This week, our team has banded together and decided to name ourselves PewPewPew. The early animators who developed action films for children felt that using guns and gunfire in children shows was needless violence, so they converted guns to lasers which were bright and colorful to minimize on screen violence in violent type films. The classic sound that these lasers make is “Pew Pew Pew”, and since our team was tasked to create an action shooter game for children of young age, we decided to adopt PewPewPew as our team name, serving as a constant reminder that the games we are making are strictly non-violent.
After long hours of brainstorming, we have come up with a large set of 17 ideas for game titles which we felt belonged in the action channel on Electronic Art’s connected TV platform. Of which we have narrowed down 4 ideas which we would love to develop further. After pitching these ideas to our client, we are finally left with 2 ideas; Ninja Academy and Penguin Mayhem.
Ninja Academy is a first person shooter on rails. Players play as a red panda ninja student performing a final test before graduating. By performing gestures on mobile device controller, players are able to shoot projectiles such as shurikens, arrows and even blow darts at cutout ninja targets. They may also flip the mobile device towards themselves to slash enemy projectiles flying towards them. By hitting the most number of targets, a student ninja will then gain a rank to reflect how well they did on this play session.
Penguin mayhem on the other hand is a multi-directional shooter. Penguins lying on their bellies are being attacked by a variety of creatures such as snowmen and polar bears. Players will use a swiping gesture to command their penguins to throw snowballs at their aggressors. When a snowball is thrown, the penguin then slides backwards in the opposite direction. Survival for the longest amounts of time and killing the most enemies will contribute to a player’s high score.
Both these ideas provide a set of tough design challenges. Our team’s next task will be to come up with detailed designs of each idea and decide on which idea we will continue to pursue. Check in next week to find out more!
