Time really flies while working with Time Machine...!

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Thought there’s been a little delay from the last blog post, the project is rolling on nicely. After meeting with the client, we decided to take one approach, which core idea was to have time machine and a kid travelling with that. For past weeks we have flesh out the story, thought about different puzzles for it and of course, the art direction of the game.

Right after the meeting we had a brainstorming session with thinking more about the actual playable stuff for the game and we come across with this fantastic book: “The way things works” by David Macaulay (“Kuinka kaikki toimii?” as a Finnish edition by Otava). Thought it’s a children book, it does tell really detailed info graphics how, well, everything works. It did inspirit us quite a lot, since the first puzzle we absolute wanted, was nearly on the first pages of the book.

Of course, we benchmarked still some games such as Clik Clak, old Amiga game, which sole idea was to place gears to be able to continue the movement from place A to B. We checked also nice and challenging game about magnets, called Magnetism, which is quite hc-game for natural science point of view. Also, one of us had found out a bricolage book for kids and had found same sort of puzzle what http://www.kongregate.com/games/Onefifth/flood-fill" title="Flood-Fill" target="_blank">Flood Fill contained. It just shows that all the funny stuff isn’t only located in world wide web!

We went through also some art stuff for checking out what sort of feeling everyone had about art directional wise. It was nice to notice how different basis everyone had started: some went straight in the action by drawing out ideas, others with already done illustrations and so on. We also checked some animations and this one popped right up for it's juicy textures: Monkey Truck by Micheal Slack. 

So much stuff to go through next time with the client and of course, huge itching already to share that also in this blog!

The project #140 is ON!

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And what a week we had! Lots of excitement and enthusiasm was on the air, when we started our first brainstorm session at Monday. Since Demola Project number #140 idea is to do “stuff for kids with Yle in flash” (or in the other words making a game for children), the brief for the project was nicely open for any kind of suggestion. Theme to start with was generally natural sciences, so after browsing the Yle’s kids website, Pikku Kakkonen , we checked out our own suggestions for what we had come up for the theme we had.

Lots of small and simple games popped out, when it was about theme of the project. BBC had many good games, like KS1 Bitesize. KS1 Bitesize had to different modes, mathematics and literacy. Both modes offered 9 different ways of learning to write the words correctly, grammar rules, basic mathematics and also the most practical uses for mathematics, what children can use on their daily basis.

A step for more advanced use for laws of physics, yet making that also interesting and funny, was seen on this clip, what we found about The Incredible Machine. The game’s idea was to achieve the given objective by constructing over-engineered machine from given objects.  Might sound complex on paper, but with clear and easy drag and drop method for constructing the machine seems to be amusing game for even grownups!

Since we wanted to keep the concept of the game still open, we had concentrated more on those aspects of how to make the game more enjoyable for kids.

Customizing the character was one idea, what popped out here and there. For Bug Hunt, you were able to customize the chameleon before playing the game. Thought this might seem to be minor detail for adults, it’s really something, where kids might spend most of the time…!

Of course, we shouldn’t forget the comedy aspect. Cutting the Cheese was all about it: the game idea is to fart on suitable times, when the panda was snoring and if you woke the panda…well, needless to say, that it’s quite embarrassing and the game ends. This just show with how little things kids (and grownups also!) find something to be funny: was it just silly gesture or a voice.

Machinarium was one adorable example of keeping all storytelling and informative tips about the game told completely on visual basis. This gloomy point-and-click-game might not be the best one for little children, but working on completely visual basis the use of comic bubbles to tell what to do or how to do something, might be quite suitable for kids, who haven’t learn to read yet.

And for the last, but not the least, this funny little game, Sushi Cat, had such graphics to look up for. Dropping the cat for eating more sushi might not be really challenging, but simplifying graphics to the extreme and giving some button eyes, will make even onigiris look cute!

So, those were the few things we thought about and showed for each other. We ended up having two different approached for actual game concept, but we’ll tell more of that on next post!



Posterous theme by Cory Watilo