While 2016 may have been chill, in terms of actual game dev work, 2017 is shaping up to be a different story. It's just not enough to have an official LLC entity, you actually need to do something with it - who knew! To that end, both myself and Boris are working on a couple separate prototypes - he will describe his soon (I hope)...
...and mine, a small proof-of-concept turn-based archery game that takes a few mechanics from one of our previous projects / ideas and attempts to flesh them out. I will also be using this prototype to test out a few small-ish multiplayer concepts, including some basic non-local multiplayer. The idea here is quick-ish iteration, while at the same time setting out a roadmap for significant feature additions and keeping the core mechanics intact as we go. There are already about 6 or so major milestones after "get game working".
What's most exciting to me about this project (for now) is the technology stack. I'm making use of Javascript / WebGL to reduce the turnaround time from concept to playable game. Luckily, there are already a few frameworks / engines that cover this, and the one I'm choosing to focus on this time is PhaserJS. I do a lot of web-based development for my day job, so this should not require too many entirely new concepts (which for a first project is a good thing). Rather, my hope is that
Further, if this prototype goes well, and I'm able to make appreciable progress, you can bet we'll make use of the process for more prototypes and proofs-of-concept...and maybe even stream some of it, too! I'm a big fan of streaming gameplay (I'm sure I've mentioned it before), so this will be another merger of existing and outgrowth of new experience. No guarantees on when it will happen, of course, but that is just how things go, isn't it.
