Amp Energy Powerdash
Game Overview
One of my first mobile games. It had an economy frontend, but this was very rudimentary because it wasn't part of the business model. Instead, this was an 'advergame' to promote the Amp Energy drink. It had a lifespan limited to a ARG competition and in game bonuses for player who scanned cans of Amp Energy they'd purchased.
In many ways this game flew under the radar - the team was small (just three full time members if I remember rightly) and nobody expected an advergame to amount to much. This meant that we could just get on with making it fun.
The client was also very amenable - only taking issue when something was either just plain bad or else lacking in regards to promoting the brand. In general they were happy to give us creative freedom to be inventive and make something enjoyable.
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Year:
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Game Designer
2014
iOS, Android
Infinite Racer
Design Objectives
I like driving and wanted to put that into the game, making an infinite driver with ideas stolen from the classic Outrun. The player had to drive for as long as possible, overtaking traffic and taking risks to get further and further each time. The metagame didn't have to see the player energy or anything because it was an advergame whose only financial imperative was to promote the energy drink. This meant that we were free to make the economy a meta-progression system, rewarding the player for good, sustained play by making the game slightly easier and more varied for them.
Successful Features
The traffic was tough to get right, although we got there eventually. Having them change lanes turned out to be especially tricky - but an awesome feature once implemented!
Cars would appear in front of the player and slowly be overtaken, apart from the police car which would challenge the player to a short race before falling behind. Traffic was limited to three lanes whilst the player could drive onto the hard shoulders (littered with static obstacles) to avoid traffic if it became too dense. Sometimes a special obstacle would cut off one or more lanes, forcing a dangerous traffic jam and the risk of dropping into a construction pit, or river.
The player could not break and gradually got faster, which distorted the camera field of view and made things overall more difficult. They could take a limited amount of damage and collect power ups to repair themselves or impart special abilities. Pickup strings littered the roadway to encourage players to drive in a certain way - collecting these unlocked new powerups in the metagame. Periodically the player would transition to a new environment / tile set to keep things interesting.
Special Mention: Las Pavas Hermanas
We were all addicted to Breaking Bad while working on this title. One of the vehicles looked exactly like the truck from Los Pollos Hermanos. The artist suggested we might possibly maybe make a reference to the series in game, which I immediately championed and pushed him to include.
My reason for this was simple: if the team has fun making it then the end product is fun to play.
"The Brothers Chicken" became "The Sisters Turkey" - the Spanish in the series is syntactically wrong and should be "Los Hermanos Pollos". Which, curiously enough in Chilean slang means, more or less, "The Dopey Brothers".
The client, quite rightly, didn't want any sort of illegal narcotics connection in their branding and asked us to remove this oblique reference. I was surprised they noticed it, since it was very difficult to see, read and make the connection. I believe this speaks to how closely they followed what we were doing without feeling the need to micromanage - a rare synergy to find.
For posterity, here I present the original graphic as made by Marco Montecinos.
Long live The Sisters Turkey!
Conclusion
We spent a lot of time doing things the wrong way - the tilesets didn't follow a standard layout and we did a lot of things by hand which should have been automated and were, eventually. There was resistance to using baked lighting as well, although it was the only feasible option for the hardware at the time. These were all technical problems with how I planned the asset production. As usual, it's easy to see the missteps after the fact.
It reached #3 in the iPhone charts at one point during its brief existence before the advertising campaign ended. Everyone we and the client showed the game to immediately got hypnotised by the speed / camera field of view effect plus the music crossfade - both features that I'd proposed in the initial design. At the time, I blagged it - I thought these features might work so did all I could to push them through. It feels good to take a risk and have it succeed the transference of which is a large part of game design.
The sharp turn feature was a bad idea and lacked proper explanation, but overall everything else worked well. It even won a Silver Effie award, although I believe this was more in recognition of the client's direction in using an advergame to place their product than the quality of what we made (although I'm sure this helped).
After its surprise success but lack of additional revenue, a remake was requested internally. It was specified to be similar but not the same as the original. This didn't work out; I built a run over zombies prototype which was trying to be something other than it was.
I still like the game; it just came together easily. The end result was addictive and met all the original design goals I'd set. Work on it was busy and constant but rarely stressful and (as I remember) we never had to crunch. Sooner or later I'll be making a spiritual sequel to this one...