Upon hearing that we’d “sold out”, our webserver hit the sauce a little hard last night and then, in a post-party stupor, took the wrong bus to work this morning. We finally found it hitting on a 40 year old cocktail waitress at the 13 Coins down in Seatac and dragged it back to the server room. We all presume this won’t happen again.

Yes, it’s true! As of November 12th, Thinglefin is part of Big Fish Games!

For the record, this is a fantastic development not only for us, but for our upcoming game. The team is continuing to work, essentially uninterupted, on the game we set out to make. In many ways, this is the best of both worlds. We get to do what we love, but with the resources, experience, and wisdom of the best casual game company in the business.

But don’t expect too many changes around here. We’re still walking softly. We’re just carrying a much bigger stick.

Choosing the player’s perspective in a game is a crucial decision. Not only does it affect how players perceive the gameplay environment, it also creates expectations on how the game should be played. For instance, if you begin the game looking at the back of a car, it’s reasonable to expect that you will be driving the car.

In the game we’re developing, we’re working with a number of assumptions:

1. 1. The player can select and control more than one character in a serial format (one at a time).
2. 2. The environment is deformable and can be shaped by the player.
3. 3. The default control scheme is “click-to-move.”

For these reasons, we had decided that an isometric perspective would best suit our needs. Games with an isometric perspective provide an omnipotent feel (going all the way back to Populous) that we thought would convey the player’s role in our game.

That was the theory anyway.

(more…)