Today's GameCareerGuide feature is a
postmortem of student game
percussONE, a music-driven competitive multiplayer puzzle game developed for the Dream Build Play competition using Microsoft's XNA tools.
While creators Justin C. Moore and Joshua Hernandez, Flashpoint Academy students, describe the game as "A cross between arcade classic
Klax and puzzle favorite
Tetris Attack with a dash of multi-player madness inspired by
Super Smash Bros. Brawl" the game also features concepts that are a little left-of-center for the genre, including the fact that "when the going gets tough, players are compelled to cooperate to stay alive."
Based on a prototype Moore had worked up in his own time, the game took shape through iteration:
"By the Dream Build Play deadline percussONE had undergone more than 10 informal production loops with several play tests in between. By IGF the game had undergone another 4 iterative loops with a final sprint the week before publishing to Xbox Live Community Games that included a full user tutorial and lowered the barrier to entry to the game."
However, despite that, Moore and Hernandez admit the game "needed more playtesting":
"Given our small team size, playtesting would have taken away from development time. Even though we tested in between builds and had several public play tests the team felt that they could have play tested more to help improve the player experience and broaden the appeal of the game even further."
To find out more about the process that lead to
percussONE, read
the full postmortem, published today on Gamasutra sister site GameCareerGuide.
