Cogitu

I'm like a lot of software developers in that one of my "dream projects" has always been to create a video game. Building useful software is quite fun - I've enjoyed it since the beginning and will continue enjoying it (particularly as Budgee Version 1.5 is being built), but there's something special about programming a game. Until now, I've only tinkered with game coding - just enough to get an idea about how it's different from "productivity" development. From a technical standpoint, game programming is quite challenging, but for me, the show stopper was always the "creative" part. I can write tons of code, but I can't draw or design worth a hoot. Well, as luck would have it, I've recently found out that one of my co-workers (Chris), who happens to be a fantastic graphic designer (he did Budgee's icon), has also always wanted to make a game. After talking things over, we agreed that we each have the skills the other one lacks, we share a common goal, and now is a great time to create a game (particularly for the iPhone/iPod Touch). We both decided to think about it and see what we could come up with. On November 23rd, 2008, Chris sent me an e-mail entitled "iPhone Game Concept", and our new game was born...

Introducing...

So we've been working on this concept for a little over a month at this point...mostly doing tech prototypes and initial graphic designs. We're still pretty far away from releasing the game - probably around 2 months away if all goes well, but I wanted to give those of you that read this blog an early look. Since this is the first game either of us have undertaken, there are plenty of things we have to figure out along the way. We've both played plenty of games, but to go from wanting to build a game to turning it into a reality is quite a challenge.

The basic idea for the game is that it's a cross between a "sliding puzzle" (where you have tile pieces that have to be moved into a certain configuration, but only certain moves are allowed) and a "rolling ball" type of mechanic. Additionally, there will be a bit more flavor to it than that, but if you combine those two concepts, you've got the core concept of ROLLAB. I love this concept because it's a great fit with the iPhone/iPod Touch's touchable display (for sliding tiles) and the accelerometer (for controlling the ball).

To give you some idea of what I'm talking about, here's an early (as in pre-alpha) version of ROLLAB:

NOTE: All graphics are very much in development so things are very likely to change as we move forward.

You'll start off with a sample of Recombinant Organic Liquid, or "ROL" (the green sphere in the shot above), which will be placed within a test chamber. Your goal will be to observe & guide the ROL as it experiences different stimuli which are provided by injectors (the small silver object with the 5 green spheres inside) located at various points within the chamber. Within each chamber, there will be an exit point (the red opening in the bottom right) that you must guide the ROL to in order to complete the experiment, but in order to do so, you'll have to overcome certain challenges. You'll have the ability to manipulate the test chamber by rearranging certain objects (the white blocks in this example), but some objects can only be manipulated once certain conditions are satisfied.

At some point in the not too distant future, Chris will be posting some of his thoughts about the game development process from his perspective and I'll be doing the same from my perspective. Hopefully it'll be interesting to watch the game's progress (particularly if you're wondering what it would take to create an iPhone game). We still have tons of issues to work out (e.g. how to calculate a player's score, developing the sound components, several more secondary game mechanics, etc) and as we work though each of these, I'll share our thought process right here. So expect to see plenty more ROLLAB posts (particularly about the technical challenges) on this blog soon...I may even get an early gameplay video online in the not too distant future so you can really see why Chris and I are so excited about this project.