A few months back we made Astronaut Kitty Boom Boom for the Lexitron.  People have responded really well to the game.  When we decided to head up to Ohio for the Ohio Game Developer Expo we dragged along AKBB to demo and see how people responded. As with the Lexitron launch, people seem to really enjoy the game.  However, up until this point the game has only been multiplayer.

 

To address this we have added a single player mode where the player types phrases, ranging from accurate to absurd, as the way of accumulating explosives and launching rockets. We are pretty jazzed about this mode and have a functioning prototype up and running.

Our plan is to develop a full single player experience.  Right now we are trying to quickly prototype different ideas to see how they feel in game.  Two examples of prototypes we have already tried are swapping the mode during play from typing to rhythm based and adding in a bonus meter that fills up based on speed.  Our design mentality is to look at the game holistically to try and keep everything on track from a theme and design standpoint, while concurrently adding in mechanics, events, and prototypes as quickly as possible to test out ideas and find what makes the game more delicious.

 

As an example of a quick prototype we built that we feel also keeps in mind our macro goals for AKBB, we asked ourselves: What is missing from the kitty in the sky section?  The answer of course is a car in the sky driven by someone who is texting instead of paying attention to the road!

In all seriousness implementing this was quick and allowed us to test our design hypothesis.  Needless to say it fits perfectly with the game.  Other quick implementations, like having to press enter when finished with a phrase, just led to frustration and were quickly cut.

 

That is about it for this Friday.  We are really excited about taking the plunge with AKBB.  This is the first time we are really dedicating our time to a full game release of our own, since we developed and released Compromised 2 years ago.

 

Thanks!