Game Prototypes – Tell Me What You Think
[EDIT – the prototypes in question are no longer being distributed. You can still find some information, and a link to supplemental license information, at the link at the bottom of this article]
It’s fairly rare for game developers to show the world their early prototypes, but I’ve decided to take a chance and do so here.
I’d really like to get solid feedback from a variety of folks, so I’m going public with these prototypes very early. They are crude prototypes, but hopefully show either the germ of something fun, or reveal an idea that frankly just doesn’t work.
You can download the prototypes from here (5.1 MB) [EDIT – not anymore]. What I’d like you to do is send me your ratings, from 1 to 10, on the different game concepts. There are 10 main concepts that I’m mainly interested in feedback on, and 6 others (variants, mainly), that are prefixed ‘Weak’ that you can skip unless you’re really interested.
Check them out and send your feedback to me at psteinmeyer A T newcrayon.com.
If you don’t mind, please also tell me your age, gender, and a few casual games, if any, that you’ve played/particularly enjoyed in the last 3 months.
February 21st, 2006 at 5:18 pm
I tried your games but I got an immediate “access violation” crash for all that I tried. I tried a few different Windows “compatability” settings to no avail. My own SDL games work fine on this computer and I think the Bonny demo worked ok here too — so I’m not sure what’s going on with that.
Oh, and thanks for checking out my blog. I should have another prototype or two up on there this week.
February 21st, 2006 at 6:13 pm
[…] Phil Steinmeyer is soliciting feedback on some casual game prototypes. Hopefully, he’ll share his thoughts on whether or not it was “worth it” someday in the future. […]
February 21st, 2006 at 6:15 pm
StGabe – tried to e-mail you – hopefully it got through. Others are downloading and playing the prototypes successfully – if you’re interested I’ll try to troubleshoot with you (see my e-mail)
February 21st, 2006 at 11:33 pm
[…] in a seemingly strong showing of faith in his fellow game designers, the brilliant phil steinmeyer of new crayon games is putting a bunch of game prototypes out there for feedback. sort of an open sourcing of game design, one might say. […]
February 22nd, 2006 at 1:32 am
Hmm while it wasn’t one of your favoured games game F was the most interesting game, at least from an unusual mechanic (in this context) POV.
But it needs ‘more’.
February 22nd, 2006 at 2:26 am
[…] pans out. It may be something you’ll want to do with your own games in the future. Permalink | TrackbackURL […]
February 24th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Some good concepts here. I will give you more feedback after I’ve had a chance to test out each game.
Like you, I have an interest in casual games. Got hooked on collapse a couple years back and haven’t been the same since. I constantly think about casual games and jot down ideas.
In fact, I’ve got one design doc that’s fairly detailed for a game that could be pretty fun. Unfortunately I’m not a programmer or 2D artist, so my development progress has been, well, stagnant.
Wondering if you’d like to take a look at it. Shoot me an e-mail if interested.
February 24th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Troy – unfortunately, paper game designs without at least a prototype can’t really get anywhere in this biz. It’s really hard to evaluate the quality of an idea on paper (All 16 of the prototypes I made seemed cool on paper, but many are, IMO, lame once implemented).
Add to that that game developers (including myself), are reluctant to even look at external ideas, for fear of some kind of ‘plagiarism’ call if it’s similar to something that the developer came up with independently.
So, it’s probably not what you want to hear, but I really can’t look at your idea and doubt others would (at least on a confidential basis) either. Your alternatives are to teach yourself enough programming to do at least a crude implementation yourself, and/or to post it publicly on a forum like indiegamer.com.
February 24th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
Off to read some more programming books, I guess! Either that, or hire some college kids to slave away in my basement…
February 28th, 2006 at 10:44 am
Troy, you may want to check out Game Maker 6.1 at:
http://www.gamemaker.nl/download.html
It’s not overly complicated, which means its not the most robust program in the world. It might, however, give you the prototyping tool you need to see if your idea works or not. It seems more suited to 2D games than 3D games; the standalone games in the Games section can give you a better idea of what others have done.
Hope that helps!
February 28th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
[…] So I’ve picked the game concept that I’m going to fully develop. It’s a very close approximation of one of the game concepts I posted publicly last week, though I’m sure it’ll evolve somewhat as it develops. […]
June 28th, 2006 at 7:07 am
Public Game Prototypes…
Prototyping is something that should be done by every game developer, but isn’t always. It’s important to know if your game ideas are feasible (read fun) before setting out on the long process of development. Phil Steinmeyer is trying somet…
August 18th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
GameDevMike, You right, thats true.
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I cant download the archive posted 🙁
September 1st, 2006 at 3:39 pm
They’ve been taken down – I no longer need the feedback, and I had some of the SDL license info wrong, and it was easier just to take them down then update them. For those who’ve already downloaded them, you can find the relevant license info at the link in the article, but please don’t redistribute the prototypes any further.