Blogs - egzgame

That's it ! Egz has been available for two weeks (28th April 2016), on iOS and Android ! That means that I've finally achieved my childhood dream : I've made my own video game !

It's been two weeks now, and I'd like to thank everyone who helped me. And obviously, thanks to YOU for playing Egz, I really hope you enjoy it !

Now what?

Well, if you've played the game, you already know there are bugs. And unfortunately, there are a lot of bugs. The good news is : an update is available since today, on Android and iOS. Here's the patchlog :

• "Egz" now requires iOS 8.1 instead of iOS 9.0.

• Various improvements have been made to the HUD preventing the game from crashing.

• Fixed a crash caused by the Egz dying during the 1st boss fight.

• Fixed a crash caused by a bubble in the level 4-7.

• Minor changes have been made to the level 2-8 preventing the Egz from being stuck.

• A "Replay" button has been added.

• A "Rate the game" screen has been added.

• In several occasions, the pagging wasn't hidden properly.

• Connecting to Facebook from the settings now works as expected.

• The number of stars shown in the 1st world has been fixed.

• New names added to the Egz.

• Savegame are now versioned.

• Various localization improvements (english)

Several players also told me that the game would crash EVERY time an Egz dies. I've been able to reproduce this bug, but only in 2 specifics levels : in the first and the second boss level (1-10 and 2-10). If your game crashes in any other level, please, PLEASE, LET ME KNOW ! Send an email !

And... what's next ?

That's a very good question, that I've been asking myself for a long time now. Well, Egz is not totally finished, yet. This was only the first update, and more will come. All the bugs and crashes will hopefully be removed and, if everything goes well, more content will be added : there will probably be new levels, new game modes and, I we're lucky, new Egz will be added.

So, my journey with Egz is definitely not finished yet.

And obviously, I'll keep on posting here and tell you how my very first game, Egz, took life. There are still plenty of subjects that I didn't tell you about and I'm pretty excited about it.

The core concept of Egz is more than basic: to control a character going from point A to point B. But for that to happen I needed a lot of time to determine in which direction I was headed. Mostunexpectedly, it’s my lack of experience which was going to define “Egz”.

Flashback : 2012

Back then I was about to leave one of the agencies I was working for, which meant “less work”, “less pressure” and therefore, more “free time”. I needed to keep busy and so the idea of making a video game came naturally.

I have been a gamer since, pfew, that Christmas of 1990 when my mother bought my sister and I a Sega Master System II. I grew up with gaming consoles, computers (I even owned a Thomson MO5 at the time!), Internet, smarphones.

In short, I have been a gamer for a long while, and like any gamer I became … “picky”. I used to see mobile game as a young platform that needed to prove its worth. Especially since mobile blockbusters were differents from the games I was used to : they were more basic, with a faster pace, and easier. All those “Angry Birds”, “Tiny Wings”, “Ninja Fruits” were fun, but they weren’t the kind of game I could devote more than three hours to in total. I was used to head-shooting people on big franchise titles like “Battlefield” and “Far Cry”, to explore the underwater worlds of “Bioshock”, to hijack cars and mug prostitutes in “GTA”, and to go through “Splinter Cell : Chaos Theory” several times, or even to fill my gaps in historical knowledge with “Assassin’s Creed”. I was what people use to call “a hardcore gamer”.

This is probably the reason why my first concepts looked like this:

You control a guy, from a first-person perspective view, who can move, crouch down and interact with his surroundings in order to create diversions. The main goal is to infiltrate buildings, retrieve top secret documents and then exfiltrate. All of this while avoiding being caught by guards, which would lead to failure.

So there, this was my very first concept. The kind of game I would play without hesitating. The kind of game I had actually already played, since back in 2012 Thief was 14 years old. And after all, if this game was conceived several years ago, it meant it was now easily doable, right ? But I reconsidered. Firstly, it wasn’t an original idea. And secondly, it would mean I would have to work on stuff I couldn’t handle : building an IA, dealing with lights in order to hide in darkness, making a good FPS view (which is not that easy if you’re used to play to this kind of game), or simply making real-time 3D.

So I tried something else, maybe a little bit more original:

You’re leading an army of tiny creatures. With the help of the mouse and keyboard, you can move them one after the other and order them to attack the enemy army with rocket launchers, grenades and other funky stuff.

Seems like redoing “Thief” wasn’t enough, I had to do “Worms” (NB: with the exception of “Duke Nukem 3D” and “Battlefield 1942”, I had never spent so much time playing a demo disc). So, for the same reasons as before, I buried the idea.

I decided that there wouldn’t be any AI. There would be only a main character and his universe. Because this involves less work.

Eventually, the idea of releasing a mobile game came to my mind because I still nurtured this unsupported belief that developping a game for a smartphone is much easier. If you’ve ever developped for tactile devices, you’ve probably giggled just like I did while writing this. Automatically, I went from a mouse / keyboard combos to… a gentle stroke on a screen.

Just like probably 80% of “indies” who are starting, I was about to make a basic platformer game. Anything else would be too difficult for me. Despite of that, I still wanted it to be original. From a graphical point of view, and a gameplay point of view. So, I made a list :

• An easily identifiable game.
• An unique universe.
• An extremly intuitive game.
• A classic gameplay, revisited.

The core-concept of “Egz” (its name wasn’t defined yet) saw the daylight : it would be the unexpected mix of a platformer and a… mini-golf game. A colorfull and cute game, where you’d control a character with a one gesture (no virtual joystick!), that you have to lead to his “hole”.

Later, subtile details would be added : each collision would cost health points, differents obstacles would appear in differents levels, each death would be… permanent (almost). On this basis, I would write the first draft of the gamedesign document (78 pages with a lot of images and white space…).

The main goal was to make a “target render”, a video that would show all those ideas and could give an idea of what the game should be. But before all of that, I had to start crafting the universe of Egz.

"Egz" takes place a few moments before our Universe was created : when there was nothing. Until matter appeared, duplicated and expanded itself, to the point where it eventually became an ideal environment to give birth to the first living beings : the Egz. In this expanding Universe, how did the Egz survived ? And what triggered the famous "Big Bang"?

EGZ - ANNOUNCEMENT TRAILER

"Egz" is the unexpected mix between a platformer game and a … mini-golf game. The player controls the Egz so they can reach their safe place. The catch? The Egz can only move by jumping, bouncing and rolling… A simple gesture is needed to aim and jump.

I've always wanted to develop my own video game. Despite the fact I'm not a developer, I've actually tried to get on and do it. Two years later, "Egz" is about to see the light of day. During those two years, I've learnt a lot, struggled a lot, but also had a lot of fun. If you're interested and want to find out more about the whole process, a devblog, maybe a little bit different, will aslso be available : Blog.egz-game.com

SOME SCREENSHOTS

So, just for the background : I used to be an art director in advertising and one day, I decided to stop doing what I used to do in order to realize a childhood dream. After almost two years of fun, headaches, joy, stress, exhaustion, pride... my first video game is almost finished.

The thing is : when I starded doing it, I almost didn't know anything about coding. I only had some basis in... ActionScript 2, which has been stopped being used for a "long" time now.

But one day, at work, we had to make a mobile ad-game for a client. Of course, at the time, I just had to do the conception with my copywriter and do the design. The studio who was working for us told us they were going to use the "Corona SDK" framework. So, in order to know what we could and couldn't do, I decided to watch some youtube videos, test some other games, etc.

That's when I realized I really, really, really wanted to make my own video game and making a mobile game seemed pretty accessible.

So two years later, here I am, finishing my first video game. I already know that I've made a lot of mistakes, starting by the fact that "Egz" is actually too big for a first experience. I should have started with something smaller, easier to do, but now, well... that's too late :)

I know I've already written a lot but I'll just finish by saying that I'm actuall pretty "proud" of myself : I honestly don't know if my game is good or not. It's just that I'm actually making it. Now,t he only thing I really want is to finish it, and being able to say "I've made my own video game".

And I know it sounds stupid, but the first thing I'll do once it will be done is to build a fake box case and put it on my shelf, in the middle of my other video games :) Can't wait !

"Egz" will be release in early 2016, on iOS & Android ! Here are some links if you wanna get more news !

- Website : Egz-game.com
- Presskit : Egz-game.com
- Email : lonelywoof@egz-game.com
- Facebook : Facebook.com
- Twitter : Twitter.com
- Google+ : Google.com