Game Overview
Jack really wants to be a true timberman. He just needs an axe. In this game, you walk around the screen collecting perks while avoiding static and dynamic objects. The goal it to collect as many perks as you can without crashing into something. There are endless randomly generated levels. Once you find the axe, you move onto the next level. Here is the first draft of concept art:
My Audience
This is a casual gamer. It is for the 1-2 minutes (or more) of entertainment.
Basic Requirements
The requirements of this game are simple:
- Jack is in a hurry. He wants to be a timberman so bad that he does not stop moving. Control Jack by swiping (or arrows on the PC).
- Avoid static objects such as rocks, stumps, and trees.
- Avoid dynamic objects such as spiders and other monsters.
- Collect perks such as Axes, Apples, and others.
- Beat your high score.
Target Platforms:
Android, maybe the PC.
Other Goals
As before, I am going to document the process of developing this game. See the Blog for more details.
I want to publish the game to the Google Play store.
Rearrange the website and the code base to support multiple projects.
Continue improving my Gimp and Pixel Art skills
Other Goals, Part 2 – Why Jack?
I want this game to be simple, yet saleable; easy, yet fun. While these are all soft requirements, I envision a very early fun and playable prototype that can be expanded as time and money allow. Believe it or not, the idea of Jack came of a lot of thinking.
- Having a simple walking sprite as my main character allows for easier animation. If Jack is missing his Axe, it makes my job of animating him much easier.
- Using Photoshop is daunting for me. All of the sprites above are based on a 16×16 grid in the NES color palette. This means I need to keep the details simple because I have a limited color set. I have found these limitations help me limit the time I spend on the graphics and meet my personal skillset.
- It also allows me to expand my audience to those folks who like NES games.
- A lumberjack character is very easy to represent and generally recognizable with little detail. This helps when working with the small sprites and limited colors.
- There are already a number of popular “Lumberjack” games on Google Play. Placing my game in a popular theme will (hopefully) give me a lot more cross traffic than a game titled “bubbles” or “shapes.”
- Creating different levels allows me to basically write a tutorial and a game at the same time. If I did this right, the whole game would not even need instructions. That is directly applicable to the toddler game I want to create.
- Eventually, I might consider developing an RPG / Zelda / Rouge style game. Developing a forest level and having Jack be a main character, offers story telling opportunities. Maybe once he finds his Axe, he is forced to head out across the kingdom, etc. The assets I create for Jack, should all be applicable across other games.
- This also could create brand recognition and other (I hope positive) side effects across products.