Wednesday, March 3, 2010

February Round Up


It has been another busy month for us here. We completed core gameplay and began work on the final stages of production, so rather than focus in on one particular area I'd like to give a quick overview of where we are at:

Screenshots:
We were able to release some of the first shots from the pre-Alpha version of the game. These give a good sense of where the game is now, but expect lots of dramatic developments over the next few months as we focus in on the user experience. I've posted up two technical shots from our globe engine and also a view of the pre-Alpha user interface. You will probably notice the hand of cards along the bottom, that is one element that has made it from the original BBC Climate Challenge to the current game, but this is so much bigger a game that I look forward to investigating the key areas over the next few months with posts to this blog.

Radio:
I was interviewed on the Jo Thoenes show and Bill Heine shows on BBC Radio Oxford and on the Sunday Morning Roast on Jack FM. It was an interesting experience and good to see what questions the presenters had about the game. Key themes that came up were population control, the fact you get to control the whole planet for two hundred years and that we don't stop you trying to break the world if you want. Actually we encourage it :D

Press:
We snuck out a small release to announce that Dr Myles Allen had provided the climate model in the game, it got picked up by the Nature Blog, Develop magazine and Guardian. The feedback was good and useful and helped us shape our final thinking on...

Final Game Title:
We will soon be announcing the final headline title for Climate Challenge, which is exciting. We have to come up with a name that defines a game that in many ways will be unique. We love 'Climate Challenge', but it doesn't really portray the breadth of actions the player can take - you can save the world, destroy it, escape to mars, build eco cities, tackle geo-engineering, etc. We want something that captures the spirit of the game!

Development:
Over the last few weeks we considered each game feature against value to players and work to complete, and made a shortlist of those we want to finish for the launch version of the game. Now that we have done that, we have a solid picture of what we want to accomplish and are working steadily toward our alpha version. What we are working on most is presentation, response, and reward for players, and our 'instantiation' (which is where the gameplay will become evident instead of being seen only in potential in the underlying system).

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