The beginning
About a year ago we were looking for a topic for another game. Initially, we planned to do something completely different, namely a dark survival horror game with a narrow color palette. We even had a prototype of the world and the first mechanics. However, there was no magic in it. There was no desire to play constantly (as experienced game creators we always look for that in early prototypes). Although the world seemed suggestive and the first tests on Twitter returned hundreds of hearts, the horror prototype was pale compared to our previous game Golf VS Zombies.
This is a game that we released in September 2023. It wasn't a huge success, but the players who bought it reported that they had a great time. The main mechanics and the idea of combining killing monsters with sports equipment were spot on. So we decided to try to do it again, but this time much better and differently. We had a lot of ideas on what could be improved or made more attractive because this topic was not new to us.
Prototyping
We started where we left off in Golf VS Zombies, with golf. Then more weapons appeared. Baseball. Ok, interesting. What else? Lacrosse, then a slingshot (it's the closest to classic shooting with a firearm) and a few other weapons. The graphics were darker from the start (here probably the influence of the 1st horror theme), but not only because darkness suits the monsters better. Golf VS Zombies was too comedic because there was a lot of sun and colors. This was one of our main conclusions.
As for the perspective, there was a prototype of FPS and a prototype of TPP. At this stage, after gameplay tests, it looked like it would be better to choose TPP.
The main reason was that flying (the jetpack upgrade) would be super cool and more natural in this camera view. Another strong argument was that it felt more natural to animate a TPP player pawn aiming with an arsenal of sports weapons.
Plus, we felt that showing the character would allow us to get a little more attached to the player.
Development, tests and conclusions
With that in mind, we started full development, but one thing I want to emphasize is that we never completely ruled out FPS, and there were mechanisms in place to allow for a future change in perspective if needed. It soon turned out that our intuition was right and that change would become very reasonable…
After 5 milestones we started to be bored with this firstly chosen view.
Also, there were a few serious problems:
- The gameplay was a bit sluggish (in TPP you can't move very fast because of leg animations - if you move fast it looks comical) BUT as some of you may noticed the best shooter games use super fast movement to give players even more adrenaline rush.
- TPP view requires a lot of modeling (players will have a lot of sports gear, masks, backpacks, elbow pads in different types, and so on. This is a ton of work hours and our team is only 2 people).
- We made a lot of detailed monsters and in TPP the distance between the camera and the monster is bigger and this results in the monster not being visible in great detail.
- In TPP rotation of camera + player pawn is not that precise (at least it was not in our case) You don't have the perfect level of control that is pleasurable and which makes you feel like a badass or action hero.
The FPS switch
The decision was quite difficult - if we wanted to change it, a lot of work would have gone to waste (about 2 milestones). But you make games to make a great game, not to deliver an average one, right? This wisdom helped us make the decision. Andy (half of our team dealing with coding) took about a week to implement the changes and prepare a build good enough for playtests.
As we suspected, problems 1, 2, 3, and 4 disappeared immediately and that was already in the first unpolished version of the FPS player controller. Then gradually things started to look and feel better and better.
Apart from the obvious “cold-blooded” factors mentioned. Our duo started to feel huge enthusiasm for this project. It was hard to stop playing. And despite it being half ready we had a lot of fun! Dozens of ideas for further improvements popped up. There is some magic in the FPS view. You can identify easily with action. Immersion is the most strong in this case. Probably for this reason most very popular recent simulator games are set in this view. Also, FPS-es have been popular for 30 years now and this will not end soon.
Steam page
Some time after the change we decided that the game was ready to finally reveal it to the world.
We didn't rush this decision. Today we see that it was the right thing to do. If we had set up the site too early, it would have been from the TPP perspective. It would probably have been met with a worse reception. As of today, we have over 8,000 wishlists after the first 2 weeks on the Steam platform. This is a pretty decent score in our opinion. We are very happy that you liked the game and we promise that we will deliver a real gem for you!
Stay tuned!
Ok so this is a short version of this story. At the moment we are polishing this camera. Working on combat to look super dynamic and cool. This will take us some time. After that and after adding a new environments and a few more monsters we will show you a gameplay trailer. It will happen sooner than everyone thinks. ;) Thanks for your attention and see you in the next devlog, Bye!