What do you show in 7 minutes?

So the thought on our minds is that it's going to be much easier to come up with some great screenshots showing how great this game is going to be rather than having the game play be shown.  So we've veen working on adding some character art as well as working up a new 1-pager for Tuesday's demo.

We've been hitting some snags in this process, but I really do think that we are learning a lot about the game-making process.

Here's some of the good stuff we've got so far:

Game Theme Overview: 

Office Heroes is an energetic light-hearted variation on the classic fighting-style video games that incorporates office supplies and environments.  A fast paced fight between two players with office supplies as characters and weapons ends when one player has defeated the other twice.  The Office Heroes characters are a parody of super heroes of our culture in the form of objects you use each day at work or in home office.  

Meet some of the cast:

Killer Clippy

Flexible and strong, Clippy is known throughout the office as a leader of organization and hidden ninja skills.

Abilities: Change shape and attack in a different form.

Irate Nate Inker 

Vicious if you look at him the wrong way, yet very artistically gifted, Nate Inker draws gasps from the lips of all those who oppose him.

Abilities: Uses ink to slow enemies and draw barriers

Memo Max

With the ability to go unnoticed, Max sneaks up on his opponents before they ever knew what hit them.

Abilities: Takes sketches found on his paper to attack

Chuck “Fangtooth” Stapler

Pointer McArrowson 

Dr. Bobble Head

Major Features:

  Power-up System

  Pick character, Random power-up/weapon selected

     Damage Boost

     Defense Boost

     Speed Up

     Health Increase

     Stronger Special Attack

Theme and Goal

Possible times to meet are directly after this class.  Zack, let us know if that would work for you next week.  

Game's Theme: Aggression caused by frustration and boredom.  Escape from boredom and frustrations in an office by taking them out object characters.  

Game's Goal: Beating your opponent two times

Some possible characters:

Paperclip

Memo

Stapler

Bird counter-weight

Dust Bunny

Stressball

Mouse pointer

Whiteout

Bobble-head

Morgan and Randy: Make a simple mockup in XNA that has placeholders (simple sprites and movement with controller)

Lukas: Make a few concept-art samples of the characters.  We'll need some stuff to put into the XNA game, but we can talk about that on Tuesday when we come back.

Zach: If you could be in contact with Lukas and come up with some special moves that characters can use.  We'll meet on Tuesday and start adding what we like into XNA. 

Dough Joe

For the next pitch process, I'll be working on Dough Joe.  It's a pretty neat concept.  It's very similar to how Smash Brothers on the N64 starts out (the hand playing with the dolls and having them fight) with the fighting style of Street Fighter, (et. al) but this is based on the desk of someone who is extremely bored at work and he gets objects from his desk to fight each other.

The characters are quite clever too.  My personal favorite is Clip.  He's the paper clip like in Microsoft Office, who pops up and gives you annoying suggestions but he Clip can transform into more deadly things like an alligator mouth or a hook to grab other players.

I'm excited to get working on this project.

Dough Joe First Pitch: HERE