2009 Week 8: somewhere, elsewhere, an idea happens

We can still remember...

... the first time we saw a number of firsts in the tech or entertainment world. The first time we played Portal and didn't think that Valve could blow us away with another fantastic game. It's brilliant developer commentary that helped us learn so much more about how to help players through a game. The first time we saw the Xiao Xiao animations (the original ones), and were reminded of the animation flickbooks we made when bored, and the pixel games we used to create using Spectrum Basic, AMOS + Assembler and BlitzBasic whilst still at school. The first time we were introduced to Flash as a web-building tool. And the first time we actually could see a path through from our imagination to something concrete, even if we were a little naive at the time.

And going even further back, we can still remember the first time we played Flashback (and its awesome d-paint style intro animation), the first time we saw a character that moved realistically due to rotoscoping.

The first layer of inspiration was the original Xiao Xiao Stick fighting animation. It brought the realisation that if you could build such moves into a game, and design a control system that could handle such flexibility —it should work out as quite fun to play.

Whilst we got started on learning everything needed to even attempt such an idea, other influences came into play. As well as the project awakening memories of older games, revealing their influence on the design.

To anyone who has played those games, just looking at the style, assets and the motion, it is probably quite obvious which games I mean. To anyone else, or if it isn't clear, you really should go and play the following games.

• Flashback / Another World
• Half-life / Portal