Pitching a game on the SteamDeck is great! There’s something great about being able to shove it into people’s hands and say – look here is our game, play it! Anyone else view it as an essential bit of kit?
As GDC approaches I was looking at some photo’s from last year, and remembering all the fun we had taking our steam deck whilst pitching our game - Mechinus. The locations ranged all the way from swanky hotel suites with giant buffets and merch for the taking, right down to being perched on the edge of a noisy bar while shouting over the crowd. We even managed to get some pretty cool people to give our game a play - here are some pictures of Daniel Mullins (Inscryption) and Prof John Hare (Sensible soccer, Sociable Soccer, Cannon Fodder) which was pretty cool!
The Steamdeck was so much easier than a gaming laptop or a console as its so portable, and you can literally just thrust it into someone's hands and they can start playing straight away. How many of the devs on here view the steam deck as a vital piece of kit for pitching their game? Is anyone on their way to GDC this year – I’m gutted I’m not going this year to be honest as it was a lot of fun.
Would there be flowers in a world that evolved mechanically?
The core concept of the game is that its set in a world where life has evolved mechanically, rather than organically. Evolution has shaped the mechanical eco-system over millions of years, and created a living breathing (sentient, refuelling?) environment. The first level is set in the equivalent of a mechanical jungle.
The idea behind these ‘Flowers’ is that they use their petals like funnels to collect and process falling fluids. Over years of use the erosion has caused the petals to become more colourful. As the environment they exist in is filled with predators and prey, the creatures will retract their petals by reflex when they sense movement nearby.
What do you think? What are some small details you’ve used in the background to help flesh out the worlds that you are working on?
Using the power of prototypes to craft a show stopping demo
I wanted to talk a little bit about how, when we see a finished feature in a game, we don’t see the months of prototyping that goes behind it, and how each of those prototypes helps to solve a problem and builds upon each other to get to an end goal. The video attached shows some of the protoypes we went through while developing a pitchable demo for our game - Mechinus - as a bit of a case study.
I think people new to the games industry don’t necessarily know what we mean when we say “start small” and want to just start working on their dream game straight away – but you’d be amazed at how creating simple prototypes to focus in on one aspect of your game and drilling down into that can help you build something much bigger.
In Mechinus, the main character is a cog that rolls around the world. It was important to us that he had a very particular feel to his movement – there needed to be a good feeling of weight, inertia and momentum, but as a puzzle platformer, he still needed to feel responsive and easy to control.
We started off with a 2d prototype to try and get a base movement system that felt representative of what we were looking for, and also felt fun – one thing that really helped the workflow was providing lots of tweakable values to experiment with whilst playing the game as it vastly improved iteration time. I think we went through something like 9 or 10 different builds trying to get to point where we felt pretty happy with it. At that point we shared the build with the rest of our company to get feedback - and then inevitably had to iterate a bit more as a consequence.
Once we had a 2d prototype signed off, we moved over to 3d and tried to replicate the same feel across a 3d spline. Often when you see 2.5d games the characters still travel from left to right, just in a more 3d environment – it was important to us that the character’s path could bend to allow the character to move into and out of the camera, allowing him to turn corners – similar to old platformers like Pandemonium or Klonoa. This caused lots of headaches, and a few changes of tactic - moving from a spline based system to making a custom track editor for example – but we eventually got something that looked pretty interesting and felt pretty cool. If we had been trying to do this, whilst also trying to work out how we wanted the controls to feel, it would have been a nightmare, but breaking down the issues into separate prototypes helped us solve one problem at a time.
From there we created a block out of the level we were planning on building – this in turn caused us to rethink a couple of things, and tweak values even further. This process continued all the way up to creating the final build.
- Peter Gomer, Head of Design, Huey Games
Dreamhack Beyond Indie Showcase
Mechinus has been selected for the Dreamhack Beyond Indie Showcase! This means you have another chance to play the demo, starting tomorrow!
Mechinus at Gamescom / Courage Cologne 2023
What a week at Gamescom! We kicked off in style showcasing Mechinus at Courage Cologne, which was held at the world famous Bootshaus night club, then onwards to Gamescom itself.
We were lucky to get a spot beside a fire exit at Courage, which provided some much-needed ventilation on an extremely hot and humid evening in Cologne.
At 7pm, doors opened to press, influencers and publishers, and we picked up a stack of business cards. Then everybody else began pouring in from 8pm. Like the other indie exhibitors, we had drinks tokens to give to people who tried the demo, and we also came prepared with special Mechinus themed keyrings to hand out - no two exactly alike!
We got fantastic feedback from players on the demo, and numerous important business meetings were held at Gamescom itself. A fantastic week in a beautiful city.
DEMO in the Dreamhack Beyond Summer Indie Showcase
We are excited to announce that Mechinus has been selected to be part of the Dreamhack Beyond Summer Indie Showcase, and this will include a DEMO of the game for a limited time!
Play as Cognito for the duration of the showcase, as you meet Bumble, and explore the enchanting mechanical ecosystem together.
Mechinus Selected for Courage Cologne Showcase!
We are proud to announce that Mechinus has been selected for the Courage Cologne Showcase, running alongside Gamescom 2023.
If you are attending Gamescom this year, we'd love to see you at the event and get your feedback.
Mechinus Shortlisted for Indie Cup Playtest Prize
Super proud that Mechinus was a finalist in the special play test prize at the Indie Cup 2023.
Mechinus at Format
Last week we had the first ever publicly playable build of Mechinus at Format in Manchester, UK:
We kicked off with the VIP industry event on Wednesday, with Mechinus being displayed on the big screens along with other games from exhibitors:
Then, on the Thursday night the public came to play at the main event. The feedback we got from players was incredible, and we also got details from a host of streamers, journalists and podcasters who want to run features on Mechinus - watch this space!
London Games Festival Official Selection
Mechinus has been participating as part of the London Games Festival "Official Selection" - an exclusive curation of upcoming games.
