It's been a while since we posted anything, so I figured we should give you guys a brief update so you know we're still alive.
I appreciate the patience of anyone who's been watching and waiting for details regarding out next game since we first started talking about it - this has been a pretty slow and excruciating development cycle for various reasons, but chief among them is that the project is just really ambitious and huge.
That said, we've made some really great strides lately. Our overworld map is now operational, and functions a lot like the map screen in the old 2D fallout games as far as how you navigate the world and find new places. Where Battleheart was basically a linear string of arenas, it's successor is intended to be very non-linear, allowing you to explore a big map and discover villages, quests, merchants, dungeons and so on. There will be various independent storylines to unearth, factions to align yourself with, and hazardous places to delve into - the hope is that most people who play it forge their own unique path, and that you can play it from the beginning many times and find new things, or make different choices. We're in the process of populating that map with lots of stuff for you to find!
We've also been busily creating tons of unique art for armor and weapons, as your equipment is now visually represented on your character. This has proven to be a pretty huge time sink, but we're already pretty invested in the idea, so there's no turning back now.
One other thing which has recently hit the 100% mark is our skills/equipment menu system. Players of Battleheart will be happy to know that we've streamlined the process of equipping items and skills on a character over the somewhat clumsy, segmented system of Battleheart. Instead of separating items and abilities across an "armory" and "academy" page, everything has been brought under one neatly designed roof, so customizing a character is much quicker and involves far less tapping and fishing through sub-menus. Further, this character sheet includes an insane amount of data that used to be under the hood. We frequently got e-mails before asking us if the effects of similar trinkets stacked in Battleheart (fyi, they do) since none of that was really visible in the UI. Now, things like critical hit chance, movement speed modifiers, cooldown reduction and other mechanics are all exposed to the player, so they aren't left guessing whether their build does what they think it does.
One last thing that's been wrapping up is our music. Once again, our composer who did some awesome stuff for Battleheart is returning with a new original score, the last of which is expected to be wrapped up in the next couple weeks. It's always inspiring to get some of the finished music in our hands, and it's great to be able to check one more thing off the endless to-do list!
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Latest news from Mika Mobile
Since it's been quite a while, I figured I'd spend a little time talking about how things are going and what we've been up to with Battleheart's pseudo-sequel.
In general, Mika Mobile is doing well. We relocated our home and business recently, which was a pretty big distraction, but we're getting back into our comfort zone again. We recently released iPhone 5 resolution updates for our two most popular games (ZV2 and Battleheart) and Apple gave both games some nice featuring back in October as a result, which is always welcome and helps invigorate downloads. It amazes us how people are still discovering/downloading our games, often years after their initial release, and it definitely helps keep our spirits up between releases. In fact, as of this posting ZV2 is back in the top 100 apps again in the US, which is just crazy.
Battleheart "2" is our most ambitious project by a long shot, so its development has naturally been taking longer than any of our previous games. We've been on it close to a year now more or less, and it's definitely starting to feel like forever since we released something! Much like Battleheart before it, this is a big project, so we knew there would be a pretty large gap between releases this time - some of you might recall that OMG Pirates! and Battleheart were separated by more than a year too. There's still plenty left to do, but I'm very confident in where it's going.
Due to the fact that our games are frequent targets of cloning, I'm still not prepared to give a lot of fine detail about the design, and how it differs from the original Battleheart, but I can share a couple things. As I mentioned in a prior blog, we're trying to focus more on exploration, rather than the game simply being a series of static arenas. Towards this end, we decided early on to build the game in 3D, with more of an isometric camera perspective (Think Diablo, any RTS, or old Zelda games), and make this our first game which uses 3D polygonal art/animation so that we can have great variety in characters/animation without having to make a trillion sprites. This doesn't mean our art style has been abandoned - in fact, we've reproduced all of the baddies from Battleheart in glorious 3d and their charming designs made the transition nicely. The aesthetic is definitely different, but I think it's still quite appealing.
Another thing we're pretty stoked about is the new class system. I think one of the things that gave Battleheart a lot of replayability was the potential to try different classes, see what their spells/abilities were like and play with different party combinations. This time around, we wanted to allow more customization beyond simply picking between two mutually exclusive skills here and there. The current design (always subject to change, but its working so far) is to allow you to kinda create your own classes by drawing from a pool of active and passive skills that are designed to complement each other. There will be some requirements/restrictions for this or that, but there's a lot of potential for mixing and matching, ensuring that almost no two players will build their kit exactly the same (hopefully). Hypothetically, you could have a wizard who swings a claymore, or a rogue who can whip out a bow to do some ranged attacks when foes are out of dagger range.
Hopefully we'll be able to share more with you guys soon. In the mean time, enjoy the holidays!
In general, Mika Mobile is doing well. We relocated our home and business recently, which was a pretty big distraction, but we're getting back into our comfort zone again. We recently released iPhone 5 resolution updates for our two most popular games (ZV2 and Battleheart) and Apple gave both games some nice featuring back in October as a result, which is always welcome and helps invigorate downloads. It amazes us how people are still discovering/downloading our games, often years after their initial release, and it definitely helps keep our spirits up between releases. In fact, as of this posting ZV2 is back in the top 100 apps again in the US, which is just crazy.
Battleheart "2" is our most ambitious project by a long shot, so its development has naturally been taking longer than any of our previous games. We've been on it close to a year now more or less, and it's definitely starting to feel like forever since we released something! Much like Battleheart before it, this is a big project, so we knew there would be a pretty large gap between releases this time - some of you might recall that OMG Pirates! and Battleheart were separated by more than a year too. There's still plenty left to do, but I'm very confident in where it's going.
Due to the fact that our games are frequent targets of cloning, I'm still not prepared to give a lot of fine detail about the design, and how it differs from the original Battleheart, but I can share a couple things. As I mentioned in a prior blog, we're trying to focus more on exploration, rather than the game simply being a series of static arenas. Towards this end, we decided early on to build the game in 3D, with more of an isometric camera perspective (Think Diablo, any RTS, or old Zelda games), and make this our first game which uses 3D polygonal art/animation so that we can have great variety in characters/animation without having to make a trillion sprites. This doesn't mean our art style has been abandoned - in fact, we've reproduced all of the baddies from Battleheart in glorious 3d and their charming designs made the transition nicely. The aesthetic is definitely different, but I think it's still quite appealing.
Another thing we're pretty stoked about is the new class system. I think one of the things that gave Battleheart a lot of replayability was the potential to try different classes, see what their spells/abilities were like and play with different party combinations. This time around, we wanted to allow more customization beyond simply picking between two mutually exclusive skills here and there. The current design (always subject to change, but its working so far) is to allow you to kinda create your own classes by drawing from a pool of active and passive skills that are designed to complement each other. There will be some requirements/restrictions for this or that, but there's a lot of potential for mixing and matching, ensuring that almost no two players will build their kit exactly the same (hopefully). Hypothetically, you could have a wizard who swings a claymore, or a rogue who can whip out a bow to do some ranged attacks when foes are out of dagger range.
Hopefully we'll be able to share more with you guys soon. In the mean time, enjoy the holidays!
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Lessons from Diablo 3
I've played a whole bunch of Diablo 3 since its release, which I partially legitimize as "research". There's a fair amount of gameplay overlap between what they're doing with Diablo, and what I'm hoping to pull off with Battleheart 2.
Like the original Battleheart, our next game is going to involve selecting from a pool of available powers to help you manage the battlefield. We're currently aiming to have nearly 100 different active abilities in Battleheart 2 (up from Battleheart's 50), many of which are coming over from the first game, with a whole slew of new ones too. These all provide different benefits like healing, single target damage, splash damage, defense, mobility, control, etc. Choosing your toolkit, and using that kit to stay alive is the heart of what makes Battleheart fun, and it's pretty much the same concept powering Diablo 3 as well. Across Diablo's five player classes exist an insane variety of powers and "runes" which modify those powers, sometimes into wholly different abilities. As you level up, you gain access to a broader and broader toolkit, and it's pretty fun to experiment with different combinations of offensive and defensive powers.
Where I think Diablo falls short is in it's difficulty curve, and the way it forces the player to use certain abilities and gear in a specific way. Around level 30 is the game's sweet spot - you have most of your toolkit available to you at that point, and you can freely use most of it without feeling obligated to play in any specific way. But afterwards, it steadily becomes more and more punishing as you approach it's hardest difficulty setting, "inferno" mode. Combat becomes so fast paced and brutal that you are forced to use several of your limited skill selections on defensive buttons and passive buffs. As a barbarian, for example, you simply have no hope of survival without relying on specific tactics - you MUST use a shield, you MUST use a defensive battle shout to raise your stats, and you MUST equip as much health and defense raising equipment as you can find, otherwise you'll be splattered like a fly on a windshield as soon as you run across your first foe.
To me, this totally pisses on what the whole game was building towards. I feel like I have very little freedom in how I build my character, because the enemies simply hit too hard and move too fast for any other tactical options to be available. It's really sad too, because earlier in the game the whole system is in full bloom, and you could freely experiment with different abilities and feel like you were refining your own unique playstyle. It works great, and then gets broken in an entirely avoidable way.
These observations haven't really changed how I'm approaching Battleheart 2, just reaffirmed what I've already been doing. Our combat is much slower than Diablo's, and you're never fighting huge unwieldy groups of 20+. This gives the player the time to parse what's actually happening and make decisions, rather than every engagement being over in the blink of an eye. We also don't have a ludicrous stat curve- in Diablo 3, you might start the game striking enemies for 10 damage, and be hitting for 100,000 damage by the end. A curve that steep will inevitably lead to rough patches where a little bad luck with loot drops will put you miserably far behind, or conversely, a little bit of good luck will trivialize hours of game play because you're doing twice the damage you're supposed to.
Overall, Diablo 3 has glimmers of greatness, where your gear level and the monsters difficulty meet at an ideal level, and your tactical options are at their peak, allowing you to feel powerful, challenged, and a little clever/creative with your character's build. I hope my next game captures some of that too. It just seems to me that Diablo is smothered by a few strange decisions, and held back a bit from its potential as a result.
Like the original Battleheart, our next game is going to involve selecting from a pool of available powers to help you manage the battlefield. We're currently aiming to have nearly 100 different active abilities in Battleheart 2 (up from Battleheart's 50), many of which are coming over from the first game, with a whole slew of new ones too. These all provide different benefits like healing, single target damage, splash damage, defense, mobility, control, etc. Choosing your toolkit, and using that kit to stay alive is the heart of what makes Battleheart fun, and it's pretty much the same concept powering Diablo 3 as well. Across Diablo's five player classes exist an insane variety of powers and "runes" which modify those powers, sometimes into wholly different abilities. As you level up, you gain access to a broader and broader toolkit, and it's pretty fun to experiment with different combinations of offensive and defensive powers.
Where I think Diablo falls short is in it's difficulty curve, and the way it forces the player to use certain abilities and gear in a specific way. Around level 30 is the game's sweet spot - you have most of your toolkit available to you at that point, and you can freely use most of it without feeling obligated to play in any specific way. But afterwards, it steadily becomes more and more punishing as you approach it's hardest difficulty setting, "inferno" mode. Combat becomes so fast paced and brutal that you are forced to use several of your limited skill selections on defensive buttons and passive buffs. As a barbarian, for example, you simply have no hope of survival without relying on specific tactics - you MUST use a shield, you MUST use a defensive battle shout to raise your stats, and you MUST equip as much health and defense raising equipment as you can find, otherwise you'll be splattered like a fly on a windshield as soon as you run across your first foe.
To me, this totally pisses on what the whole game was building towards. I feel like I have very little freedom in how I build my character, because the enemies simply hit too hard and move too fast for any other tactical options to be available. It's really sad too, because earlier in the game the whole system is in full bloom, and you could freely experiment with different abilities and feel like you were refining your own unique playstyle. It works great, and then gets broken in an entirely avoidable way.
These observations haven't really changed how I'm approaching Battleheart 2, just reaffirmed what I've already been doing. Our combat is much slower than Diablo's, and you're never fighting huge unwieldy groups of 20+. This gives the player the time to parse what's actually happening and make decisions, rather than every engagement being over in the blink of an eye. We also don't have a ludicrous stat curve- in Diablo 3, you might start the game striking enemies for 10 damage, and be hitting for 100,000 damage by the end. A curve that steep will inevitably lead to rough patches where a little bad luck with loot drops will put you miserably far behind, or conversely, a little bit of good luck will trivialize hours of game play because you're doing twice the damage you're supposed to.
Overall, Diablo 3 has glimmers of greatness, where your gear level and the monsters difficulty meet at an ideal level, and your tactical options are at their peak, allowing you to feel powerful, challenged, and a little clever/creative with your character's build. I hope my next game captures some of that too. It just seems to me that Diablo is smothered by a few strange decisions, and held back a bit from its potential as a result.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Battleheart "2" (sort of)
We've been working on a new game for a while - it began life in early 2010 as a sci-fi themed game, back before we started Battleheart, and was shelved after a couple months of pre-production. Now it's back, and it's changed quite a bit since then - while initially we thought we'd keep with the spaceships and laser guns (some folks might recall me tweeting about a space game earlier this year), as we got into it, we found ourselves just wanting to do more fantasy stuff. I love swords and magic and monsters, and the game is going to share a lot in common with Battleheart anyway, so why not just call it another entry in the series? A "spiritual successor" perhaps?
So that's what we've been going with for the last few weeks, and making big progress. It's still a long ways from release, so don't get too excited yet - the original Battleheart took almost a year to develop, and this game is likely to be bigger in every way. That said, we're getting better at this stuff all the time, so hopefully it will see release before we're old and grey.
Why have I hesitated to just call it "Battleheart 2" though? Well, it's going to share a lot of gameplay ideas with Battleheart, but a lot is changing too. I don't want to go into intense detail yet, but I can share some of our objectives. Battleheart was (as the name implies) all about combat - tricking out your party with a collection of powers and equipment that complement each other, using powers at the right time on the right bad guy... that's the core of the game, and we're keeping and building on that. But it lacked in two major areas - it had basically no plot, and no exploration. Our goal with this new game is to maintain the feel of Battleheart's combat, but take it from a simple series of arenas and put it in a more fully formed world to romp around. It's a little ambitious, but I feel like we're well on our way.
So that's what we've been going with for the last few weeks, and making big progress. It's still a long ways from release, so don't get too excited yet - the original Battleheart took almost a year to develop, and this game is likely to be bigger in every way. That said, we're getting better at this stuff all the time, so hopefully it will see release before we're old and grey.
Why have I hesitated to just call it "Battleheart 2" though? Well, it's going to share a lot of gameplay ideas with Battleheart, but a lot is changing too. I don't want to go into intense detail yet, but I can share some of our objectives. Battleheart was (as the name implies) all about combat - tricking out your party with a collection of powers and equipment that complement each other, using powers at the right time on the right bad guy... that's the core of the game, and we're keeping and building on that. But it lacked in two major areas - it had basically no plot, and no exploration. Our goal with this new game is to maintain the feel of Battleheart's combat, but take it from a simple series of arenas and put it in a more fully formed world to romp around. It's a little ambitious, but I feel like we're well on our way.
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