Baby Steps

Well we're a couple of weeks in, here's an update:

My Bro's helping out:

He's a producer for a big UK game studio, so we'll be able to pick his brains for sagely wisdom and advice. I doubt he'll get too involved in the nuts & bolts of our work but it'll be great to have him around to bounce ideas off etc.

He's also younger than me by several years... so that puts him on tea duty!

Training's going OK:

Rich and I have been cracking on with learning Illustrator and Flash respectively. 

On my side I've ditched the boring training videos.  I feel I know enough of the basics now to actually start making some games!

I'm working my way through a book on flash game design, it teaches you by showing how to make a bunch of classic games, (pairs, bejewelled, minesweeper, etc). My plan is to go through each chapter and then, when I've got the gist of the game, start fucking about and try to make it a bit different.

With that it mind let me introduce our first ever game: Card Bastard!

You can play it at: http://www.caper-republic.net/card-bastard/CardBastard.html

As you'll find out, despite the awesome name, it's a pretty boilerplate rip off of the card game pairs.but it lives! and we made it! we're off the mark :-)

Also a disclaimer! We're going to publish a bunch of games over the next few weeks of a similar ilk... but these are just training exercises for us - they're not part of our overall plan.  We know the first 'proper' game we're going to make and we're already quietly working away on it.  So by all means go play these games, but don't judge us on them yet!

The website is starting to take shape:

If you clicked on the link above you'll have already noticed :-) I've added a simple colour scheme and some info about our blog / twitter / etc. There's still not much content on it, but it's a great jumping off point for all things caper - and that's where our games are, so go play!

http://www.caper-republic.net


This is by no means final (we'll tart it right up at a later date when we have the time) - but at least it looks a bit better than a white page with a couple of sentences of Times New Roman text....

Next step:

Well the next chapter in my book is on minesweeper... so expect a caper version of minesweeper in a couple of weeks!

We've already started brainstorming the design and have hit on a few ideas that should add a twist to the old formula.

Also I want to get everyone else involved, the last game I just got my head down and made in a couple of evenings.  I grabbed a few art assets that Richard has developed for other projects and also raided our band's mp3 collection for sounds, but neither the visuals or the sounds were designed for the game, I just picked whatever fitted.

Next time we'll do things the proper way round: starting off with a plan and then designing assets specifically for it.  Hopefully it'll make the end result more polished.

Well that's the plan anyway...