Number Rescue

Started by CaptainD, Sat 31/10/2015 21:16:14

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CaptainD

So I finally decided (after a little gentle cajoling from certain people! :grin:) that I should finally learn to actually script in AGS, start making something instead of just designing and getting other people to do the making.  I have decided on a fairly short, simple project for my first one, and since I've always been interested in the concept of educational games / edutainment, I wanted to make something that my young daughter would enjoy playing and would also learn something from. 

What I came up with was Number Rescue.  I plan to use a graphics style similar to the Mr Men books (as it's the only style I can do reasonably well! ;) - but also because it fits my target demographic of 6-10 year olds well), and the writing / voice acting style of the recently relaunched Danger Mouse (which my daughter loves, and I've also thoroughly enjoyed watching with her).  So basically, you play the role of Agent Tan, a top agent in the Numbers Secret Service, sent to foil a dastardly plan by the evil twins Sin and Cos to kidnap all the numbers and thus make sums impossible!

There will be some very simple traditional adventure game elements to it, but mostly the puzzles themselves will be maths based.  I'm trying to make it so that the puzzles come along as part of the natural game flow rather than seeming forced.  How well I've succeeded is something I'll only know later on I guess, though for now I'm pleased that my oldest daughter appears to like it!  Of course this means that this game will have a very small audience, but hopefully older players might have a bit of very non-demanding fun with it. 

If I can get a moment to make the thing (which is proving very challenging atm) it should be released before the end of the year.  I'm fighting my natural tendency to balloon every project into something massive and keep it quite small!

Here are some screenshots of the progress so far:










 

Cassiebsg

Really nice!
You just have to trash the "written" elements for something more intuitive (for kids that can't read yet - or read English :P ).
There are those who believe that life here began out there...

CrashPL

Quote from: Cassiebsg on Sat 31/10/2015 21:42:00
You just have to trash the "written" elements for something more intuitive (for kids that can't read yet - or read English :P ).

Yup, or use voice samples/spoken dialogues, instead of text. ;)
I actually used to work on games for children, from what I saw they are much more keen on finishing the task, when they are told to do something (^voice samples), rather than having a visual/text clue (sometimes they don't really care what's on the screen, they just click all over the place. :P But when they hear what they should do, in order to advance the game - that's a whole different story). But doing so you will limit the target audience to just native speakers, or kids willing to learn the chosen language - so it's up to you what you'd prefer in your title. ;)

Besides, they also love bright, colorful and cartoony art style, so the graphics suit this kind of game really well. I'd actually love to check your game after it's finished, so good luck with the production! :)

CaptainD

Yeah I'm a little short of ideas for a completely non-verbal way of communicating the questions, but Cassiberg's comment made me look back at a couple of the screens and add an extra comment or two by the narrator (will be voiced).  I think for the moment I'm definitely going to stick with just English - but maybe we could get it translated later.  I would like this game to help with my daughter's literacy as well as numeracy - since like me when I was younger she's much more naturally interested in maths than reading / writing (although being read to is quite another matter! :-D).

I am going to have the characters voiced as said, but a little hard to convey that in a screenshot :P :grin:

Thanks for the encouragement. This will probably be very simple indeed but the maths puzzles perhaps not so easy for very young children.  We shall see - I look forward to getting people's feedback once the game is out.  I was thinking that if it proved popular I might make a series of small educational games featuring the same characters, depending on available time of course.
 

CaptainD

This is nearly finished now.  I think we're looking at an age of 7-8 to play this without any help from parents.

Emont has created some lovely retro music, I'm polishing up a bit and adding the voice acting and SFX.  Have also added some randomisation to the puzzles.

Thanks also to my testers Cassiebsg, Mandle and CrashPL for bug reports and other feedback. ;-D
 

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