So since I talk about a lot of games on this site I should probably talk about one of my own eventually. One of our recent releases is Lil’ Bush: Iraq Hero. Ultimately I think this game didn’t quite hit the mark but it is still interesting to me.
As a little background I should begin by saying that I can’t stand the Lil’ Bush show. My politics being what they are I can’t even bring myself to watch a caricature of W for longer than 5 minutes without getting angry. But given the opportunity to lampoon the man I was eager to make a game using the property. Originally it was proposed that we would make a game about trying to eject him from the White House, but then the producers of the show said they wanted a game like guitar hero that would show case the songs in the show. Ok fine, not as funny but still challenging.
Each game we make is made in about five weeks. Five. One less than six kind of five.
The first thought was why not make the game exactly like a web version of guitar hero. But I initially pushed against this idea because it takes a lot of dexterity that most casual game players don’t have. So we went with notes that would appear around the screen that you could click on.
The notes in Iraq Hero never quite feel tied into the game. There is still a disconnect between the action of clicking the notes and the music. If we have more time I think we could have improved it (classic developers lament). There is something about sliding the notes in a direction consistently rather than a count down clock that seems easier for people to time. The problem in our game is that the notes are still a little to hard to predict.
Interestingly when we had fewer notes in the game it was harder but when we put more in it got easier. I believe this has something to do with the notes seeming to keep the rhythm a bit better.
As I said this game is not all it could have been but I’m interested in trying a rhythm-action game again at some point.
