By Brandon Coates
Hello and welcome to Goofball Games first dev blog post! For our first post I will be going over our brainstorming process and game overview. The most difficult part of initial brainstorming is deciding which idea is the best choice to pursue. In a meeting with 10 people there will be at least 20 ideas. Therefore, it is important as a team to have an open and free discussion about each possible idea. In our process each team member had the opportunity to pitch their top ideas which they believed were within our skill and scope to achieve. After that initial brainstorming discussion we had narrowed our game to a handful of ideas. To finally decide what to focus our efforts on we held a team vote. Ideas with significantly less votes would be eliminated and we would vote again. A few rounds later and we had our answer – Kick Some Bass.
Any idea originating from a single person will always be improved through the collective efforts of a passionate team. Through another series of discussions we narrowed the broad collection of ideas into a series of deliverables that can be done in our short two semester time frame. The most important question any team needs to ask is what are your unique selling points? Why should anyone bother playing your game? Well, with a unique blend of 3rd person arena combat, quick and interactive fishing, several unique biomes, and many fish puns – there is an abundance of entertainment for the player to enjoy in one packaged experience.
The story revolves around our protagonist Jim Jimson. A salt of the earth fisherman with a unique perspective of the world. He is convinced the creatures of the deep are plotting the downfall of all surface dwellers. No one would believe him if he tried to alert the authorities, they may even think he is crazy! Thus, our hero sets out on a personal quest to tame the creatures of the sea with the only reliable tools he has ever known. His own two hands.
The game will be divided into different biomes which act as traditional game levels. As the player progresses and unlocks new abilities, those new areas will be opened up for them to test their skill and experience new enemies. After a biome is selected the player will have the opportunity to guide their fishing implement towards their desired target. If the player is successful in catching a fish they will then be thrown into the arena to subdue the mutated nautical monster and be rewarded for their efforts.
There is a lot more to cover but this has been an introduction to our design process, and a description of our game. In future posts we will discuss topics such as game design, 3d modeling, program architecture and much more. Stay tuned for more from our dev blog!