Firo is the work-in-progress title for our latest primary development from the minds of Matthew Tuxworth and Daniela Hammer who sought to combine a platformer with Daniela’s natural art style. The high concept for the game is as follows:

“Firo is a Co-operative, Puzzle-Platformer game with an Attachment System and a quirky natural aesthetic.”

What do we hope Firo will be? Let’s expand upon the High Concept.

Firstly, Co-operative. Firo shall provide all the systems for a co-operative game and promote it’s necessity in playing through the game. Yet whilst offering the co-operative experience, Firo s
hould be able to be played as a single player game where control over both characters is granted.

Secondly, a Puzzle-Platformer. As opposed to the platformer genre’s primary mechanic of “jumping puzzles”, Firo should focus on providing not just the difficulty of timing and direction, but challenge the player to think about the level and solve the puzzle to continue. These puzzles should challenge both the single character and the co-operative effort.

Thirdly, an Attachment System. In particular, attachments unique to each playable character to create a diversity to a player’s interactions with the world.

And finally, a quirky aesthetic which this game was largely envisioned upon. As a sample of the aesthetic, you may view Daniela Hammer’s poster for Firo which was selected as a Freeplay 2011 finalist for Best Concept Art.

We’re largely open about the development process, but the goal is that information is trickled out so the blog doesn’t go into word recession. For now, just know that we’re doing some work on a little game with the name of Firo and admire the concept art. I know I can be caught staring at it often!

As the manager of Moving Target Games, I empathise with the goal of the gamejam: help people help themselves. By creating a low entry version of the actual game development process, game jam offers a unique experience; debatably more useful than a short internship at an actual development studio. My goals with this group strike a similar chord I only hope I can realise here.

Moving Target Games members were involved in the Game Jam with 2 participants and 1 organiser amongst the group.

Daniela Hammer was a part of the Game Jam event down in Melbourne, working with a team to produce Whip Frog: a 3^rd person grappling-hook platformer where the player takes control of a Frog in order to save his species of whip frogs from extinction. We held a small interview with Daniela to discuss her experiences:

What made you want to participate in the 48 hour Global Game Jam?

I was keen to try and develop a product in collaboration with other people, and enjoy sharing my abilities to see what we can create. I was excited about the creative potential of the task and the chance to meet new people. Basically, it sounded like fun and it has been a while since I have enjoyed working in a team like that. I enjoyed that development style while at university and wanted to try again.

Your team worked on Whip Frog. Tell us a little about your work on the game?

I assisted, as did the whole group, in creating and developing the game concept. The original idea was generated by Campbell Barton. My main role within the development was the creation and direction of the art style. This involved concepts for the environments and characters as well as generating the assets. I was also responsible for assigning tasks to other members of the team. The role posed many new challenges, and I found the overall experience to be very educational and very fun.

What were some of the highlights from the gamejam?

I guess that many people enjoyed playing our game. They would just drop by and say “Oooh fun”, including Giselle’s kids (one of the organisers), one of which would keep coming back shouting “Froggy~!” and playing our game.

Plus the team environment: helping out other teams using blender also, laughing ourselves silly at 1am in the morning, sharing our skills and feeling useful whilst creating something together.

That and hearing “Spider Frog” mentioned around us, haha.

Craig Peebles was one of the organisers behind the Global Game Jam Melbourne, and I’m sure they couldn’t have done it without him. We held an interview with Craig to discuss his thoughts on the Game Jam in Melbourne also:

Congratulations with the turn out for the Global Game Jam in Melbourne. How did you find the interest and enthusiasm of local game developers for Game Jam 2011?

Thanks Andrew, it was a great event, and we had a lot of fun putting it together. This was the first time that IGDA Melbourne has put together a Game Jam event, and we were just bowled over by the amount of interest we had from local developers wanting to take part. We received registrations from familiar faces from our regular IGDA meet-ups, as well as students and developers who had only just found out about IGDA Melbourne through promotion of the Game Jam.

We ended up with 72 developers coming along to take part, ranging from games students, students coming along to make their first game, and professional and independent developers. We had 18 games made over the weekend, all of them complete and playable by the end of the weekend. We even had our first game ready to play (in a very basic form, but still as a proper game) after just 4 hours of development!

During the Jam itself, it was amazing to see everyone so excited, and that excitement and passion stayed pretty constant throughout the event, even in the early hours of the morning when some people might only be getting to sleep after a hard night of game making. We had a big stockpile of food available for everyone at any hour, thanks to our local industry sponsor Firemint, and people made good use of the supply of soft drinks and snacks over the weekend.

Just last week we had one of our regular IGDA meet-ups, where we re-capped the events of the Game Jam for those that weren’t there, and we had all the games on display there for people to play. It was fantastic to see that teams had still been refining their games in the time since the Global Game Jam, some teams have already placed their games on game portals such as Kongregate and Newgrounds, and some are already planning developing their games commercially, for example on the app store for iPhone and iPad. It’s really great to see people still so fired up about the events of just one weekend, and the bonds that have been made between students and experienced developers through the teams that were made.

Did everything run as smoothly as anticipated?

It was pretty busy in the lead up to get everything in place, but there was a great team working hard to put this event together. I have to say a huge thanks to Giselle and Tom from IGDA Melbourne, and also to Paul from La Trobe University, who was an absolute champion in setting up all of the IT support, internet access and everything else that’s so critical to support people making games. We had lots of helpers coming in to help during the weekend as well. All in all, the weekend went very smoothly, with all the jammers busy making games at all hours. This was really important, as we wanted to make sure that the weekend was interruption-free for the jammers, so they could make the best use of the limited time that they had and get the most out of the weekend.

What did you most get out of the event in organising it?

For me personally, the most rewarding part of organising this event has been seeing the reactions of the jammers taking part in it. We’ve had lots of positive feedback from the jammers, and everyone got a lot out of the weekend, from the experience and skills gained during the weekend, to the friendships that were made in the teams formed. Everyone’s already very excited about next year’s Jam!

Anyone you want to thank?

There are lots of people that helped to put together the weekend. Firstly, I’d like to thank our sponsors for the event, being La Trobe Universiry, Firemint and THQ. La Trobe were fantastic in allowing us to make use of their IT labs for the weekend – it turned out to be the perfect venue to hold a game-making weekend! Firemint sponsored food for the weekend, allowing us to have a ready supply of food and drink for the entire weekend, allowing us to run the event at no cost to any of the jammers. THQ provided a bunch of goodies for the award-winning games of the weekend. We also had Stephan Schutze (creator of the Sound Library at www.stephanschutze.com) with us for the weekend, giving the jammers full access to his sound library, as well as technical support and tips on how to incorporate sound in the games. He even awarded a commercial license for the Sound Library to the game that won ‘Best Sound’. If you haven’t heard of the Sound Library, I definitely suggest you check it out, it’s a great resource for making games, or any project where you need quality sound effects.

Also, I’d like to thank our industry guests for the event. We had presentations at the start by Stephan Schutze and also Tom Killen from The Voxel Agents, and also had a great discussion panel before the jam started with Rob Murray and Steve Fawkner from Firemint, Ben Britten from Tin Man Games, and Trent Kusters from Torus Games. We had a champion panel of judges, including Tassos Stevens from Coney, Sam Mayo from Firemint, Ben Britten, Donald Duong from Channel 31′s ‘Level 3′ TV show, and Leena Van Deventer from Resolution Magazine. We also had media guests throughout the weekend, including the team from ‘Level 3′, who were with us for the entire weekend. We were stoked with the amount of interest and support we received from everyone for the event.

Lastly and most importantly, I want to thank the rest of the IGDA team for working so hard to put the weekend together. Giselle Rosman and Tom Killen from IGDA Melbourne, Paul Taylor from La Trobe Uni, James Rhodes who helped with filming and documenting the jam online during the weekend, and all the volunteers that helped us through the weekend to make the event as successful as it was.

Overall, Global Game Jam 2011 was definitely a success, and a great shining light of creative energy for the game development industry that is much needed. Moving Target Games was partially involved, hopefully moreso in future years as those of us that attended pass on our experiences to those who were unsure.

P.S. I attended the Sydney Global Game Jam and made Dodocalypse and learnt much from my experience. I’m not about to interview myself, and my thoughts are laid out further above. Only have to give special props to all the organisers and volunteers, particular thanks go to Dan Graf, Malcolm Ryan and Chris Lee for running the Sydney Game Jam.

Ultimately, every public face needs a public mouth for words to be publicised, and thus the Moving Target Games Blog was created. Our goal, for the blog, is to provide continued updates regarding the development of our independently created games and to spread word of our feats to people far and wide. When the complete website is launched further details will be provided regarding our group, expressions of interest and details for games in production, but until then allow me to provide a summary of ourselves for the unaware.

Moving Target Games was previously known as Scatter Games (for a couple of months), but perhaps more commonly acknowledged as Team A from the Tsumea Initiative, which was kick-started by a naïve designer just looking for someone to make games with. Despite a large expression of interest, few stayed on and over time numbers ebbed and flowed amongst our team. Though team’s B and C appeared to have simply gone quiet, our team continued work on our planned game: Cosmos Concerto.

Cosmos Concerto was, in retrospect, overly ambitious as a start-up game, though not totally out of reach. However, the story of Cosmos Concerto’s development to it’s current point as an alpha-build demonstration is for another time.

Despite a publically quiet last year or so, Moving Target Games is gearing up for a large push on projects and people to assist with the development of them. Currently our primary focus is a co-operative, amazingly cute platforming game with the tentative title of Firo. Pieces of information regarding Firo will be released as the game works its way through the development pipeline with the goal that our audience is up to date with our development with little hidden in the background.

To conclude, welcome to the Moving Target Games blog.