Dare Blogs – A Necessary Evil

The game we are working on stars a meatball who has been torn from his natural habitat, lounging in a hammock eating a taco, and thrown into someone’s stomach. It follows his heroic quest in search of freedom and more importantly his lost taco. The world will include a variety of environments and hazards that Carne has to overcome from edible blocks that can be spat out at enemies, to spike pits, slippery ice, smashable bone and deadly acid. Most of this is achieved through the power of his very long tongue which can grab blocks and allows him to swing through certain parts of the level. Although the main single player game is mostly a 2D puzzle platformer, we have included a much more simple multiplayer split-screen race mode as a few members of the team have had a lot of fun trying to best each others’ times in completing levels, and we felt that others could do the same during ProtoPlay.

So far Dare has been a great experience. I think I speak for all the team when I say we are enjoying the challenge of creating a game in such a short time, plus the chance to earn experience working together as a team to create an entertaining product. It’s been great to meet and talk with other budding designers about their games as well, and it definitely pushes you to work harder and gives the whole thing a competitive edge. 

The long hours can be tough, but we keep each other entertained as best we can, and racing against each other helps to relieve stress. We usually start the week with a meeting outlining what we plan to have achieved by the end of the week, but if something isn’t working we cut it out. In the same way if we find something else that turns out to be a lot of fun, or adds to the gameplay, we put it in. It’s a lot of adding features, testing and trying to make things as smooth and as fun as possible. Working within the time allowed is in itself a challenge; it’s such a short period of time. The most important thing is getting an easy to pick up and play game out in time for ProtoPlay that helps to demonstrate all the main features of your game.

In regards to ProtoPlay, I think a lot of teams (us included) are quite excited about showing off our game to the masses. There is still a fair bit of work to do between now and then, but if we keep up the hours and keep pushing ahead we should have no major issue in getting a playable game out in time. Fingers crossed everything goes well and we look forward to seeing everyone at ProtoPlay. It’ll be easy to spot us, we are the idiots wearing the sombreros, probably in the rain.

Team information and videos can be found on the Dare to be Digital team profile.

Also, we have a team Twitter account: @anecessaryevil_