Work Work Work!

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

I’ve made my way back to Massachusetts to work with Fire Hose Games on their up coming title Slam Bolt Scrappers. It’s been a fun and crazy few weeks thus far and has been a blast being part of a creative team again.

My impression of the game so far…

I can honestly say Slam Bolt Scrappers is the only game I’ve worked on that I’ve had a genuinely fun experience playing day after day. Especially considering the stage of development it’s in, I have no doubts it will be a hit with all who play it. And the reviews can certainly back that up.

At it’s core it’s a tower defense game but with an interesting mix-up of mechanics from many other genres. In Battle Mode, you and a teammate can square off against two other players in a fight to build the baddest tower and destroy that of your enemy. Throughout the round, baddies will fly into the screen and attack each team’s tower as well. Punching and Kicking the crap out of these grubs (as we affectionately call them in the office) will eventually reward you with a block of a specific color. Those blocks can be used to build new weapons or shields, or strengthen your current stronghold.

I’ve seen many different strategies employed while playing. Some players will try to stack up massive shields with minimal weapons at first, and then strike. Other’s will try and end the game quickly by building up one massive weapon and nothing else. An interesting strategy is allowing your teammate to attack the opponent directly, while you work on the tower. Communication is key when in Battle Mode no matter what strategy you choose.

My contributions…

I’ve been animating enemy characters and the player characters so far. One boss in particular will be featured at PAX coming up over labor day weekend and it’s looking pretty bad ass. I’ve been able to have my hand in just about every aspect of development as well. One of the great things about working at Fire Hose is it’s a relatively small team. Decisions are made and implemented much faster than at studios with 100+ person development teams. It’s been great to work directly with designers, coders, marketing on ideas that you can see come to fruition, sometimes in a matter of hours. We’re always encouraged to contribute and speak up about ideas or changes that we think could make the game better. Awesome.

It’s really great to be leaving my mark on this game. By the time we ship I’ll likely have keyed on just about every character in the game and that is a cool feeling.

I may do a write-up on gameplay after PAX and I’ve also been asked to blog on the Fire Hose site about some behind-the-scenes stuff which should be fun.