Day: 6 June 2016

Game Review: The Scruffs Online

The Scruffs Online   The Scruffs Online

About this game: The scuffs online is a simple 2d platform type game where the aim of the game is to find objects hidden in a what seems to be the front yard of  a hoarder. I don’t have a hugely massive attention span when it comes to playing games but I found myself easily drawn into the simple mechanics of just simply finding an object.

First impressions: I really enjoyed the graphics of this game and I found the characters oddly charming. The way the introduction was animated put me in the mind of Warner Brother’s Limited Animation technique, where the main bodies of the characters stayed still and only the mouths moved.

What I really liked. I liked the fact that this game is a based on a word search type activity, but having a timer and having the timer speed up if you get click happy adds a certain amount of risk. I liked the way you could get help from the dog, who would bark faster if you get closer to the object you have to find, but I soon ran out of dog treats to feed him. I’m not one of the world’s most observant people so I found even the initial levels quite challenging, which kept me more entertained than many people might find it.

What annoyed me. As I previously stated, I’m not very observant, and with the clock ticking down, and my random desperate clicking speeding the timer up I soon ran out of time and to start the level again. I am not a huge fan of having to go right back to the beginning in a game so I soon got despondent with it and gave up.

Game Play. The game leads you into the story quite well, with voice actors telling you the background and prepping you for game play. Game hints pop  up on the screen when it’s evident you need them. The game only uses the mouse as the interactivity, so it’s reliant on you searching the screen to find the object you are looking for.

The nitty gritty. I found this game quite enjoyable and would most likely play it again. I am not sure what value at the paid version would add, this is something I’d only consider if I was totally immersed in the play, which at this point I don’t see happening.

scruffs5 scruffs6 scruffs7

You can try your hand at this game yourself on 2Dplay.com.

 

Brother Monkey World Warrior Game: Character Development and Mood Board

Brother Monkey – Love the world

That’s a working title, I’m not exactly sure what I am going to end calling my game, so if you have any great suggestions please do let me know.

As promised, here is a post about the development of my main character and hero of my game, Brother Monkey. Anyone who knows my family, know who Brother Monkey actually is, but for those who don’t, he is my daughter’s favourite toy, some might say, her one true love. She has said in the past “I’m not going to get married Mama, I’m going to live alone with Brother Monkey!” (We believe her!)

brother monkey - stylised

I did lots of googling on anime eyes and discovered a style called Chibi, I really liked the simplistic approach so I decided to try drawing that myself.

I started by doing a lot of different sketches of Brother Monkey, trying to get a feel for the direction the artwork for my game was going to take. I’ve included a few of my initial sketches. I had an idea that I wanted my characters to have anime style eyes to use as different expressions so I had a starting point of sorts.

I imported my images into Photoshop and then used my Wacom pen to styles the miniature Brother Monkeys I had created. The next step was vectorising my monkey so I skipped over to Illustrator to start work on that. It didn’t take long for me to realise that I wasn’t quite heading in the right direction.

Moodboard

brother monkey dev snippet

After awhile I started to go around in circles, thankfully soon after this my husband sent me a link to some gif’s by Eran Mendel, an Animation director and designer and I immediately fell in love with his style.

Eran Mendal - Animation

Brother Monkey SketchWith this style in mind, I went back to the drawing board and came up with an idea for my monkey. After playing around with this style in Illustrator and keeping in mind how small my character would be I decided to stick with the chibi style eyes rather than use the plain eyes in Eran’s Style.

After this, the process sped up some, but still took the time to work out proportions and create Brother Monkey’s backpack.

After three days of working on this, I have come up with the following character concept art.

Brother Monkey Character.

Stayed tuned for the next step, I still have lots more work to do!