Monday 20 December 2010

Designing the Bankers: Part 1


Greedy Bankers for iPhone is making fantastic progress, with the gameplay elements really coming together. It's still a little rough around the edges, and I've not balanced the drop rates yet, but it's already proving fun to play. It's become clear that the artwork and animation is a big job which I need to get on with before the game can progress further.

With that in mind, I decided to spend the past week entirely on artwork, and trying to pin down a clear design for the "Greedy Bankers" of the title. These characters had always been in my head, as part of the setting the game takes place in. I'd always imagined the player as part of a big Greedy Banking corporation, working away in a secret vault.

The setting isn't clear at all in the prototype, which has led some players to question the connection between the title and the game, so a big change I want to make for the commercial release is to make the banking setting obvious. I want to inject some more personality into the game, and invent some recognisable characters.

In the upcoming blog posts I will show you what I've come up with so far. My intention was simple: to come up with characters that were recognisable as bankers and also recognisable as greedy. I also wanted to make them fun to watch, the kind of characters the players should love to hate.

It's a continuous process, so I'll be continuing to play with designs and come up with new ideas before putting them in the game. Any feedback you can offer would be really helpful!