Taking the time to make this game fun has so far been a very interesting challenge. Have a look at our tutorial level puzzle below. We are in the process of taking this simple idea and turning it in to a great experience. See you soon.

A simple puzzle's solution

A simple puzzle's solution

Every hero needs a villain. Batman has the Joker, Superman has Lex Luther, Mario has Bowser. These foes are often strikingly different from their do-gooding rival. Serious vs Silly. Brawn vs Brain. Little tubby plumber vs giant go-kart riding dragon turtle.

Calling all units

Compare this to rival type villains- A favorite of mine. Villains who have some of the same principles and often have a lot in common with the hero; However they are twisted. They are examples of someone with the same powers, resources and sometimes background, if their goals were far less noble. These are the Spiderman and Venoms, Luffy and Blackbeard,  Darkwing Duck and NegaDuck.

Yeah, make fun of the little guy, with his ONE EYE.

So, Mack needed a foe, but this post isn’t about his dastardly rival. It’s about his rivals minions. The thankless and hardworking faceless soldiers who uphold their employers iron will. These guards patrol the corridors and rally points in enemy territories.

More often than not, Mack may overhear them expressing their discontent with their job or their wages, or just chatting to kill the time as they wait around for someone to try and put one over on them.

They're much more friendly than they look, trust me.

Now enter the far less talkative reaper bot. As part of the autonomous aspect of the enemy’s forces, these smaller more agile bots patrol alongside the persistent henchmen. Though they lack long rang capacity, they make up for it by being fast runners. However, they aren’t quite as smart as their human counterpart, lacking some reasoning skills. They kind of focus too much on eviscerating Mack to see the big picture.

Well, that about wraps up this post. Stay tuned for the post that goes a bit more into depth about the man who controls these forces, Mack’s rival.

RUN. JESUS. RUN.

- Josh Hano

Usually when I hear the term ‘tester’ I think of open betas, bug squashing, and the polish that follows a nearly completed game. But recently I’ve started to rethink what the role of testing is. Making games fun is tricky, and authoring a fun gameplay mechanic is is very difficult to do in any systematic kind of way. In the past when I would envision creating a game, I would plan everything in advance. I would think of how the graphics would look, what the game would play like, how it unravels over time, and what the long-term goals are for the player. Only after I have planned everything out would I move on to art. Then only after all the art was created would I finally write the code for the game. There is a major flaw in this process, what if the game turns out to be not very fun?

I am writing this post to convey to the game devs out there this message: Test your gameplay
I don’t mean test for bugs, or to work out aesthetic issues. I mean literally create your gameplay mechanics using squares, cubes, whatever is easiest for you, and play the game before doing anything else!

I recently was brainstorming, trying to come up with new interesting ways to solve puzzles in my upcoming game, Macro. The game revolves around manipulating time and space. Games have done this before, but I started thinking that maybe directly controlling gravity would be interesting. Rather than continuing to ponder how it would tie in with the aesthetic of the game, or thinking about integration with the existing mechanics, I simply started trying things in the code to see if it was fun. The first thing I did was the most obvious, I allowed the player to directly enter the gravity in real-time by looking at the normal movement keys. I created a bunch of pipe pieces to look at the effect and see how it felt to use. While it was fun to throw the pipes all around the screen, and the visuals were satisfying, I felt like I did not see any way to fully implement this in to a puzzle.

Ignoring this instinct I continued to play with the gravity input. This time I made every object in the level gravitate towards the player (within a certain threshold.) This looked pretty cool, but because of the collisions, it was instantly frustrating and I would get pinned from moving almost every step I took. Through these simple tests I took away the following:

• Manipulating gravity really just means moving objects
• Objects will collide with the player, so unless you are intentionally trying to collide with these objects, they will block you
• Seeing swarms of objects flying around by your control is very fun

So, if my plan was to create a fun experience by manipulating these objects from a distance, then I would have to give them a purpose that meant the collision with the player would be planned and intentional. Here I decided to try giving the player more control by allowing mouse input that would define a point in space where the objects would “gravitate” to, similar to what I had done before with the player’s location. I made this change, and immediately saw that it was very interesting because now I had the ability to create things to stand on that were visually appealing, potentially strategic, and fun to use.

In these screenshots you can see how this element might now contribute to the gameplay. At any given time I could move a “mass” to any location on the screen, and then use it to navigate. It is tricky to do successfully, but that’s part of the challenge of using it I think. I played around with the models used and then had my partner take a look at the potential new gameplay mechanic I had found. He came back with the suggestion that “maybe the objects only levitate towards the center point if they are set to a metal material. It would make sense in the sci-fi aesthetic that this was a magnetic attraction.” So in the end the gameplay mechanic was quickly adapted to fit the game, but only after 3 or 4 iterations before ever creating any artwork.

I like to refer to this as design through testing. From beginning to end, only a small fraction of the original idea was left. However, I had accomplished my goal of finding a new gameplay mechanic involving the manipulation of gravity, and had not wasted any art development time in the process of iterating the mechanic.

So now we have this idea, and we are going to start thinking about where it makes sense in the levels, and what kind of models we need to make to continue. I hope you enjoyed this little bit of insight in to part of my design process. Thanks for reading!

So we wanted to show some progress and get feedback on the art style so far. So here is a video for you showing a few elements of the game and the current player model. Enjoy!

What is Macro?
It is a 3d game, viewed from a 2.5D side scrolling perspective. A typical puzzle could include creating “macros” of yourself in order to open doors, defeat enemies, or to just lend a boost to your future self, which would be impossible if attempted alone. Using this ability combined with the ability to modify the players size, you solve puzzles and progress through the story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDDkXy7kqU0

Are you a voice actor or aspiring voice actor? We are looking for some work to be done on a budget, remotely is ok. The work will be for 4 main characters, one being Mack shown below. E-mail us at info@voodoosoftware.net your information, rates, and a reel if you have one and if you are interested.

• New screenshot below, sign up for the beta here.

The characters that need voices are as follows:

Vivi:
Cool-headed damsel in distress. Not particularly scared of being held captive and often critical of others.

Mack:
Energetic protagonist. Hero to the rescue. Character is slightly goofy but strong-willed. He has something of a higher pitched voice, but not feminine; tough, but gentle. He is often the voice of reason.

Crow:
Evil villian, serious but also slightly incompetent. A very weak-willed villian who only initially is a force to be reckoned with. Eventually he becomes exasperated/frustrated. This should be represented in the character’s voice.

Mack and Vivi Test Lines

VIVI – Vivi talking to Mack after being captured. She is annoyed, and not exactly scared or impressed by her captor.

MACK – In response to Vivi, in a sort comforting tone, almost taking sides with the villian in the face of Vivi’s aggressive attitude

Vivi: Are you sure this guy is dangerous?  I think I could probably just walk out of here if I wanted to.  I’m pretty sure he was playing his evil laugh from a tape when he kidnapped me.
Mack: Oh, he’s prerecording now?  Good for him.  He’s a great diabolical genius, he’s just always had trouble with the performance aspect.  The pressure gets to him, you know. [catching himself] Oh, but believe me, Crow is nothing to be trifled with.  He’s rotten through and through.
Vivi: Did you just call him a “diabolical genius”?  Really?  Listen, I know you’re a nice guy and all, but geniuses write novels and cure diseases and stuff.  This guy prances around in a cape and builds forts.  That’s more like a toddler.
Mack: Listen, I’ve been his sworn enemy for almost five years now, and he’s made a lot of progress.  He tries, okay?  That’s more than you can say about most people.  Sure, he’s not perfect.  He’s got to get up in the morning and put on his evil leader jumpsuit and armor one leg at a time, just like the rest of us, but that’s no reason for you to attack him like that.  What’d he ever do to you?
Vivi: Umm, kidnapping?
Mack: Oh, right.  That.

Crow Test Lines

During a strategic withdrawl of his troops (over a remote comm system/walkie talkie, increasingly exasperated with minions)

“All units from all divisions return to base immediately.  As punishment for your repeated failure, I will be terminating your health benefits. [inaudible comm chatter] I don’t care what the law says.  I killed a man this morning.  I’m evil.  It’s in my job title.  It’s in the name of the company, for crying out loud.  Do you remember the big red sign out front of the barracks where I feed and clothe and shelter you?  What does it say?  Does it say “Bright and Shiny Hugs Incorporated”? [more inaudible comm chatter] Why no, you’re right, it doesn’t say that at all.  It says Crow’s Twisted and Evil Machinations, Inc., because that’s what I am: twisted and evil.  Now get your troops back to base or your healthcare plan won’t be the only thing I terminate today.”

NOTE: Feel free to take liberties with the lines as they are not part of a larger script at the moment. We are still working on the character’s development and want the future voice actor/actress to be part of that.

Send your recordings to info@voodoosoftware.net to be reviewed.

We plan to release alpha copies of Macro to a select few testers, and to do a public beta release later. Go to the sign-up page to register.

The physics puzzler, the turn based strategy game, or the time-manipulation puzzler? We asked what you thought, and read through *ALL* your comments and suggestions. It looks like the winner was Macro from this poll, although Goop! and Macro had been fighting back and forth for quite some time. We tried several things to see how it effected the votes. For example we changed the name of Goop! to Project Mass for the 2nd half of the voting after numerous comments stated they thought we were copying World of Goo. The game is an entirely different genre, but I think lots of people just looked at the title and the screenshots and voted based on that without reading/understanding the description of the title. If the majority of people voted this way it would mean they were all really just voting on the visual style, or how fun the game *looked*. So we still are not totally sure what the masses agree on the most about our ideas, but what we know for sure came from the comments left. There is no ambiguity to these, and we want to thank all of you who left meaningful comments. So the next step is to produce more detailed artwork and start solidifying more gameplay ideas.

We are going to leave the poll running to get more opinions from a larger sample size, and if by some strange stastical reason the winner changes, we will consider that.

Since the winner was Macro, this is the game we will be developing. There is however a concern that people may have voted based on the misinterpretation that Macro was a top-down 3D game, when in fact it has been changed to be a 2D side-scroller. We tried to make this clear in the description, but are not sure how many people fully read that.
If you haven’t already, head over to the beta sign-up if you’d be interested in playing an early version of the game.

We did some tests this morning in Unity and have the basic Macro mechanic working. Here are some *early* shots.