The Road to Pistol Reef

Pistol Reef is a 2D, third-person side-scrolling shooter where an adorably furious pistol shrimp named Rotor uses his claws and an arsenal of upgradeable weaponry to battle the forces poisoning his reef home. It will feature over-the-top character and enemy designs, a cel-shaded art style, and rotating weapon nodes around Rotor's body. 

Pistol Reef is the Flash game my team is making over the next six weeks.

I mentioned before that we created our Flash teams before the end of Term 1. Our first step as a team was to discuss our roles, followed quickly by me (the PM) setting a deadlined meeting for the five of us to share at least two well-developed ideas for games that we would want to make and play. The results were lackluster, but fortunately we settled on an idea that has some real potential to be tonnes of fun and a beautiful portfolio piece. Before I get into that, though, I wanted to discuss why Pistol Reef, my idea, was chosen over the others.

Let me state first that my idea wasn't better than any of the other (few) pitches that came out of our first meeting. There were some intriguing ideas there that could make for good games. Still, I've found I often get my way—my ideas get "made" in the confines of our assignments and projects—for four reasons.

1. I take the prep time and the assignment seriously so I can develop good ideas.

2. I present entire ideas (not just gameplay concepts) using the structures we have been taught.

3. I only pitch ideas that I am invested in. I pitch ideas for games I would want to play.*

4. I'm willing to be wrong. Ideas are cheap and everywhere, and better ones are bound to come along. This makes humbleness easy to come by.

* From speaking to our instructors in the industry, this is a habit I will want to break if I want to seem intellectually fecund**; somewhere between one and five percent of professionally pitched ideas end up being implemented, so I should get used to pitching everything, not just the "good" ideas.

** I don't care how haughty this sounds. It's my vocabulary and I can dig into it if I want to. :)

Anyway, I have no doubt that being older and bolder than the other students also plays a part in me getting my stuff "made", but I've been more than willing to take the passenger role during group work when someone else steps into that leadership role. Someone's gotta do it.

Back to Pistol Reef. GD has six intakes (one every two months) right now, so there is plenty of wisdom to plumb, and the most common advice has been to manage our scope for these major projects. Pistol Reef's goal length has been set to a modest five levels, and while we have some ambitious art and design aspects (20+ enemies, minibosses, bosses, and multiple weapon types) I think our team is up for it. Ideally, it will look a little like Castle Crashers and play a little like Metal Slug, and if we can achieve those goals I will be incredibly proud.

This is the first project of this scope for all of us, though, so I am being cautious with my optimism, but yesterday we received feedback from our instructors on our concept document, and it was overwhelmingly positive. The few negatives were already picked up by us and addressed as a team, and we were also warned to put our core gameplay before our sweet unique mechanics, lest we fall behind and have to scale back.

I'm hopeful, and I know we have the talent to make a good game, but we have our work cut out for us and I have some creeping doubts that I am hoping to address soon.

I'll tell you about those soon. Thanks for stopping by.