TwinSky Games

The goal of this game was to create a full-fledged parody of my favorite franchise completely by myself, filled with tons of variety and surprises, and try to make a profit from it all. By the end of its four-year development I learned the importance of intuitive game mechanics, target audiences, tasteful humor, and true friendship.

For better or worse, I have a habit of seeing a silly idea through to completion once I get a decent mental visual of how it plays. The concept for Smashed came from a conversation I had with some classmates in 2000, during my senior year of high school. I fell into the trap that most amateur game designers seem to; the overall premise was overambitious and unfocused.

Like ögonbryn a couple years earlier, the game revolves around a series of jokes, while the mechanics were more of an afterthought. (Unlike ögonbryn, the jokes and overall progression were actually planned before development.) The art style is a slight evolution of the wacky, purposely imperfect scribbles I made for Macarena of Time just prior. The humor is based on the contrast between the cheery, colorful world of The Mushroom Kingdom and the bitter reality of alcohol abuse, which is fairly easy to pull off since several famous Nintendo characters already act a bit intoxicated. The game is absolutely loaded with random references and homages, and I’m particularly fond of some ironic situations. For example: in the alley stage you need to avoid potted flowers falling from the sky. One flower type is modeled after the SMB1 fire flower, while the other is similar to the smiley flower in Yoshi’s Island. While I still think some of these things are clever, in retrospect I find the humor as a whole in pretty poor taste, not as fun and playful as a parody can be.

Early on I decided that the game should have ten stages that vary wildly. This was probably because I couldn’t come up with a drunken game mechanic that might be fun throughout the duration of an entire game. The biggest difficulty was that the traits that get associated with being drunk (slow response time, blurry vision, lack of control) just happen to be traits also associated with bad games. I did what I could to make each part of the game fun, but in many cases it’s not perfectly clear how to get your character to do what you want, and even when you start to figure it out the game is too hard. As the designer and programmer it’s easy to overlook these things. While watching others play I noticed I had to give many hints to help them figure out how to pass a section, and I ignored this big warning sign much more than I should have (the help screens I later added didn’t entirely resolve this problem). A good game is made even better with a fitting theme, but this game certainly suffers from its theme. It receives the majority of its value by the assumption that the player wants to see Martinio and company’s drunken misadventures, not from the way it actually plays.

It didn’t take long before I realized that I could use at least a little help from friends to make the game better. I was originally supposed to have assistance from a high school buddy with animation and voices, but he became uninterested the moment that it began to resemble “work.” Wacky voices were an important part of the game, and I didn’t have the ability to perform everything myself, so through the course of the game I acquired the help of several friends from online (Brandon Horton did Martinio, Wartinio) and college (Shan Field did Flamingo, Mike Coughlin and B Clifton did Loogie).

Music was similar; I’m no Uematsu, so after making a few themes I was musically dry. Musical high school pal Scott Blanchard helped me with some great themes (the Dr. Mario and Bubble Bobble parodies), and a little later Dr. “Kevin Green” Fruitcake improved some of my previous songs and made a bunch of originals. I’m incredibly pleased with the soundtrack for this game, even if MIDIs are out of style these days.

While Smashed took four years to make overall, this was by no means four years of consistent development. I’d take long breaks, work on other games, then have a creative spurt where I’d add tons of content in a week. That big boost of motivation when starting a project fades pretty rapidly, and I noticed that it became necessary to get feedback and encouragement from friends, otherwise I’d start to shift my focus on other things.

By the time Smashed was nearly finished, I had graduated from high school, my first college, moved out of state, and was close to finishing my second college. After learning a thing or two about game design, its flaws started to become more apparent to me. I didn’t want to just throw away all my work and plans, so decided to take the road of quantity over quality, and made the challenge mode and three 2-player vs games. Conveniently, I was able to leverage this game for some of my classes, like the creation of a mock Smashed Bros design doc, and the addition of somewhat complex (and humorous) AI to Martinio Frisbee.

At long last the game was finished, and even more ambitious than I originally set out for. Friend and concept artist Liam Newton created some great box art that pokes fun at the original Smash Bros N64 box. This was right before the recent trend of DLC that proves most people don’t really care about having a physical copy of the disc, so it seemed important to have an actual jewel case & CD available. Cafepress made this easy for me to set up, but the game was promptly pulled due to the “similarity to other popular characters.” Apparently they aren’t willing to even consider dealing with the legal gray areas of “parody,” as it wasn’t even open for dispute. At least I got a few professional copies for myself and friends before it was yanked. So I reworked online distribution on my site via paypal with a lower price. This wasn’t a big deal since the game was under 30 MB, anyway.

It sounds obvious in retrospect, but I wouldn’t realize until later just how unappealing a console-style parody game on PC with a juvenile art style was, and word of “this hilarious game” didn’t spread like I was counting on. I do thank the fans that purchased the game, and it did sell better than you may think, all things considering. I decided to offer the game for free after about a year.

Despite the fact that Smashed didn’t make me millions of dollars, and it’s far from the best game ever, I’m glad I took the time to see it through to the end. It’s doubtful that I’ll ever work on another project that requires so much time and devotion. Without a doubt I learned more about game development during Smashed than my others so far.