Last week I talked about playing around with some prototypes and thinking about ideas for my next project under Chronik Spartan Games. By the end of the week I’d come to a conclusion of where I wanted to head next and that was a Tycoon game based around building a Gym empire. Over the past week I’ve been starting work on the underlying systems and maths that will be used whilst also making a mental plan for the gameplay type. As a project I really want to involve the community and build a game that people will genuinely enjoy and find different from other Tycoon games.
However, that is not all that has been going on over the past week. A second project has also been brewing in the background. Along with a friend, we have been thinking and planning a joint project. We wanted to make some decisions before we announced this second project and now we feel we are at a good point to reveal the concept and start to work on it.
A few years ago I began some early work on writing a script for a comic that I planned to create. With life taking over and finding the whole process of creating the artwork for an entire comic way out my abilities for the time I could dedicate to it the plan fell by the wayside. Over the years I’ve always looked back at what I feel was a great foundation for a world I think could provide a lot of depth and intrigue over multiple stories and felt it was a missed opportunity. When I started game development properly this year I started to think if I could make any game what would it be?
Being an absolute huge fan of Metal Gear Solid my dream game would be one that captures the excitement and intrigue of Metal Gear Solid on the original PlayStation in a modern and unique way. The story for that game would be the story I originally set out writing for the comic. The gameplay would be of a style that fits nicely in the indie categories of games but one that does things slightly differently by combining two genres that have been historically difficult to balance in many games.
A few weeks ago, after the PLAY Expo, I was chatting with one of my closest friends, Chris Nisbet (@NIZMO58) someone I have shared nearly every one of my early gaming experiences with, about the idea of working on a game project together and what we could both bring to the table. We both excel in different areas that lend themselves very well to game design. On my side the experience of being a programmer and dealing with the mechanics behind creating a game and on his side the experience of having an artistic background and having the vision for concepts he can translate into art. Together we both bring a deep love and understanding for game design and what we think makes a good game. It’s kind of a no brainer. So with the desire set in stone we went about exploring what game we could make. Of all the prototypes and ideas for games we quickly turned on to the idea of making that dream game. To highlight why we made the decision there are a few factors that played into the decision:
- There is the foundation of a great story with a lot of scope for us to cooperatively build upon
- The game style is something we truly believe to be unique
- The game style is something we truly believe we can execute in an exciting way
- We will be able to build the game in GameMaker Studio allowing us the scope to focus more on creativity than problem solving
- We think it’s frickin cool!
So what is that game!? This game will be Project ZATO. Project ZATO will be a twin stick, top down bullet hell/stealth game with a heavy story driven element. The gameplay mechanics will focus on creating an equal and natural blend between stealth and action, whereby neither plays second fiddle to the other. We aim for it to feel just as exciting and fun to play the game hiding in the shadows as it does coming out guns blazing but each with their own benefits and difficulties to judge.
So you must be thinking, working on two game projects, you must be crazy! As crazy as it sounds I think it will really help. The Gym Tycoon game and Project ZATO are two wildly different games but I believe that the development of them will complement each other. One thing I decided for the short term future of game development is to allow more development time even if the actual core game development itself could be done relatively quickly. I believe this opens up the opportunity to fit in more effort. Also the development required for the two games is so different, one focusing on maths and systems and the other focusing on story and mechanics, that they will each provide a form of relief from one another when things get a bit too heavy on one side. And finally Project ZATO will be built in GameMaker Studio which means the majority of the development will be time dedicated to sitting down in front of a computer with GMS installed and developing the story, whereas the Gym Tycoon game will be developed using C# which means most of the systems can be developed and tested on a variety of devices that I’ll have available to me in a more quick access and portable sense.
Over the next few weeks we will be releasing more information around Project ZATO and we hope soon to have some early concept art and prototypes. Please follow Chris (@NIZMO58) also for more information as we will be jointly posting about Project ZATO and it’s development from now on.