Hey guys! Hope you're all still checking up on the blog : )
This is my third idea and it's finally a single semester one. It's really very simple, an interactive children's story book for the iPad/iPhone. Illustrations appear on the screen and the story written on the bottom. The reader can click different parts of the illustration and make things happen. For example, Red Riding Hood. The kid whose reading can touch the wolf and it will shake its fur and growl. They can pick up red riding hood's muffins from her basket and throw them about.
Having done the iPhone course this semester, I'm pretty sure this would not be a difficult thing to achieve. In fact, having completed basic iPhone games in a day, we could potentially have whole pages of the book done in a day or two. We could use a really nice art style to bring it all together, kind of like this flash game:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/550407
This one would be easy, but also pretty cool in my opinion : ).
Jacob out!!!
Sounds like a good idea but really really easy, and its already been done. This would take a about a week of solid work for me to do by myself in flash just to put it into perspective.
ReplyDeleteHere's my spin, we write our own story, and make a truly interactive story book.
Each page is a puzzle in itself, using a variety of puzzles from physics puzzles to riddles throughout the book. each page has hidden item, some that can be found to enhance the story, others that are required to solve future puzzles, but some just to have fun with (i have a mental image of smooshing little red ridding hood's muffins on various things :P )
basically what i'm saying is we mix the interactive story with the room-escape-puzzle/point-and-click-adventure genre.
These games can be extremely sucessful, 'Machinarium' sells at around $25 and is available on across all consoles and most portable devices, play the demo here:
http://machinarium.net/demo/
of course id prefer to do something a bit darker than little red riding hood such as 'Machinarium' or 'Alice is Dead'
(http://www.kongregate.com/games/ImpendingRiot/alice-is-dead-ep-1?acomplete=alice+is)
and if we wanted to do some hardcore-ish puzzles this would be more suited to the target audience.
Did you look at the link? Cos Gretal and Hansel is basically a darker version of Machinarium or Alice is Dead, though it leans more towards an adventure game. I actually think it would be a better game than Machinarium if more time had been put into it's length. Then again, they do the game in installments, so it might be longer as a whole. Anywho, it has the great art style, involving story and awesome puzzles I would envision our game to have : ).
ReplyDeleteJust to put it in perspective though, most (if not all) of the 3rd year games this year were much less involved than this idea and were created over a year : /. So I guess that's why I was thinking of just the book. That's no reason to cramp our awesome though! So I'm glad you brought it up. You have the experience in Flash games so I trust you with this stuff; it's great to hear you could whip it up in a week : D.
Anyway, I did reference Gretel and Hansel because I thought that would be a very achievable game. Please play it through and tell me what you think : )
I had in my head a book for children though, so I wasn't thinking the puzzles wouldn't be so hard or the content so...blood-soaked : P
P.S. How do we add people to the board? Logan says he had some trouble posting cos he wasn't a member or something.
after playing Gretel and Hansel, something like that would be awesome, although preferably with controls that dont make we want to smash my computer.
ReplyDeleteafter reading your above comment (i didnt read it before starting to play the game) i should add that if we made the game like Gretel and Hansel, we should make it in a book format rather than a map format, so while being linear, you can flick backwards and forwards between pages and i think some kind of pop up book styling would be awesome cite: Paper Mario, Yoshi Story.
ReplyDeleteand really easy to do in unity (plus we can make fun physics stuff that way too).
I would also like to say that i would much rather do a more serious kind of game like machinarium or at least a game with serious puzzles than a childrens book, but something leaning more towards Gretel and Hansel or Alice is Dead is were willing to do something a bit darker.
Anyway this idea has my vote if we decide to do a half semester project, we just need to come up with the other half first.
oh and you have to accept the email invitation to comment on the blog, i just resent the invites so hopefully everyone actually signs up this time.
ReplyDeleteLol controls are pretty terrible.
ReplyDeleteYeah that's exactly what I had in mind, like Gretel and Hansel but book format. When it comes down to it I don't mind if it's a kids book or something more mature, just a matter of preference ; ).
Yeah, I am pretty into this idea for a half-semester thing.
Ok, hopefully everyone can get it working : )
I've been thinking, and I'm really leaning towards this idea because I think we will have the time to make it look awesome as well as fleshing out all the bugs and things, so we should be able to come up with a really cool game in the end.
ReplyDeleteI should also make clear the two foremost ideas I have for this game, one is for it to be a really awesome looking 3D pop-up book (Maybe something like the Yoshi Story cut-scenes but bigger and better) and the other is for it to be 'Limbo'-ish. Thats just the direction i see it going but id be interested to hear other ideas.