Ghost Mortem VI
I think this’ll be my last ghost mortem post. I’ve covered most of the year at this point. All the interesting bits, anyway. You can read the rest here: http://fun-ghost.tumblr.com/tagged/ghostmortem
So today I’ll talk a bit about MILE-AGE.
Mile Age started as an top down open world game, modeled after space sims like Escape Velocity Nova and Freelancer. But with monster trucks. As you explored the ruined highways of the wasteland, you could speak to NPCs, trade goods, and buy upgrades for your car. It got fairly far along, but I realized that to fully build what I envisioned was a far bigger project than I could handle. One by one I stripped away systems and simplified until what was left was a mobile driving game that could be played one handed. Rather than firing weapons, you needed to steer through obstacles to crash enemies and weave through bullet-hell like fields of projectiles to survive.
Here’s an early shot of the mobile version. At every store, you could stop and examine your surroundings, talk to station attendants, repair, buy upgrades, and get quests. In the final version, you can’t even stop at stores; you drive through them and items are automatically purchased. That non-stop driving is ultimately what I feel MILE-AGE is about; you’re always being pursued by enemies, always moving forwards, and it felt wrong to stop, pause the game, and take time to look around. This version also had an inkling of the original backstory I wrote, also cut: I wrote a short scrolling intro that explained how the earth had been ravaged by climate change, and humanity had been burned away, leaving only the sentient AI monster trucks that we used as transport just before the end to roam the streets.
In the end, I think my cuts worked out. What’s left is a unique little arcade game that feels pretty tight. My main regret from development is I think I listened to the wrong advice while playtesting; while there was plenty of good advice that worked out well, I should have stuck closer to the Flappypunk model, and kept the difficulty high and the rounds short. The best part of MILE-AGE is the close calls, weaving through bullets with no health left, and a less forgiving damage model would not only create more of those, but would create a faster feeling experience. As it is, games can drag on pretty long, which I think exposes the relatively small amount of content I was able to build out. It’s something I figured out relatively quickly, but I wasn’t confident enough in the design to stick with it when people said otherwise, and I think the final game suffered for it.
That lack of confidence goes back to something I said in Ghost Mortem I: a truly great game needs strong direction, and a design that embodies that direction in every aspect of itself. MILE-AGE was a meandering project that did eventually find that direction, but I never fully leaned into it. Did the game even need upgrades? Or were they a holdover from the original design document? As I put more distance between myself and the game, I suspect there was more that could have been cut out and refined. I’m happy with what I made, but I feel like there’s another, better game buried within it that just needs more time and testing to tease out.
An unexpected highlight of the year for me was demoing the game at a bunch of local events. I hadn’t really had any experience working a booth and it ended up being something I really enjoy. I showed MILE-AGE at about 6 local shows, from the fairly large Boston Festival of Indie Games to some smaller developer focused events, and I enjoyed standing around chatting at all of them. It’s super cheesy, but when I was down on the game and felt like a failure as a creator, hearing from other people who I’d never met how much they liked the game was enough to fuel me and keep me going. I doubt anyone who came to those events will find their way to this blog, but if they do, thank you for coming out and playing the game; it really meant a lot. I think standing behind those tables made me more confident in myself over the course of the year, not just in conversation, but as a developer who believes more in myself now.
Unfortunately, while people loved the game and were excited to buy and download it while standing at the booth with me, it never turned into extra sales. Over the course of the year I made less than two hundred dollars off MILE-AGE and Flapjack Flinger, which finances...maybe a week of development, if I kept it real lean. The positivity I’ve gotten from people who played the game, and the knowledge about myself and my abilities that I gained has made it worth it a hundred times over to me, but now it’s time to look towards other sources of revenue. To that end, I’ll be starting a job at GSN Games next week. Fun Ghost’s Haunted Fun Factory LLC will of course continue, and I’m continuing work on both a patch for MILE-AGE, and an untitled orbital first person shooter, which I’ll be announcing soon. While it’s been a complete financial failure, I love Fun Ghost with all my heart and I feel like I’ve only just established myself and the company, and it’s far too early to stop. Thanks for reading.
Chris Maire
12/6/2015