Five Games I Want to Steal - The Last Two

This is part three of the Five Games I Want to Steal thread I've been writing for the past week or so, so if you haven't read the first two you should check those out.  As I've said before, I got the basic idea for these posts after I read a book that Austin lent me called "How to Steal Like an Artist".  The book explained how creative people steal ideas that already exist and then change them enough so people don't know where they came from.  After reading that I thought I would look at five games I would want to steal from to help make our games more creative.

To recap from the last two posts I want to steal Color Zen and KAMI for their creative puzzle game ideas (in fact, we may start working on a puzzle game in the near future) and I want to steal Ozone for it's unique maze style game play.  In this last post I'm going to kinda lump two games together.  I was originally going to separate these two but then finals got in the way and I don't want this thread to drag on.  So I decided to just wrap things up with this post. 

The first game in this wrap up that I want to steal is Tiny Wings.  This is one of my all time favorite games and if you don't know what it is you should go and get it from the app store.  The reason I want to steal this game is that it incorporates a lot of physics into the game.  While any kind of platform or endless runner is going to have some kind of basic physics engine to deal with the motion of the player, Tiny Wings adds another level to that by dealing with collisions into the ground and the physics of ramps.  For example, to get as far as possible in the shortest amount of time you have to time your decants just right so that you hit the ramp at just the right angle.  If you time it wrong you'll end up running right into the side of a hill which will drastically decrease your velocity.  I've always enjoyed physics and I enjoy that extra aspect in this game.  While it would be very challenging, creating a game based around physics would be pretty fun.

The last game I want to steal is BADLAND.  I want to steal this game because, well, it's just overall a great game.  It has won so many awards and is arguably one of the best games on the App store.  I think that we should use this game as a standard for all of the games we make.  While there is so much to love about this game, the unique gameplay, the challenging levels, the reason I really want to steal this game is because of its art.  The art in the game is simply incredible.  I think it would be cool to make a game that is based around the art, instead of the art being made for the game.  Creating a game where the entire plot and gameplay was about the art would make for an interesting game.

With these last two games this thread comes to an end.  I hope you enjoyed reading about some of the games and the things that make them unique.  Make sure to check out the previous two posts on my blog if you haven't read them all ready.  Thanks for reading and stay tuned for some fun videos tomorrow.

-Matt.

Five Games I Want to Steal - Maze Games

As I said in my last post, I recently read a book about how everything has already been done in the world and creativity is just stealing ideas that already exist and altering them enough so that people don't know where you got them from.  With that in mind I decided to look at five games I want to use as inspiration for our own games.  I decided to break the games up into different categories and last time I talked about two really creative puzzle games I want to steal from.  In this post I'm going to talk about an older game that has a unique gameplay I haven't seen in other games.

We've all seen platform games and endless runners and puzzle games in every shape, color, and seize and while they are unique and fun to play Ozone is a game that had a different feel to it.  I would call it a platform maze type of game where you had to avoid and kill enemies and get to the end point of each level, but Ozone was unique because it wasn't just a straight path left to right.  You literally had to find your way out of a maze while dodging enemies and making sure not to run out of fuel.  What I want to steal from this game is the type of game; at some point I think making a maze game would be cool.  As I said earlier, there are tons of endless runner games and platform games so I think there's more room for creativity with a maze game.  I think there are lots of cool stories that could be told from a maze type of platform.  It adds another level to the difficulty and intricacy of the platform game.

Anyways.  Kind of a short post and a little awkward.  I'm never really sure how to phrase these posts so they don't sound like plagiarism.  In general, these are games I think we could use for inspiration.  Some of them are inspiration for types of art other are inspiration for the whole game play idea and just all in all these are some awesome games that I enjoyed playing. 

 I hope you enjoyed reading this even though it was a little late.  Another Photo Friday tomorrow so make sure to check that out.  We also had our exciting news about ColorGuess! 2 over on the Symbiotic Studios blog so also make sure to check that out.  

Thanks for reading!

-Matt.

Five Games I Want to Steal - Puzzles

Austin recently lent me a book called Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon.  The overall idea of the book is to help people become more creative in their lives.  In the first chapter he talks about how artists get their ideas by stealing them.  He talks about how everything in the world has already been done, and creative people can just take those ideas, re make them, and then release them back into the world with out anybody knowing where they stole it from in the first place.  This idea is something you can see a lot of people doing, including Apple.  When they released the iPod way back in 2001 they weren't the first company with a portable MP3 player.  They stole the idea of a portable MP3 player and remade it into something that was elegant, not only on the outside, but also in the way people used it.  This idea of "stealing" other ideas is not new to the world of apps, in fact, it's often abused.  

There are tons of people making replicas of successful games and adding giant paywalls to try and make some quick money. I didn't play Candy Crush for the longest time because I thought it was one of those games.  I had played Bejeweled for the and loved it, so when I saw Candy Crush I thought it was just a rip off of Bejeweled, putting up pay walls to try and make some quick money.  However, after playing Candy Crush on a friends phone I realized that while the main idea of the games are the same, the overall gameplay of each game is very different.  Candy Crush had added different goals and different challenges to a point where it didn't feel like I was playing the same game.  This is what the author was talking about in the first chapter.  Creativity comes from people stealing ideas as inspiration for their own work.  

With that in mind I decided to look at some games that I would want to steal for some of our own future games.  I came up with a couple games (five, as the title would suggest) in a couple different categories and over the course of a few posts I'm going to show you the five games I want to steal.  For this post I decided to look at puzzle games I want to steal from.  I love a good puzzle game and would love to make one, and the first game I would use as inspiration would be KAMI.

The premise behind this puzzle game is folding paper.  You start with a game board that has a pattern made up of three of four different colored paper.  You then can choose a different color to unfold an existing color into and each pice of paper above, below, or on the sides of that paper will also unfold, and so on.  The end goal of each level is to have the entire board be one color, but this must be accomplished in a specific number of moves to pass the level.  

There are a couple of things I love about this game and want to steal from it.  The first is the uniqueness of the gameplay.  Both this game and the other one I'm going to talk about in this post both have the same basic goal for each level: to fill the screen with one color.  However the gameplay in each games gives it it's own specific feel and one thing I like about this gameplay are the cool patterns that each game board creates.  Since this game is based on a grid the start of each game reminds me of intricate tile work.  The second thing I love about this game and would want to steal is the art.  The art in this game is mainly just the different textures each square is given.  It's very simple, but it also adds a specific feel to the game, something I would love to steal from for our own puzzle game.

The second puzzle game I want to steal from is Color Zen.  This game has a similar goal in that you are trying to fill the screen with the same color as around the boarder.  You are given blocks of color that can be moved into other blocks and when two of the same color touch they expand to fill the background with that color.  From this game I would want to steal the simple, but precise gameplay.  While it would seem simple enough to just keep getting rid of the colors you don't need until you end up with two blocks of the color you do need, there are colors inclosed within other colors.  Each move you make must be exact and thought out or else you'll be in trouble.  I think having to think out not only your next move but the move after that and work the problem from the end to the begging to figure out your move order is what makes this a good puzzle game, and is what I would want to steal from this game.

I feel that I should end this post by saying that I'm obviously not going to just copy one of these games to try and make some money.  When I say I'm "stealing" this or that from these games what I mean is I'm using that as inspiration, as a starting point for our own games.

Anyways.  I hope you enjoyed this.  I'll continue this post with an older game that I would love to steal.  Also, there should hopefully be some exciting quadcopter stuff happening this weekend so keep checking back for that.  We also have some exciting development news about our own games that you should keep an eye out for.  So yeah.

Thanks for reading

-Matt.