Catch Up: The Evolution

The game that has become Mystery Marines began as an idea to bring a Lemmings and Mario Vs Donkey Kong style fusion to the iPhone. The decision was taken to work with a gesture based system primarily out of interest and also the challenge of getting full user control out of it. We didn't know it at the time but this decision was to prove extremely problematic when introducing multiple characters.

While we wanted the player to control multiple characters without having to stop one and then move another we had to scale back the character numbers from the ridiculous to the more sensible. We found that with some gestrue filtering based on pre-determined contexts it was possible to control around 4 characters.



With characters that could run, jump and idle we looked into various interesting ways of navigating them around the level. We prototyped ropes that allowed for up and down shimmying and sliding down via a quick double swipe down action. Ladders were also added and maintained the same control mechanism for consistency. A variety of other elements were also developed including floating logs, springs, slippery pole, high wires, vertical and horizontal pulley devices, lifts, cannons, and also interesting pickups such as the inflatable ring. Most of these worked and will be finding there way into the game.



With a handful of working mechanics in place it was time to get all of the temporary art replaced by someone more capable so we convinced an Animator (fortunately he's also a talented artist and audio technician too) to sacrifice every minute of his free time to help bring the game to life. The evolution began with gameplay and themes developed around an idea based on a group of marines that would be sent on secret government missions to solve the unexplained mysteries of the world. Mystery Marines was born.

Mystery Marines caught on camera

Due to the recent requests for footage and screenshots we have been concentrating our efforts on creating a variety of in game clips.



The idea will be to add more videos and screenshots over the festive period and continue this trend throughout the rest of the development; providing a sneak peek into forthcoming themes, creatures, gameplay and story direction.



I will also sort out the development Catch Up blogs and aim to get them live within the next week.

Mystery Marines Got Blogged!

Mystery Marines is a puzzle based platformer where the aim of the game is to guide your Marines through a variety of levels within 4 unique environments; avoiding enemy creatures such as the rampaging Bumbleoid and the flying WereDog Chomperitter.

We wanted to start this blog sometime ago but because this is a spare time development actually making the game has been our number one priority. Anyway here we are and we have just been listed as one of the 172 entrants in the 2010 IGF Mobile competition. Over the coming weeks we will run a section of catch up blogs talking about the evolution of the game, inspirations, concept work and a sneak peek at the game itself.

For now keep up to date with all goings on over at our twitter page - http://twitter.com/MysteryMarines