This is a post I didn’t think I’d be writing.
Mini Mob recently got to the stage where its feeling at a sort of half way point. It reminded me of being in the same situation with PPRPG (a game I put on hold around this time last year). I opened PPRPG to see where I had left it and was surprised by how far along it is.
At this stage I think both games require around 6 months to complete them. I thought I’d do a small amount of market research and post screenshots and details of both games to Twitter with a simple question – which one do you like the most?
The response was fairly unanimous with people preferring the look of PPRPG and its originality (based on the details I gave). This fits with my feelings too. I find myself more enthusiastic about PPRPG than Mini Mob – its just more my type of game. Also, there’s still something really satisfying about placing the tiles.
I’ve setup a clean project with the latest version of cocos2d and migrated my PPRPG code. I’ve also dropped the PPRPG moniker totally since I want this to be a fresh start (I’m using the internal project name of Merlot so that’s how i’ll refer to it on this blog until such time as I give it an official name).
My next step is to update the project to use relative positions so that it works for the iPhone 5 (and any other devices I decide to deploy for). I’m using my learning from Mini Mob here.
I’m sticking to the goal that I left the original series with. A 5 level mini-story that incorporates all of the core features (which would give me a good base from which to build the content). Honestly, if I stick to the tilesets I have, I don’t think this mini-goal is that far off.
I’m parking the level editor for now; the raw data format will suffice for just 5 levels. Once I’ve created my 5 level story, I’ll create a new, simple level editor that allows me to rapidly create the full content for the game.
It sounds like we’ve been here before, and we have! All I can do is work on what I’m currently the most passionate about. A year later and this is the project I’m excited about.
Stay tuned.