M.A.Z.E. - Update

I realize that it’s been very long since I last spoke about my current project. I guess that since I’m immersed in it I can’t really see any remarkable or newsworthy events. Hence the general update.

The gameplay has come a long way in two months, from nebulous (read: unplayable) action/puzzler-to-be to an actually quite pleasing experience. Obviously the damn thing is still being developed and bugs keep popping up, but they are mostly minor. Streamlining the gameplay required cool heads both for me and Yvan, deciding what to cut in order to let the original idea shine through. Luckily we haven’t made bad, irreversible choices so far.

If you remember, the goal of the exercise is to build a prototype that demonstrates the core idea of a game, and at the same time write the design document of the whole game. Well, I guess we’re going along nicely, because the prototype and the design document are pretty much the same. Obviously the gamedoc talks about tons of things that aren’t even near being in the prototype, like a single player mode, for example. But hey, three months (interspersed with mandatory assignments, conferences and classes, so it boils down to two months of REAL work).

A small piece of advice to any game studies teacher that would happen to come by. If you’re planning to have your students complete a project in a short amount of time, don’t schedule something else for that time. We work better if we have only one thing to do. Oh and programmers should be untouchable the last month of production, so no programming lessons or lectures, please.

Ahem

So anyways, the prototype will be freely downloadable and playable (you’ll need two xbox controllers though :S ), so I guess we’ll see then.

And now… TEAM PICTURE, ASSEMBLE!

Left to right: Samuel Lachaud, Bérénice Paquier, Meng Wang, David Hart, Julien Promp, Fabien Montpion, Guillaume Padé (in red), me, Yvan Taurines. Ain’t we quaint!