Monster Puzzle RPG - My Game

So I released in the last few days a game called Monster Puzzle RPG. It's my third game in the Android Market. It's not successful so far, though. I made it together with my cousin, he told me about an interesting mechanic he wanted to pursue and, after some convincing, I went along with it.

Download Monster Puzzle RPG on Android Market!

Monster Puzzle RPG on ModDB!

Let's analyze the game(our own game xD), then.

Gameplay
The main mechanic of the game is a grid. A grid of blocks where you have to destroy the blocks and rotate the screen to get an advantage, so you can avoid AND attack the monsters. It's feels quite puzzle-ish, which is why it has the puzzle in it's name. To reinforce the puzzle aspect, I decided to grade the player based on his score and allow the player to retry the stage freely to increase his rank, similar to Angry Birds.

A picture of the puzzle-battle thing

While not inside a puzzle-battle, you proceed through the story in a visual novel manner, similar to games like 999. This way of telling the story was chosen because it's easier and faster to make, since we are indies, but even so it's still an effective way of telling a story, I believe.

We went for an sort of addictive gameplay thing where you kinda wanna make yourself unlock the S rank in every stage. Not sure if it worked, though.

Story
We went with a traditional medieval theme and a story about a treasure hunter that's looking for an specific treasure. I think that it fits well with the puzzle theme and that isn't integrated in to the gameplay yet, I suppose. The story is light-hearted and develops as Soleil, the main character, interacts with his companion, a little girl by the name of Ciel. They are both happy people, so the story stays warm through the demo, but if we continue the game it will go deeper in to darker themes.

Graphics
We went with pastel colors since we find that lighter on the eyes, so light colors are seemed though the entire game. The graphics are mainly vectorized stuff. We're not graphics specialists, but the game still went nicely, we believe.

Sounds
The sound effects are generic stuff, but they fit well. The music was compoused my cousin, who's really amazing and managed to create some cool songs for the game. We went with MID stuff, which kinda limited his potential, but the musics are still great and might justify a download, I hope. He used a program called Fruity Loops Studio

So there you have it! So the game still isn't successful(we hope we can turn that around), but we do not thing the game is faulty, it's just a matter of exposion.

Make a Game - Concept and Scope

Make a Game Series!

First up, we have to choose which kind of game you want to make.

Well, I'm going to make an avoiding game. We have a screen where enemies keeping popping up and moving around and you use the mouse to move yourself and escape the enemies while trying to collect prizes.

The basic engine could be written in less than a day, easily. Afterwards, you would only need to draw some graphics and put together some sounds and bam, you have a game.

That's too simple? Yes, it is. And that is good, for two reasons:

1. We're trying to train for Ludum Dare and you only have 48 hours to make the whole thing.
2. Overscope kills indie game design projects all the time and a lot of other things in life.

The first reason is kinda obvious, you need to plan something simple and small for Ludum Dare, doable in 48 hours. The second reason...

Scope

The second reason isn't so obvious and it is much more important. The bigger you make your before you even actually start to make it, the more likely it is to fail. When you're a beginner, even the smallest game in your head will already be quite hard to make, believe me. You're just one person making a game(or a small team, maybe), and you need to create something that you can actually complete. You may have the fire inside of you now, but in 6 months, that fire might not be so strong. Other ideas may come up and you'll lose heart in sticking with your original idea. That's called overscoping.

And there is also another problem related to that. You should make a playable version of your idea as soon as possible, to see if it's actually fun, if you actually like what you're making. If it takes you 6 months to get that first playable done and you find out you don't like it, well... It's not that bad since you learned through the entire process and you may make less mistakes in your next game. But it's also important to try and make something that can actually be played and that people will like, since that way you can feel more confident in your own work.

If you start now and you start small, nothing can stop you from adding more stuff later :)

Theme

Now, we're also going to decide on a theme. So we have the player, the enemies and that which the player must collect. I guess I'm going with an angel theme, so the enemies'll be little devils and the collectables will be feathers.

Story

I got nothing. I just wanna make the engine and try it out. But, if I must write something simple, then I'm going with...

"You're Raphael, the Angel, and you lost some of your feathers in the Earth sky. But the devils are waiting to get you! You do not wish for battle, so avoid them while trying to collect the feathers!"

Do not get me wrong, I love story. I'll make a post about my story-intensive games later :)

Graphics
We're going with some very simple sprite art. I'll make a post later about it, it'll be basically be sprites for non-spriters.

Sound
This is far from my specialty, but I'll discuss a lot of free solutions for sound effects and music on a future post.

The next step,
My next post will about making some very simple sprite art and then we'll get on to the engine! :D