Fire changed to water?

Mark, my tutor at uni, suggested I try work with vectors for a clean Iphone friendly character look. I used the fire dragon from the previous post but focused more on the toad aspect. I don't like this final outcome at all, but since I have been developing my drawing skills throughout this project I feel i can achieve what I want with hand drawn drawings, as opposed to vectors.

Fire Based Concept.

Baby dragon I have started working on noted for his toad like qualities. Working concept name is not in the works at the moment.

Sketches cont...

Initial Concept Art

Sketches

Initial Concept Art

Likes & Dislikes

Ipod features

Features I feel do not work very well or wouldn't work with my idea include,

- Joysticks or gamepad controls. From the games I did play with these control layouts, all of them were clumsy and I ended up quitting pretty quickly into the game because of the frustration these caused me. Although I did find some games better than others, this control style has no appeal in the game I’d want to develop which is more text based and menu controlled.

-The Gyro & accelerometer functions that apple claim to have said are vastly improved didn’t impress me very much, and personally I didn’t think much of them. I also felt from the games I researched the more popular ones are simple games and didn’t use these features amongst the vast majority, and because of the game I’m developing, these big iPod features simply have no appeal to my genre.

Genres & Target audience

Popular apps on the app store generally are puzzle based, including defence type games like Plants VS. Zombies, and skill based games like Angry Bird backing this statement up. I took this into consideration but, after researching Pocket summoner, there wasn’t a lot of competition and what I did see, all the games have similar functionality and a lot of repetitiveness. I looked to see if there was a tamagotchi game, there was but it was totally different from the tamagotchi’s of old and has become a rhythm based game, lost in the backlogs of the app store. I then decided I wanted to use elements from Pokémon & pocket summoner, and combine them with elements from

The old tamagotchi’s, making a game younger IPhone/Touch users will love but also appeal to the  Older users who have seen and loved these type Of games/toys. From market research I found 69% of iPod touch users are 13 to 24, and 74% of IPhone users are older than 25. Remaking types of old products older users may have liked growing up is a viable choice i.e. The remade TV animation and games of brands like

Thunder cats and Teenage mutant ninja turtles,

appealing to both kids and adult who grew up

with them.

Pocket Summoner

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pocket-summoner/id389297143?mt=8#

Pocket Summoner, Riida.com

FEATURES:
- iPhone4 retina display with high resolution graphics
- Capture and train various type of spirits. Each spirit is equipped with unique skills.
- Quests and boss fight! Defect and capture the powerful bosses.
- Freedom on training. Train your guards wisely and make them as powerful as they can!
- Player versus player group fight!
- Advance to become more powerful summoner by leveling and gaining reputations! 

Pocket summoner is a text based monster collection/fighting game. Players rank up based on earning experience from questing and battling other players via the in game online database that stores each players selected team, meaning you can fight anyone playing the game, regardless of them being online or not. There is actually no direct way of talking to other players, only this system. As you rank up you can level your monsters to tackle harder quests and bosses, but monsters can never be a higher level than your current level. The only downside to this app is that It requires constant internet Connectivity, so playing on the go can become hard for Ipod users.

Angry Birds

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds/id343200656?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D2

Angry Birds, Clickgamer.com

The number one top selling paid app on the app store. Angry birds places you playing as a group of birds fighting for survival against the green pigs who have stolen all their eggs. You have to shoot the birds at various different structures while eliminating the pigs set amongst them, the fewer birds it takes you to destroy the pigs the better the score you receive. The game integrates different varieties of birds that have different abilities i.e. the blue birds can split into 3 smaller birds after they have been catapulted, making for more challenging game play.