Developing Ideas 02

After researching into racing games available on portable Apple products I have gather a lot of ideas that I wish to incorporate in my game idea.

As I explained in my previous entries, I want to design a children's racing game for the ipad. I chose to make it available only on ipad because the amount of features required on the game will use a lot of screen space, and i want the player to get the best gaming experience possible. I thought, hmmm targeting children is an interesting audience to go for but by themselves they wouldn't be able to afford an ipad. I then decided to target it at families as a whole. That way at least one member of the family would have an ipad that a child would be allowed to access.

I have drawn up a basic in game overview of how I want everything to look.

Top Left: Character, and the cars damage meter.

Middle Left: Track map. Shows all the other racers positions, and your car's position is highlighted in red.

Top Right: Racers position out of 8 players on the track

Middle Right: Lap number

Bottom Right: Car's speedometer and boost bar

Bottom Middle: Two directional arrows are the steering controls. Press either button to go left or right.
Also in the middle you can see the car that you are driving.

Off the race track I'm thinking of adding an educational aspect to it, so when children are playing they learn something. I don't want to make it too riddled with facts that a child would just put the game on and move onto something else. I was thinking along the lines of being able to use materials from different time periods to use in the construction of your car. For example, during the English industrial revolution, there was a lot of iron and steam powered technology. Using steam power in your car and making it out of metals would make it faster and more durable. Another  example would be making a car from prehistoric materials such as wood and dinosaur bones. It would make your car faster, but venerable to heavy damage.

In the car construction menu, when you scroll over selected items from different time periods a little bit of text will appear describing the item, when it was made and what its function is. It will also display a rating or recommendation to what race style the item is suited for like drag racing, circuits, sprints, battles etc...

For a quick game, players can select preset cars, that are automatically tuned for different racing scenarios.

Research Into ipad Games

Today has been an excellent day. Not only did my ipad 2 arrive ready for game testing, I have a clearer idea on what i want my game to be about.
During game testing I noted down all the games characteristics, along with their good and bad points regarding gameplay, controls, general gameplay overview, graphics and simplicity/complexity of the game.
I focussed my testing on three games in particular. Reckless Getaway, Zombie Highway, Drag Racing and Lego Racers on the Nintendo 64.

Reckless Getaway

Reckless Getaway is basically a Burnout/Grand Theft Auto game. There are two different game types. one is demolition, which involves driving a massive lorry and smashing through as many obstacles to gain the highest score possible. All along the road there are '?' icons laid out, for players to drive through to earn bonus points. This mode is also available online so you are able to compete with random people or your friends online. The second game type is called Getaway. The key objective of this game mode is to escape from a robbery of some kind in a getaway car and evade the police. The one mission I played involved me having to escape and evade the police in an allotted time.
What I loved most about this game was the graphics, the birds eye view the player had of the game and the simplicity of both the games mechanics and the overall game in general. What I didn't like was the sensitivity of the controls. Although the controls were very sensitive I loved how it was two simple left and right arrow buttons. I checked out a number of reviews in both ipad magazines and on the App Store. Most people who purchased this game gave it a 4-5 star rating, because of the positive points I made.

Demolition Mode (See the scoring system
 for certain cars/objects destroyed)

Great example of the birds eye in game view

Title Page

Zombie Highway


Zombie Highway was another great game I played today. The key objective of the game is survival. You are driving a heavily armoured vehicle through the desert, fighting off zombies trying to knock you off the road. The game itself is simple, highly addictive and very competitive.

When I first picked up this game I thought 'oh no, not another zombie game'. But to be honest, I have never played a zombie game, which involved driving too. It does exactly what it says on the tin. Driving on a highway with zombies.

The game can be played either offline or online against other people, trying to survive as long as you can. The game has a good upgrade system, although it does become very restricting if you have no money to spare in order to buy some hardcore weapons. I was playing for at least an hour today and only just unlocked a simple SMG. It just proves that money goes a long way.

View of the game on the ipod Touch

Concept art for the game

In game screenshot

The game is available on all three Apple iOS products, being the ipad 1/2, iphone 3, 3GS, 4, 4GS and the ipod touch. The games control system is done by tilting the device left and right to steer your vehicle. As you can see in the image above, when zombies mount your car 4 circles appear around your car. 2 circles on each side of the car to represent doors. Whenever a zombie mounts a certain door on the car, the circle indicating will turn red. It is then the players mandate to tap that circle to shoot the zombies off the car or steer the car into obstacles sprawled on the roach to knock them off. For the players convenience, each attacking zombie has a health bar above them. As I mentioned earlier there are 7 different classes of zombies in this game. One being stronger than the other. The health bars support this by either decreasing slower when being attacked or they are a different colour to represent the stronger classes. 

Overall I personally love this game. I like the idea, how it plays and the controls. The trouble I had with it was the difficulty at the beginning. I had to really work at the game to unlock items and in general; 'survive', which is the initial aim of the game. I wouldn't say this game should be a first choice game to pick up if you are new to gaming on Apple devices, because it requires skill and the ability to look ahead, not to mention epic multitasking.

Drag Race

Drag Racing is a racing game primarily based around drag racing. The aim of the game is to win drag racing competitions to earn in game spending money to buy upgrades for your car, or just buy a better car and upgrade that one and so on.

In game

The garage, where you purchase new cars or upgrade them

This game is available on all iOS devices like 'Zombie Highway' and 'Reckless Getaway'. It has an insanely simple in-game control system. As you can see in the 'In game' screenshot above, there are two tabs left and right to the steering wheel with plus and minus signs and a foot pedal logo to the right, above the positive tab. The two tabs are used for gear shifting. In game, the player has to simply press either of the + and - button to shift up or down to control the speed of their car. The foot pedal logo is what the player presses to rev up their engine ready to accelerate off the start line. In order for the player to see their distance from the finish line or between other players, there is a track map displayed at the top of the screen. The general in game layout is very basic. Its a 2D layout. The players drivers seat with the controls in and the racing cars in front of that.

While I was playing 'Drag Race' i found it very similar to a popular console game called 'Need For Speed'. The idea of having a garage of cars and being able to upgrade the cars performance and look is very relatable to 'NFS'. Of course 'Drag Race' is far simpler, to make it an easy pick up and play game, with no in depth narrative or extreme graphics and game mechanics.

I found the in game menus and customizing car options tiring to flick around, because I'm wanting to make a game that is easy to navigate around and can appeal to families and children.

Overall I'd say this game is great, but I would find it very tedious after a half hour or so of gameplay. So I think its more of a pick up and play game, not one that one would play continuously for hours on end, but thats just my personal opinion.

Lego Racers

Lego Racers was a game I used to play on the Nintendo 64. It is a racing game based around the children's construction toy, Lego. The game allows players to make their own car out of lego pieces and race their car against other players in local multiplayer or AI (Artificial Intelligence). 

I found this game a great influence for my game idea, because it targets children, the player can make their own car to race with and it has a nice comic themed style to it, which is exactly what I'm looking for.

Lego Racers

I really want to use selected features from each game I have analysed and condense them into my game idea. I like the steering controls and in game birds eye view in 'Reckless Getaway'. The touch and shoot feature in 'Zombie highway' is a good idea if I want to have a combat system during races. 'Drag Race' doesn't really have any appeal to me, but I am considering its simple gameplay. 'Lego Racers' comic theme and the ability to build your own car to race with is a great concept, that I want to include in my game.

Research and Developing Ideas 01

I was set a new assignment recently to come up with a game that can run on a selection of Apple products, being the ipad, iphone and ipod touch.

First things first was to get some research down for inspiration. 

I already have a game idea in my head, but I can't go off and start developing an idea without knowing what is already out there, otherwise the game may not sell.

My heart is set on designing a racing game, targetting a younger audience, because I believe that younger people enjoy gaming far more than a much older audience. 

As I'm targeting a young audience I am starting to look in old childrens games, In search of ideas I have gone out and purchased Lego Racers for the Nintendo 64 and found Wacky Racers online. 

I went out and purchased some Apple magazines, focussing on the ipad. I've chosen the ipad over other Apple products because there's more screen space to play around with I feel that my game will need the space to make the game easier. The magazines were very useful. inside they had pages upon pages of apps available for the ipad, plus a list of the top 10/20 games for the ipad. From what i found, the majority of the games are RPG's and shooters. There are a lot of console titles, such as Battlefield, Dead Space and Need For Speed Hot Pursuit have been re-dubbed and released for Apple Products.
Since I intend to design a racing game I primarily focussed on the racing games out on the market. There were a couple in the magazines, which I noted down, but I thought the App Store was the best place to look. I also did some general Google searches for the top rated games and also checked the Apple website for other games and reviews I may have missed on the App Store.
I found that the racing games that are out were either 2D demolition scenarios or had the full 3D experience and added zombies into the gameplay. Zombies are cool and everything, but I feel that they are in every game on the market.
I want my game to have a unique kick to it (NO ZOMBIES!)
I have a rough idea of how I want my game to look floating around, but I think I'll get some more research to support my idea, otherwise I may risk my concept going wrong.

My current dilemma is the audience. The ipad is an expensive piece of hardware, and most people at the age range I'm targeting (ages 16-25) may not be able to have their own personal ipad. In this case I will have to increase the age range of my target audience. Its a work in progress and I'll come back to it.