GunTruck started out as a simple game: a car with intuitive two-button controls, a turret that aims at enemies automatically and AI controlled enemies that charge at you in various ways. A simple arcade-style score chasing game at its core. On paper this sounded like a six month project, but a few years later, we’re still at it.
Mockup scene for the main menu
Of course we’ve had to do various other jobs in the mean time to stay afloat. We’ve gone through phases when every team member has been attached to various subcontracting jobs mid-development, so months passed where the game didn’t progress all that much, but we’ve been happy with the fact that we’ve been able to maintain focus on this one game all this time. (Even though we get about six game ideas every single day. I guess this still bleeds into GunTruck in the form of feature creep, but that’s just how it is with us.)
Before we started developing any sort of prototype, we made a visual representation of what we wanted the game to look like, often called a target render. In our case it was a straightforward 3D scene done in Blender made to sort of look like it could be gameplay. After we decided that that’s what we wanted to move towards, we had a talented intern throw together a quick prototype using whatever assets he could come by and tighten it up for a few weeks. Then our lead developer took over the project and started remaking the game from scratch.
The initial target render for the game
The graphics have gone through big changes, as well as the level and even the overall design. It’s been as much a journey of experimentation as our first game, WoodChopper, was, but we think the game is better for it. I have a separate post all about graphics stuff prepared planned for the near future, and I’m sure Pauli can cook up something about the design at some point.
We’re currently in the process of testing the game out on players, polishing up menus, refining the gameplay and adding more loot for players to collect There are still a bunch of usability issues we have to solve, but we’re now closer than ever to getting it out. Please stay tuned as we release a new test version on Android in the coming weeks!