For the last few months I’ve been spending some time developing a game for the Android mobile platform. Up until now, I’ve just eluded to it as my ‘uber-secret Android project’, but it’s time to let the cat out of the proverbial bag.

Introducing …. (drum roll please) … GrandMasterPixel !

GrandMasterPixel is essentially a low-res pixelart competition, with light combat RPG elements.

GrandMasterPixel Arena screenshot (Android emulator)

The basic gameplay is as follows:

• Draw a pic. Make it look good. Submit the pic to the Arena – this costs ‘submission credits’.
• Judge some battles in the Arena between other artists pics by touching the one you think should win – judging one battle costs one ‘judging token’, and earns you one ‘submission credit’.
• ‘Judging credits’ recharge over time, so if you run out, just come back later.
• Pics have ‘hitpoints’. Losing a battle loses the pic hitpoints – when the pics hitpoints reach zero, that pic is dead and can no longer battle.
• Artists (that’s you) begin with only limited colors in their palette. You earn more colors based on (a) the number of pics you have submitted (‘leveling up’) and (b) how successful your pics have been in battle (eg, ‘achievements’ earned based on the number of wins before dying).

GrandMasterPixel drawing mode screenshot - me drawing an 8-bit Mario-like guy, with blue skin since that's all the colours I have at this level.

The idea behind this system is that players need to use all their creativity to make interesting pics, even with limited colors. Credits to submit new pics are only earned by judging, and judging is rate limited – this means players should be encouraged put some effort into each pic they submit, since submissions are a somewhat limited resource. In the current design, only half the colors are accessible based on number of submissions (eg, quantity) – the other half can only be earned by submitting pics that are successful in battle (‘quality’, as subjectively judged by other players).

I think some interesting dynamics may emerge here, but I’d rather not speculate too much before letting a bunch of players loose with the game.

Check it out and give me some feedback on FriendFeed, or tweet me @OMGWTFGAMES ! Download a time-limited alpha version of GrandMasterPixel for Android with this link. Or scan the QR code below with the Barcode Scanner app using your phone. In order to install it, you will need to allow applications from “Unknown sources” under the Settings->Applications menu.

There are still lots of features left to implement to make it more game-y, and a few bugs to swat, but I’ve spent a surprising amount of time developing and polishing this little game so far already, so I thought it was time to put something out there and get some feedback.

In future posts I may detail some of the lessons I’ve learned about developing Android applications, social games on Google App Engine and some general game design issues I’ve come up against in this project.

• Mass Effect !! Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m over a year behind on this one – but it’s part of may strategy to not spend too much money on the latest games when I don’t have time to actually play them properly. It was on special on Steam, so I pounced. Only a few hours in, but I’m loving it so far.
• Play testing my uber-secret Android game, soon to be released for alpha testing. Of course, this doesn’t really count as ‘playing’, since playtesting isn’t all fun and games, and can get quite tedious at times. It’s a labor of love.

• The Gratuitous Space Battles beta – it’s currently undergoing lots of balance changes.
• Dungeon Quest. It’s a braindead grind-RPG in the simplest sense. But it’s on my Android phone, and it’s on Facebook. It’s just there … so I play it.
• Played just a little bit of Guitar Hero World Tour. I’m so out of practice now it’s pathetic

So, the Game Design Concepts course officially finished a little over two weeks ago. I followed along for the first half, but dropped the ball when it came to the month-long design project. Playtesting is time consuming, but essential – and finding a bunch of ‘randoms’ to act as testers for blind playtesting is tricky.

Rather than working on my Game Design Concepts project, I instead decided to focus my game development time in August on getting something ready for the “Android Developer Challenge 2“. While I didn’t actually make that deadline (I decided it was not worth submitting something unpolished), it helped to push my uber-secret-Android-project into the realms of playability, and I should be able to release it before the end of the year.

Here’s a summary of my Game Design Concepts project, as it stands.

The game board “pre-prototype”:

"Commuter Hero" board design. Squares are stations, circles are points enroute between stations. Triangles are the destinations ("goals"). Lines are railroads, "roads" are bus routes, dotted lines are walking routes. The "piechart" thing represents the clock, which turns to the next colour each turn (representing 15 minute timesteps, I guess). It's been rubbed off the whiteboard now, so this photo serves as a record of the design in case I want to reproduce it and continue.

Each player is given three destination cards, which are destinations they must visit during the game, as well as sharing two “shared destination” cards with two other players, which are destinations that each pair must meet at during the game. Once a player visits their five destinations, they win. Players move around the board one step each turn, but sometimes they must wait several turns at a station for a train to arrive (indicated by the “colour clock”). While they are waiting at a station, they must roll to possibly draw an “event card”, which can initiate things like rail strikes, or provide a “taxi ticket” to get them from A to B, pronto. The game forces players to determine the optimal route between their destinations, re-route as events occur, and negotiate their routes to be compatible with the players that they must meet.

I may finish designing this game at some point, including proper playtesting, but I also feel like the basic mechanic is a little tedious and there are not enough “interesting decisions”. I may be better off just scrapping it and starting with something entirely new. Below the fold are the rules as they stand, and my working notes …

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I’ve made a quick “GDCU” mindmap using XMind. It covers some of the concepts in the Game Design Concepts course, however I don’t claim that is complete, and I may update it over time. Feel free to fork it and add/correct it in any way you feel. I’d love to see updates from others doing the course.