{"id":418,"date":"2014-06-03T10:11:41","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T17:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robotinvader.com\/blog\/?p=418"},"modified":"2014-06-05T10:21:54","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T17:21:54","slug":"making-games-in-a-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robotinvader.com\/blog\/?p=418","title":{"rendered":"Nanobots: Making Games in a Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Casey and I founded Robot Invader back in 2011, one of our goals was to build a team that could produce high quality games in a short amount of time with just a few people. \u00a0We produced\u00a0Wind-up Knight<\/em><\/a> with just three people (and an intern!) in about five months, which was a pretty good start. \u00a0Our second game,\u00a0Rise of the Blobs<\/em><\/a>, took us longer, but we didn’t just build a rocking puzzle game: we built a bunch of core tech and tools, not to mention our own network backend that now powers all of our games. \u00a0Wind-up Knight 2<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>took four of us six months to ship, and it’s significantly more complicated than its predecessor. \u00a0Of all our accomplishments thus far, I am most proud of our repeated ability to build high-end 3D games with a very small group on a very strict timetable.<\/p>\n

\"Brimstone4\"<\/a>

Brimstone Deep. You’ll have a chance to burn in this flame soon.<\/p><\/div>\n

Over the course of the last three years we’ve experimented with different ways of increasing our bang-for-the-FTE. \u00a0After finishing\u00a0Rise<\/em>, we split our team of four into two teams of two and spent three months building prototypes. \u00a0One of these microteams produced the game that eventually became\u00a0Wind-up Knight 2<\/em>. \u00a0The other, a first-person murder mystery game that we’ve teased a few times. \u00a0Both made it to\u00a0a playable prototype phase, and after looking at them we decided to build\u00a0Wind-up Knight 2\u00a0<\/em>first. \u00a0Considering the short development period and the small team size, we got quite a lot done.<\/p>\n

This month, as we’ve waited for various moons to come into alignment so that we can release the new Brimstone Deep world for\u00a0Wind-up Knight 2<\/em>, we’ve been experimenting with an even stricter goal: build a game to completion in one week. \u00a0It can be a simple game, but it has to be fun, and it has to be ready to ship in one week. \u00a0The actual mechanics of shipping a game (collecting screen shots, writing marketing copy, testing, integrating analytics APIs and the like) might take a few days more. \u00a0That’s ok. \u00a0But the game itself must be completely finished in the time it takes to kill somebody with a Japanese curse.<\/p>\n

\"study\"

We came a long way in three months, but there’s lots of work left on this one.<\/p><\/div>\n

What’s the point of making a game in a week? \u00a0Like many time-limited game jams, the main idea is to hone our ability to assess and control scope, and to experiment with ideas. \u00a0Putting development on such a short timeline forces us to cut any game idea down its bare bones. \u00a0We don’t have time for complex features, there’s no schedule\u00a0for difficult engineering. \u00a0The\u00a0core game idea has to be fun immediately.<\/p>\n

We’re calling these one-week games\u00a0Nanobots<\/em>. \u00a0The first game in the Nanobots series is called Tapthello!<\/a>, and we shipped it last week for Android (the iOS version\u00a0is waiting for Apple’s review). \u00a0The second Nanobots game, also developed in one week, is called Cybergon<\/a>, <\/i>and we’ll release it in a few days<\/del> it’s available now<\/a>!\u00a0 We’re now in our third week of development, working on our third game. \u00a0We don’t even know what it’s called yet but it’ll be out\u00a0soon!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Cybergon1\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"Cybergon2\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

So far, the experience has been hectic and fun. \u00a0For every problem we have to ask ourselves, “how do we solve this immediately?” \u00a0If there’s no immediate solution, we might just have to kill the idea and move to something else. \u00a0It’s stressful, but also a bit liberating, to be able to make decisions so quickly. \u00a0And with each title, we seem to be increasing the scope ever so slightly as our confidence grows.<\/p>\n

We’ll have more info on these new bite-sized\u00a0games as we release them. \u00a0And stay tuned for the new Brimstone Deep update to Wind-up Knight 2<\/em>, which is coming very very soon!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Casey and I founded Robot Invader back in 2011, one of our goals was to build a team that could produce high quality games in a short amount of time with just a few people. \u00a0We produced\u00a0Wind-up Knight with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robotinvader.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robotinvader.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robotinvader.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robotinvader.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robotinvader.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/robotinvader.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429,"href":"https:\/\/robotinvader.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robotinvader.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robotinvader.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robotinvader.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}