Something’s coming…

Tinytanic 1.0

Hey all!

Just a small post to let you know that we reached version 1.0 of Tinytanic. We also made a nice tiny page, just for this game.

Try it out, have some fun, and be sure to let us know both your highscore, and your thoughts about the game. And thanks again to everyone who entered a character for the game, or who supported us in any other way!

Ludum Dare- Tinytanic: It sinks magnificently

After hours and hours of hard, hard labor, we’re finally finished with Tinytanic 0.8! There are still some things we’re going to fix in the coming week, but we’re really proud of what we’ve created with the Abbey team!

Behold, the very sinkable Tinytanic!

You can play the game HERE, at our website, or if it’s to heavy you can download it HERE. Features consist of:

• Throwing people of the Tinytanic
• Bashing people of the Tinytanic
• Shoot people of the Tinytanic
• Make others do that to an unlucky target
• Survive the unluckiest ship in the world
• 80 unique characters who are dying to meet you
• Many little secrets…hehe

We hope you enjoy the game, and do come by here to see how the polished game is going to look like! For all those jammers out there: Good job! We’ve seen some pretty cool stuff out there. We particularly loved the livestream concert given by FireFighter Scott!

Cheers!

Tinytanic: All Aboard!

So here you can read about our concept, the Tinytanic. An ever decreasing amount of boat is available to keep you safe from the disasters that strike this unfortunate boat. So how are we faring? Well, this is how the game looks right now!

As you can see, our team of Abbey Games member clones plus the ever so present Valentijns, Jelles and Shaniqua Lakeeshas are fighting for our lives to survive on the Tinytanic. Obviously, we need more characters in the game. We want YOUR help for this! So how can you participate? Simple:

1. Use our super awesome random character generator, and pick a seed of someone you like!
2. Make up a name for your character!
3. Make two remarks about his or her life, that he or she can say to the player. Try to keep it short! (like: “I love fishing with my granddaughter” or “My ambition is to make the biggest wooden cabin in the world” )
4. Make one sentence he or she would say when he or she is dying (like:”The fishes will take revenge on me now!” or “I hope they have hardwood in heaven…”)
5. Post it HERE at Abbey Games! (Including the seed!)

There are 160 places available on our cruise, so we really need some inspiration!

Ludum Dare- Tinytanic

Our team  entered the Ludum Dare with a bit of a problem: We’re already making a tiny world game during working hours! So we needed another look on this “tiny world”. We came up with small scopes and small spaces, and inspired by the national geographic we came with THIS:

Man, the world of safety sure seems small in this situation. Our game would be Tinytanic, a story about an unfortunate boat, ever decreasing spaces, and way too much people trying to survive. And how do you make sure you survive? Well, by diminishing the amount of “rivals” that also want to claim a saving spot!

This is the art style of the ga… neh who am I kidding. So features of the game are:

• Survive the tinytanic, the boat with ever decreasing size and luck!
• Forge alliances with NPC’s to work together for your survival!
• Throw, Push and Trick people to convince that “you’re surely the one who deserves that survival spot the most”.

While we’re making the game, we also have a request for the readers! We want to add 160 NPC’s, and they all need a character. Can you give us suggestions for NPC’s? We want:

1. A name!
2. Two remarks about his or her life, that he or she can say to the player. Try to keep it short! (like: “I love fishing with my granddaughter” or “My ambition is to make the biggest wooden cabin in the world” )
3. One sentence he or she would say when he or she is dying (like:”The fishes will take revenge on my now!” or “I hope they have hardwood in heaven…”)

Any suggestions are welcome, and we’ll try to keep you up to date!

Hey! Pssst! We’re looking for someone…

Maybe you already noticed, but we now have a jobs section here on the website.  At the moment we’re looking for 2D Artists, so if you’re a talented artist (or you know one), take a look there!

P.S. We will soon release a lot more information about the game we’re working on!

Production FTW

Here at the Abbey we achieve greatness with our customized development method. When we applied this super awesome development method, our production efforts doubled, NO TRIPLED! Quadrupled?..

tl;dr: Scrum but not really. Team divided in two; production and pre-production. It works great for us.

Let me explain some more

The Designer Class- What are the game designer’s pitfalls?

A few weeks ago, I started with a series of blogposts about what it’s like and what it takes to be a game designer. Because we’re talking games here, I’m approaching these posts as an RPG character creation guide. The series consists of the following chapters:

1. Role: What are the tasks of a game designer?
2. Passive Abilities: What are favorable character traits?
3. Powers: What are important skills? 
4. Weaknesses: What are the biggest pitfalls?(This chapter!)

In this final chapter, we’ll look into the things that are most likely to keep you from being an awesome game designer. In every career path there are risks that can stop you from achieving your goals. Most of those have a lot to do with lack of knowledge about what it’s going to be like to have the profession you’re aiming for. A good example is a professional sportsman, like a (soccer) football player. When he was 16 or so, he might have dreamed:”I’m going to be a good player, because I have a great technique, I’m fast and I have a great endurance.” But he can easily forget that the world of a sportsman is more elaborate than it looks. Does he know that he might play badly because the target of his wonderful passes is always poorly chosen? Can he handle the pressure of thousands watching him, counting on him to succeed? Even more close to home, would the thought that he won’t be able to go out with his friends on Friday anymore, cross his mind? Game designers have their own pitfalls too. So here is the list of my three most dreaded pitfalls that you could cross in your potential game design career!

OK let’s get these pitfalls over with..!

Change

So you’re probably wondering, “Hey, where are the new blog posts?”. Well, we’re currently in a transition. Since March 19th, we are legally, officially a company and with that, we decided that we needed a new name, logo and website.
I’m working very hard on the above-mentioned right now. Hopefully somewhere next week we’ll be able to reveal our new identity.
But that’s not where the transitions end. Starting next month, we’ll be working in our new office. I’ve come to appreciate that fact even more, now that the days are becoming sunnier here in the Netherlands.

You’ll hear more from us soon!

Game Design: The Designer Class – What skills does he use?

A few weeks ago, I started with a series of blogposts about what it’s like and what it takes to be a game designer. Because we’re talking games here, I’m approaching these posts as an RPG character creation guide. The series consists of the following chapters:

1. Role: What are the tasks of a game designer?
2. Passive Abilities: What are favorable character traits?
3. Powers: What are important skills? (This chapter!)
4. Weaknesses: What are the biggest pitfalls?

This week’s subject is about skills. When I talk about skills I mean things that you can learn and develop by going to school, reading books, analyzing stuff etc. To be honest, it’s a though subject for me to talk about. The most important reason for that is that the skills you need to learn depend strongly of the kind of game you wish to make. The game designers from the Civilization series probably learned a good amount of history to enhance that feel of progressing through the ages. I don’t think that the game designer working on Mass Effect did the same. One thing, however, is certain: the world with all its information and possibilities is a massive pool of interesting perspectives and experiences. The more you see, do and learn, the more perspectives and experiences you gain. Being curious will certainly help you in making great games! Basically, I’m saying: “Do everything!”. But since that’s not feasible, I’ll just list the 3 things that I think will help you the most in general…with one side note. I think I hammered on communication enough by now, so I’m going to leave that one out. BUT IT’S THERE SO PRACTICE YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS!

Again, big thanks to Jesse Schell, Extra Credits and Joost van Dongen.If you want to learn a lot of game design, I recommend to start with Jesse Schell’s the art of game design. After you read this of course!

What can I learn to become a better game designer..?