Subverting The Casual

I’ll admit, my head is an odd place to be of late. It’s one of those things, the brain lays dormant for a few months with other things to worry about, summer holidays certainly don’t help if you want to get any work done so best not to even try. Then Bzzzt. There goes the alarm. Things falling into place in a rather random way.

This year has been an odd one. It’s the year I became a little too fixated on the more casual end of the spectrum. The mechanics of putting together a truly great casual game. I blame Bejewelled Twist personally, evil thing it is. It’s clever and pretty easy to see how much thought has gone into the design.

It’s also a fruit machine, that impresses me.

Those who play far too much Bejewelled Blitz on Facebook (thankfully, I’m not one of them) will already be aware of how utterly random it is and oh, the arguments over Peggle and the madness of seeing things that likely aren’t there. Ok, ok, casual is wrong. My fascination has mainly been with Popcap whilst trying to ignore the ridiculous nature of the “scientific studies” they indulge in for marketing because, y’know, being someone who gives a shit about the difference between misinformation and information they kinda offend me a little bit.

It was also the year that I realised that in many ways, I was sorta heading in a tangential but similar direction. Here I am making hardcore-ish arena shooters that use many of the same principles. I knew I’d finally snapped in the last update to Squid Harder when I added a ranking system. Yup, totally gone now. There’s no going back.

So it kinda started with an idea I had a few months back. Make a kids game. After all, War Twat had graphics designed by my then 4 year old so why not go the whole hog and “do a Dizzy” and expand the SYNSO theme away from a direction I felt I’d little else left to explore with. I did some rough mock ups (as in “draft” not as in “arses”) and found myself pleasantly surprised at how nice they were. A bit too limiting though, y’know? It needed something else, a bit of madness to it and where my head was sort of bobbling around at the time meant it wasn’t really going to work out too well. Having learnt my lesson the hard way before now, I left it on the side for a while and went off to write a remake of Transversion instead. That’s done by the way. As I ported it over to GM8 a few weeks back you’ll have to wait for it to come out of beta to be released.

I kicked around another couple of ideas to myself. One of them I’d still love to do – get Harry S. Price to remix War Twat. In a moment of madness I was even tempted just to ask a couple of people to remix it to see what would come of it. Maybe when I’ve got all this crap out of my head I’ll come back to that one. Definitely needs Harry S. Price-ing. Contemplated going back to Peejay and revisiting Deus Ex Machina but oh, the graphics! The work! Not yet, dear Bob.

Nah, best to finish off the SYNSO trilogy first. From moments after completing the orginal version I figured it should be a trilogy – it’s only right. The rule I laid down for myself at the time was that if I were to write a new one it’s got to be a riff, not just a rehash or a sequel. Play about with the constraints and the ruleset a bit, mess its hair up, change its face. Do something but not the same thing. All times, stick to the golden rule. It’s a love letter to those who made me. The first is hugs and kisses to Eugene Jarvis, the second (you’d never guess this, right?) to Minter. The third? The third you probably don’t expect.

When I was but a lad, one of the first games I picked up was Football Manager for the Spectrum. If I still had my review of the remake to hand from a few RR competitions ago, I gushed at the time that despite having little to no interest in football itself, I loved Football Manager. It inspired me as much as any of my beloved shooters. A game made in BASIC and sold? Something anyone with a little rubber keyed Spectrum could do. Well, there’s part of my philosophy right there isn’t it, readers?

Here’s the thing though, there’s not much room in my head for a football themed SYNSO. It’d be a silly too far. There is, however, room for Kevin Toms (the author of Football Manager) to appear in SYNSO. In a moment of madness, I dropped Mr Toms a line, likely sounding like a complete crazy head to ask would he mind. He replied with a rough not at all and even offered to write in his own dialogue. Brilliant. Ok, we’re getting somewhere. This is going to a good place. Where next? Oh yeah, the kids game – lets take that and run with it a bit but stretch it out a bit. Let’s go a bit casual in the visuals department. I’ve done CRAZY IN YOUR FACE. I’ve done the arcade look thing. Alright, let’s not go totally casual though, it’s still going to need a shiny effects mode. It wouldn’t be SYNSO without a shiny effects mode.

Christ, I do like making work for myself don’t I?

Let’s top it all off and call it Vampyros Squidos. Sorted.

So, I fucked around for a couple of weeks trying out different looks, seeing what looked nice and what didn’t. Thanks to Ed Clewes for letting me use some artwork, I’ve got the look I like. It’s hyper-casual cute kiddy. It looks sweet. It’s not going to be the only look. Twice I’ve put off including two different looks in the game so finger out of backside and crack on there. Thing is, I can’t show you that bit in a screenshot as it’s still in my head so y’know, it cannot be seen. Thanks to some fine suggestions elsewhere I’ve got the direction of the game now and it’s coming along alright. It doesn’t do much right now, I’ve got the intro, the titles, the portal screen and all the graphics bar a few fripperies done and that’s been harder work than I anticipated. It’s trucking along though.

And yeah, the headline of this post is a bit misleading, sorry. I sorta liked it though. I’m not really subverting anything here, I’m just taking where I’ve been heading with the SYNSO series to its natural conclusion design-wise and having some fun letting the game evolve around the stupidity of my own brain and itself. For those familiar with SYNSO, you’ll be right at home with Vampyros Squidos but hopefully, it’ll be different enough to stand on its own two feet. Whether I succeed with this, I don’t know yet – it might yet turn out to be a massive folly created by an idiot – who knows? I’m enjoying myself with it right now.