Blogs - Mouffers

Hey everyone, Ashley here. I figured it would be a good time to start a series of blogs where I talk about things related to development since development is awesome.

People have different ways of brainstorming for game ideas and coming up with the next great idea can sometimes be challenging. You know what might help you out?…turning off your devices, or if you want to be even MORE extreme, turning off your power.

Magma Pig was not planned: it sort of just birthed out of complete boredom. Jonathan had just finished an epic 3-month long race to get his game Mine Crush out on the Google Play store with Zarabeth and was seemingly exhausted. We woke up one day to no power and since I had a migraine or something and didn’t feel like stressing to rush to work without breakfast, I took the day off. I think I slept all morning, seriously it was a bad headache. Eventually, Jonathan and I were just chilling on the couch staring at our whiteboard and thought it might be a neat idea to spend our 4-year anniversary doing a game jam (we’re nerds at heart).

Jonathan always wanted to implement an infinite runner, but with the saturation of runners on iTunes/Google Play, we wanted to focus on introducing a new unique gameplay element to it. That’s when Jonathan came up with spawning platforms by pressing on the screen. It’s a challenging mechanic and we both felt like it would be fun enough to keep players stimulated to play for a while.

The original concept involved a chubby knight running to save a princess or something. It seemed fairly stereotypical…so eventually instead of it being a knight, we made it a pig. We also thought it would be hysterical if it exploded into pork product particles…and thus, Magma Pig was born.

Seriously, if you’re ever having trouble coming up with ideas for your game, try disconnecting for a bit. Go outside, take a walk, or just turn off your power. Sometimes we are way too distracted by our computer monitors and devices!-Ashley