Acorn Heroes

A beginning is a very delicate time.

Know then that it is the year 2011.  The mobile space is ruled by the App Store.  In this time, the most precious substance in the Appverse is a successfully implemented game idea.  A successful App extends the Indie lifestyle.  A successful App expands possibilities and opens doors.

Ok, I think that’ll do, enough butchering of a great movie.

I have previously talked about my game-in-waiting Faerie.  Currently, Faerie is a simple game mechanic that has been prototyped and ‘just’ needs to be turned into a finished game.  Starting things has never been a problem for me.  But seeing them through to the end is a lot more difficult.  And so I have a plan.  A plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.

The Plan

1. As of this post, Faerie officially enters production.  I can’t promise it will be a rapid process, but it is my plan to make demonstrable progress every week.
2. To add incentive for me to keep it up, I’ll write about the process as I go.  Posts will vary in nature, some technical, some design based, some will be about art style and some will be about marketing.  It is my intention to be as open and up front about the whole thing as possible.
3. If I fail to live up to my promises in 1) and 2) above, I fully expect to be harassed by you, my friends and readers, and to be called a lazy git.

As Sam Beckett would say, “Oh boy!”.  Here’s hoping this works.  If not, people seem to enjoy watching a train wreck so I hope it provides an interesting read either way

MVP

So there’s this new-fangled idea going around about “Lean Startups”.  But one of the key ideas for a lean startup is the idea of identifying your Minimum Viable Product.  In other words, what is the minimum product you can produce that is of sufficient worth that your customers will be willing to pay for it.  For someone with tight time constraints like me, identifying the MVP for Faerie makes a huge amount of sense.  It’s too easy to fall into the trap of trying to incorporate every great idea from every other game out there.  That way leads to madness, and stagnation.

So, what does my MVP look like?  Here’s the current idea:

• Game mechanics – a never-ending series of different coloured objects fall from the top of the screen.  The player creates chains of these objects as they fall.  Chains must either be all of the same colour, or all different colours.  Chains score points based on the rarity of the colours used and also the length of the chains formed.  If an unfinished chain reaches the bottom of the screen, it’s game over.  The player tries to last as long as possible, amounting as high a score as possible.  Ninjump and geoSpark are good examples of these kinds of games.
• Variety – to avoid things getting boring there will also be a number of ‘power ups’ that fall down.  Tapping one of these will, say, slow down time, or activate a points multiplier, or create an auto-chainer, or… It should also be possible to activate combo-like scoring by creating chains in quick succession.
• Audience – I want kids to be able to play the game and have fun, but I also want more serious gamers to find plenty to challenge them.
• Aesthetic – for various reasons, I’ve always seen the falling objects as being leaves falling in a magical woodland – chaining them together is a game played by Faeries (hence the name), and the result of scoring well is to bring life to the woodland in the background.  I’d love to pull off a sort of line drawing and water colour feel to the game.  See the image below by Linda Ravenscroft for an example of the kind of style / colours I’d like to work with.  I’m no artist, so this would indeed be a challenge!  How can I convey a similar feeling / impression with meager skills?

This image is from a great tutorial over at http://www.artgraphica.net

In terms of features, this is what I believe would make a worthy game, with everything non-essential removed (the plan is to add more in as updates, once Faerie has been successfully launched):

• Single ‘endless’ game mode
• Seamless in-game tutorial
• Players can choose one of three levels of difficulty to start on Easy (Kids), Medium (Normal Player) or Hard (Hardcore Master Gamer)
• Scaling level of difficulty as the game goes on
• Gradual introduction of more types of game object over time (as in Tilt to Live, geoSpark, Linkoidz etc)
• Satisfying visual and aural feedback – the player needs to enjoy the process of putting together chains – the game should make them feel like a Minor God of Leaf Chaining.
• Online leader boards, or in some form the ability to brag to your friends.
• Dynamic music that gets more frantic as time goes on.
• All standard iOS behaviour works as expected – save and resume, multitasking, player’s music plays in preference to game music and so on.

I think that’s it.  It doesn’t sound like much, but even given my minimalist goals, I still want the game itself to feel stylish, fun and well polished.

Here’s the thing…

This is the part where I’m going to hit you up for a favour.  What I’m hoping for by conducting this process in the open is to get feedback from everyone.  Is the game good?  Does it suck?  Have you thought of a cool power up?  Would this game work better with Space Marines than Faeries?  Should I use a swipe gesture instead of a double tap? Whatever your thoughts are, I’d love to hear them as we go.  I can’t promise everyone’s ideas will make it into the game – that way lies madness.  But what I hope to achieve by throwing this project open to the world at large is to take this rough idea of a game and reduce it to an elegant, streamlined and fun game.  The more opinions I can get, and the earlier I can get them, the better this game will be.

So, my first question to you is: does the MVP sound viable?  Is it enough, or does it need something more before I can justify asking $0.99 or $1.99 for it?  Even at this stage, is there something that could be cut back on?  And a second question: what of the game’s theme / aesthetic (faeries, woodland scenes, water colour rendering) – does it sound promising / appealing?

There’s a bunch of ideas for posts mulling around in my head, but perhaps the best place to begin is, as they say, at the beginning.  So here’s a quick introduction.

Who?

There’s two of us, Sam and George.  ”Sam and George’s well designed and written software for the iPhone and iPod Touch” was catchy and, most surprisingly, available as a domain name, but it was perhaps just a smidge long for a company name, and so we settled on Acorn Heroes instead.  Between us we have over twenty years experience in the gaming and real time animation business, not to mention six kids, several cats, a dog, rabbit and two very understanding wives.

What?

We’re developing quality software for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  What do I mean by quality?  Careful design, consideration for the user and solid, reliable code that we will use ourselves.  While our primary goal is to bring to life some of the hundreds of game ideas floating around in our heads, we’re also keen to build useful applications that just help to make life easier, more organised, more fun, more meaningful, more… well, you get the idea.

Where?

Well ‘here’, obviously  Here for us being Dunedin, in the lower reaches of New Zealand.  It’s a lovely place, with a wealth of very talented people, beautiful scenery, and great beer.

When?

Weekday evenings, especially Thursday, because there’s nothing on TV.  And the odd weekend too.  You see, with families and mortgages, we can’t quite turn our back on ‘The Man‘ just yet.  And besides, in my case ‘The Man’ is a friend and good employer.  So this is a part time effort – although that doesn’t mean we’ll sacrifice the quality of our work, just that we need to ensure we work smarter, not harder.

Why?

Partly it’s the challenge, partly it’s the prospect of earning some extra money.  Oh, and it could be that the iPhone is one of the coolest toys out there.

So now that you know us so well, what can you expect from this site?  That’s one of the things we’re still figuring out.  So feel free to pop in and see what we’re up to, leave a note, or subscribe to our RSS feed, and we’ll come to you!