Wire Whizz - ‘A History’ Part 4 (Wire Whizz Concept)
The Idea
Because the iPhone contains an accelerometer (and now a gyroscope!), and I believe I had read that games and apps were doing well that made use of the phone’s hardware, I was thinking of ideas that would work well and might appeal.
Before having worked with the iPhone’s accelerometer, I wondered if it would be possible to move the phone in space and have the phone’s view appear to move in 3D space. Now, this might be more achievable with the gyroscope (I have yet to try) but this isn’t really possible with the accelerometer.
Idea Evolution
Still my idea had been to have a wire that the player had to traverse by moving the phone in the air, without touching the wire. This rapidly became tilting the phone to steer a hoop along the wire and I eventually realised that the point of view would need to be behind the hoop, so that the player could see both the hoop and the wire. There are still some problems with this approach, but they are workable for the most part.
iWire –> Wire Whizz
I had intended to call the game iWire - it seemed quite the logical title - but this has been taken by a similar game idea here. When I discovered the title I had planned was gone, and that the game idea was already out there I panicked - it was something of a sickening feeling and I dashed home to download the game. I have to say, it’s not much of a game. I like the quality of the graphics but not the design and the game itself is short, dull and uninspiring (sorry!).
The game is in 2D, the gameplay is weak, and there are very few levels and very little replay value. You can probably imagine that I breathed a sigh of relief. I should add however, that this discovery was probably a 9 months ago, and getting the game remotely ready for release has proved so time consuming (with a few personal interruptions in between) that I am resigned to that fact that I may not be the first with this concept and indeed, it may already be out there. I don’t look, I find the idea of being second or last to be demotivating.
Anyhow, with some brain-storming, I settled on Wire Whizz (which I think my lovely Wife Sarah came up with) and it has stuck ever since.
Here’s some early artwork:
I should say that this artwork is different to the current artwork in the game (as you will see later), but the game graphics are similar.