Prototyping

The next day, on April 20^th, our engineer posted an update of the initial prototype. Working on this was a much-welcomed distraction from the production of Awesome for him. Variety is the spice of life indeed, as it showed by the progress he made on the prototype. It was actually fun to play already. I found myself trying to beat my best score and panicking as the “bubbles” (which were still snowflake assets from Awesome) sped up.

The great thing about rapid prototyping like this is that you quickly figure out things you couldn’t by simply writing down game descriptions on paper. For one, if you have long nails, as do many well-groomed women and some poorly groomed men, it was difficult to execute the pinching mechanic. Obviously we would have to brainstorm a solution, or as I jokingly said, “Let’s just make a single in-app purchase for $0.99 that switches the pinching to tapping.” Hmmm…

At this stage, the prototype kept track of the most bubbles you have popped and how long you lasted in the game. When you miss 3 bubbles, the game ends.

I quickly swapped the snowflake and background assets so it doesn’t look so much like Awesome, before I showed it to a couple of friends. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive! All the obsessive casual game groupies of the female persuasion, as well as the finest Peruvian drugs our neighbors from the south could provide, would be our reward; if only we could put this game out there in the short time frame we proposed.

The next step was clear. We would meet in person to make the decisions of what exactly the final product would be, and how we would divide the women and drugs. The strategy was gradually shifting. Instead of shipping Awesome first and then devoting a week to this simple game, we could develop both at the same time by putting in a few hours here and there. Potentially, we could release the One Week Game first, and thus generate a user base we can tap into when we launch Awesome Snowcube.