Making Fun Games
Baby Vs Spiders is a shooting game. Red Code is a shooting game. Deathracers is a racing game, where you shoot each other. There's no shooting in Destroy All cars, but you do use your car as a weapon. Until now we've been making games for boys. It wasn't a concious deision. It just ended up that way. Until now. I've made our logo pink to introduce our new series of games designed for girls. Games without testosterone but still with plenty of spunk.
The female of the Species
Girls play a lot of games these days. You check out any portal and there's a ton of dressing up games, puzzle games, farming games and dating sims. Personally I don't think it's that black and white, or even pink and blue. 'Casual' games are not the exclusive realm of the female. I've played enough Peggle to dismiss that theory. I also know more blokes playing 'Farmville' than 'Mafia Wars'.
But there's a lot of girlie portals and a lot of portals with a girlie section. So we're looking to give them games.
The new range of games does coincide with the addition of a new member of the MFG team- Alice, who, if you really couldn't guess from the name, is a girl. It's also the result of continued pressure from my two daughters to make games for them to play. Now, they do both enjoy playing Baby Vs Spiders, but I don't really think it's the most suitable game for them. So I'm working with Alice to give them something that won't warp their young minds.
The first game is called 'Nail Studio' and it's a very nice manicure game. Having spent a long time watching my kids play with it I can confirm that painting virtual nails has never been so much fun. It is a nicely put together package, allowing players to paint colours, apply transfers and draw their own designs on each nail. Then they can print their creations and stick them on their wall with tape and ruin the wallpaper.
Dress Up
Our second game in the series is called 'Dress 2 Impress'. Taking the features from 'Nail Studio' and applying them to a person, 'Dress 2 Impress' also features the ability to create your own designs.
It also lets you choose a boy and dress him up in a dress. Why not? It's all about having fun after all and if that's what the kids want to do (and apparently they do) then we're gonna let them.
More to Come
Alice is currently working on a gorgeous Match 3 game with a nice twist. There will be more to come after that though. I haven't done a show jumping game for a while so maybe I'll switch wheels for legs in the near future!