Last time we talked about how our team communicates, but today we are going to reveal our terrible secret; How we manage our tasks, time and documentation. Read more →
So you’re looking to start contracting and want to know “How do you get contracts?”
It’s a tricky question but here are 5 dos and don’ts that we follow when applying for a new contract. Read more →
Hi, Paul here. So last week you met our bearded wizard Nic. Well now it is my turn to give you a basic 101 – Intro to Paul. Where do I start? Let’s go all the way to the beginning (queue dreamy fade out/in here). I was born in 1989 – wait, that might be too far back. Ok, basic info. I hail from a small town back in South Africa and moved to the sometimes sunny Gold Coast of Australia where I currently live. I work at Well Placed Cactus with my unofficial title being “That guy with the accent”. So when you hear that guy screaming at the screen after dying 500+ times – that’s me.
http://youtu.be/HwbJFEh5ka0
I am a huge fan of movies and games alike. I think there is a whole lot more to any screen media than just sitting back and watching. To make a really great experience for the audience there has to be something to connect with, and I connect most with characters. I mean when I was a kid I used to watch all my super heroes save the day. Now with games, I can be the one saving the day. Take Uncharted for example. Playing as Nathan Drake is freaking awesome. But it’s not just Drake I care about. Sully, what an awesome old guy. When Sully gets shot I felt goosebumps and a tingle down my spine. I didn’t even realise I cared about him until that event. Good characters make a movie or game so much better. Whether it’s to try create a deep emotional connect or just keep the mood light like Mario, characters can add so much to any medium it is hard to overlook them. Would you play through games if the characters were still cubes?
http://youtu.be/QyI9F_5zq6E
That’s what I try and do here at the cactus. I try adding character to the games we make. Not just through character, but the entire game. Not all games require an actual character, in which case the game itself becomes the character and we work to give it a certain personality that ties in with the game. Luckily with Eggolution we had the chickens to work with. So I tried to give then some quirky movements and not just be your average chickens. We only started animating the chicken towards the end of development. As soon as those chickens were moving it added a whole new layer of life to the game. That is my aim for all future games we make, add that extra layer of life.
Chickens are better than cubes.
Mario looks a bit better these days.
PS. I have been asked a couple things about living in South Africa so I figured I would answer then here quick just to clear things up. I did not live in a cave. I did not have a lion as a pet. I did not go to school on an elephant every day. I lived in a house, had a couple dogs and went to school in a car. Although I think having a lion as a pet and going to school on the back on an elephant would be awesome.
It has been an incredibly long time since our last blog post so we decided to restart regular blog posting action. I find it quite difficult to think of blog topics so Paul suggested we start fresh with an intro to the Well placed Cactus team series. So today it’s my turn to bring you some possibly interesting information about why I wanted to get into games development and maybe some other things if we have time. Where the hell do I start?
The greatest storytelling tool in history.
I’m Nic, I am from a small rural town in Queensland, Australia. I currently live in Brisbane and work with Well Placed Cactus. I like games, I think they are an excellent medium for both storytelling and constructing environments where players can create their own adventures. As a kid I loved to play games with a story, point and clicks were a favorite of mine, then came the Metal Gears and Final Fantasies. I also used games to tell my own stories. I would spend countless hours playing multiplayer worms 2 against myself, building bunkers out of girders and after the sudden death waters consumed the map the last surviving worm would be the victor and my badly acted worm drama would come to a close.
Background Storytelling in Eggolution.
So stories are cool and games are even cooler for being able to tell them and let players create their own. I think that is one of the main reasons I wanted to get into game development, also because you know, they are fun and stuff. And while at the moment I am making small mostly mobile games with simple mechanics and little chance for storytelling, I try and push for little details that add story elements to our games. For example when Eggolution was pitched to us it was an egg catching game that included a set of levels that were not linked in any way. What we ended up with though is an implied story that unfolds entirely in the background, the chickens start in a barn and start plotting their escape and over the next 24 levels, they flee the farm, build up their society, go through an industrial revolution, build a space ship, and escape to a planet they can call their own. So even as the small developer we are right now, we still have opportunities for storytelling, but our players don’t really get the opportunity to craft mines or their own stories. That is something that I would love to work on at some stage though, a world with a bunch of tools for players to just go crazy with. I should get designing.
Nic
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