#Contraption maker bright idea full
We just thought that we were going to make something really cool that we could show to everyone at Lionhead to really entertain them.Įven, secretly deep down inside, you had no hope that Shuffle could one day become a full project? The only thing me and Tom thought about was, okay, our game isn’t going to be made into something real later on, so let’s not have any silly hopes for it. We got our team together very quickly and decided to actually start working on our game idea before the official two days that were allotted to it. The moment Peter mentioned that we were going to be doing Creative Day, I thought that it was a really brilliant idea. What was the mood in the studio when Creative Day was announced? The potential of this is explored when both Shuffle’s in-game hero and the preview box are used in collaboration to solve puzzles and defeat enemies. With the player pictured inside the window, arms can be extended outward to hold onto objects, punch enemies, and drag the preview image across the screen. In an ingenious moment, Shuffle allows that preview box to become an in-game item. Yet the game takes a dazzling post-modern twist when Kinect’s own camera view is displayed in a small preview window. A standard controller is used to jump and run through the levels, yet Shuffle’s sketch-drawn hero can also respond to player arm movements to reach for items and attack enemies. Idea: Shuffle follows a classic 2D Mario template that has been completely revitalised with inventive use of Kinect. Team: Tom Lansdale, Virgil Tanasa, Kevin Fairbairn, Annes Stevens, Charles Griffiths
Here are two key games exhibited on Creative Day SHUFFLE But the staff Develop had spoken to made it clear that Lionhead Creative Day isn’t about pitching a multi-million pound game design, it’s about blowing off steam, throwing caution to the wind and awakening artistic passions. Whether these small and splendid ideas will ever become full development projects is another issue entirely. “These projects are so big they have to be well-orchestrated, and I think you lose a bit of creativity and innovation in that sense.” “Big modern games do tend towards becoming a bit of a production-line,” says Neil Wallace, a programmer nearing his tenth year at the studio. Others, like the two games highlighted below, are too impressive to remain mere concepts. Some people had designed entirely new game concepts for Fable, while others decided to test Kinect in ingenious and innovative ways. In two working days (as well as a few voluntary late nights) a monstrous level of creativity had awakened within the Guildford-based studio.
This was Lionhead Creative Day – a ‘design, show and tell’ project that culminated in Lionhead booking out a cinema theatre for its staff to show off what they had got up to.