Carnage under the looking glass.

It's about time that the producer steps in to write a couple of words on our development blog.
If you, dear reader, have been following this blog for a while there will be some instances of rehashed information, but there will be some new stuff in there as well.

Right, so the name of our game is Carnage that we are developing for the PC using the unreal development kit.

Carnage has been mistaken for a casual game by many people but we'd like to think that we have some sort of middle round in between casual and hardcore. We can see how it could easily appeal to players in both categories.

The game is a digitalised version of a board game our group put together last year as a part of a assignment.
It is a turn based racing game that still maintains the fast pace and excitement of a regular racing game, but takes actual driving skills out of the equation and forces the player to win the race through strategy, tricks and weaponry.
Due to the low manpower of our group however, we have decided to make a playable demo out of it rather than a complete game.


Here is our high concept: In the near future the most popular sport around is the one in which ordinary people take their ordinary cars into to an extraordinary violent arena and participate in a race so deadly that they call it Carnage.

Our group is considerably smaller than most other groups and our project is going to be difficult. We are currently working 10 hours every weekday to ensure that we will be able to finish our demo, even if something goes wrong halfway.
That is part the ability we want to develop working on this project; getting used to working under extreme time pressure.

The reward we expect to gain from this project is self-discipline, experience in both coding and making 3D-content for UDK and learn how to more productive team members than we were previously.

The biggest challenge we face are mainly the previously mentioned time constraints and the fact that we may end up with a very small budget (at this point we do not know what our budget is going to be, but I'm preparing for the worst).
Also we must try to avoid miscommunication as it is can lead to a drain on our resources.

Our strategy going into this was for everyone to take responsibility for their own work, but to keep encouraging and aiding their teammates should the need arise.



Back to the game!
Our target audience for the demo and the finished product are a bit different from each other. The demo is there to showcase our skills for the professionals that will attend the conference, whilst the TA for the finished product is young adults between 18-25 years old who enjoy action, strategy, car games as well as playing games together with their friends.

Although Carnage would work great as a Facebook game that isn't going to happen soon as Facebook doesn't support UDK at the moment. We would probably do best to try and publish it on xbox live and/or steam.


But enough about business, you're here because you're interested in the game itself.

A race in Carnage is played between 4 players. Once the match starts a timer begins a swift countdown during which the players make their inputs on their controllers and once the count reaches 0 the cars move in response. Depending on how the cars moves compared to each other a lot of things happen. There are mechanics for drifting, ramming, crashing into walls, running over traps and of course there are weapons galore!

It is this kind of gameplay that makes Carnage stand apart from other violent car games: you do not have to be good at driving to win! In fact if you would try to outrun the other players you could very easily be shot to scrap metal rather than get an early lead. Tactics, guile and dirty tricks is the way to victory in Carnage.

Finally I would like to remind everyone that there is a market for this kind of violent games. There are the classic titles like Carmageddon, Interstate 76 and just last week the old classic Death rally was rereleased for Apple iOS devices.

This producer is feeling slightly optimistic over Carnage's future.


That's all for today folks! Be sure to check by soon for even more Carnage!