bit mindless but I suppose it fits the hulk perfectly.

I've actually gone over some other games like Katamari 2, and a Godzilla game for the GBA, but I'll post stuff up on the design document for them later. So was I playing games all Saturday? Haha not quite. I was actually working on some level design specifics. Planning out level design for this game (especially before gameplay is completely worked out) has been very very challenging. You can't design normal levels. Foamzilla has five different sizes and we are determined to make the game fun and interesting with that same space, no matter what your size is. And thats not easy at all.

It's possible we bit off more than we can chew, but Johan and I have been working tirelessly on this. And I have confidence in our creative ability. This is something I especially can't wait to get feedback from you all on.

As a side note, we are looking for someone who specializes in graphics and web layout who is interested in helping us get our website look a little nicer. As well I've just registered www.foamzilla.com. Nothing there now, but we definitely have plans for it.

I'll post later on today too. I still need to get those pictures of our work area up.