Skeleton Crew: Striker Ball #1

In the first installment of this blog series we get to tell you what the first game we will be making is! Because of the fact that this game will be made virtually from scratch and that we have a very small team, the first game we want to make should be very small, but we still want to exercise most of the features that you expect to see in a full blown game. We have encountered game engines in the past that were very good at making demos that look good by themselves, but when you try to make a complete game with them, you quickly find that start to finish features are not actually present. The game doesn’t need to be big, but it will include basic physics, collisions, animations, music, UI, the whole deal.

We have also found that when you are trying to keep things small scale, making a fun clone of a game you already enjoy greatly reduces the amount of design work you have to put in. So in keeping with this idea, we decided to make a clone of the Mario Party mini-game Shell Soccer. In case you are unfamiliar with the mini-game, it is a four player, top down, soccer like game where the goal is to knock out all the opponents Goombas first. While the Mario Party game is 3D, we opted for retro style pixel art to make it easier for us to create. Our version is called Striker Ball. Go ahead and criticize the name if you like, I just couldn’t come up with anything better before it stuck. I once had a friend say that one of the two hardest things in software development was naming stuff, so cut me a little slack.

Striker Ball has actually been under development for a little bit now, so we are expecting to have it in it’s first “done state” in the near future. While we may iterate on it over time to add features and refine art, it is approaching the point of being fully functional and ready for people to start testing it out. In the mean time, we hope to give one or two insider looks at how we developed the game. For now though, here is a teaser of how the game is shaping up.

We are excited to share more with you soon!