VoxelBoy and I have formed a new company Owlchemy Labs devoted to creating original IP using Unity. Much like Adult Swim, our style is in the realm of absurd, silly gameplay, and we hope not to disappoint with our newest title. We’ve been building and scheming and working on something big, and it’s finally time to show you guys a sneak peek:
Smuggle Truck The premiere smuggling game for iOS and Web
Info:
Smuggle Truck is an over-the-top physics-based driving game where you smuggle your passengers across the border in the least amount of time. Tilt your truck, catch newborn babies, drive over armadillos, and rocket your way over hills, through caverns, and over quicksand to save the people!
Video:
More info:
Looking at the screenshots, you may recognize the art style. That’s because legendary artist Bill Tiller is behind the art direction and creation! The name may not ring a bell, but he was the lead background artist from Curse of Monkey Island and many other big titles with LucasArts.
How he came to join the team was actually a funny story. He contacted us directly after seeing a pre-alpha build of the game and said “your game is so ****ing hilarious, I want to do all of the art for the game, because I want to see it succeed”. Once we changed our pants, we started full-on production of the game.
So with a seasoned artist and a two-man development team cranking for almost two months of balls-to-the-wall development, we present to you our teaser video and screenshots. Hope you like them!
Update: We take a look at the medal system and how it breeds replayability.
This week in the Smuggle Truck Screencast, Yilmaz shows off our medal system. This system was designed both as a reward system for regular gameplay and also to provide solid paths for replayability. Check out the video below.
We found that often, racing games do a particularly bad job at offering a reason to replay levels. Additionally, if the player does choose to replay, they aren’t replaying with a different goal in mind. It’s usually just “do it faster”. Games like Burnout provide a secondary goal in addition to time, which in their case is the number of ‘Takedowns’ you can achieve during a race. Similarly, Smuggle Truck is tracking two major gameplay variables, both your time and successful passenger count. With these two metrics, we are able to provide players with multiple different goals.
We provide three medals that push for overall quality driving (bronze, silver, and gold medals require increasing speed and successful passenger delivery to varying degrees), but we also provide two other medals which urge the player to think explicitly about their driving style. The ‘Green Card’ award is awarded to players that drive slowly and carefully due to the fact that they are not being timed and their only concern is the safety of their passengers. The ‘Smugglers Run’ award, however, rewards pedal-to-the-medal reckless speed-run driving, with a minimum of one safe passenger. With this medal structure, we’ve observed 2-4 playthroughs on a single level, with minimum fatigue, which extends the play lifetime of each level we create.
What ties this all together is the fact that medals are used as currency to unlock later batches of levels, much like the non-linear progression through the Rock Band campaign mode. Players aren’t forced to beat all levels in a rigid order, but must go back and do better on prior levels in order to unlock new ones.
dude this is sooo damn wacky ! i love it ! every aspect of it is funny !
