Reptile Games

Posted by Tim on February 8th, 2012

We are happy to announce that Lightwatch is (finally) done and ready to be sponsored and hit the online portals soon! You must be thinking, that doesn't look like a Reptile production! You are completely right.

Before the three of us started Reptile, Dillon and Tim worked on a start-up called Kinetic Toast Games. Our plan was to create high quality flash games and started brainstorming about the projects we wanted to do. Lightwatch was the result of one of those brainstorms and we decided to create a quick prototype. After two weeks we had a beautiful small prototype where the core of the game was clear. Shoot the stars out of the sky to supply the lighthouse with light.

The process of brainstorming up to a playable prototype went better and faster then we expected. "If we can do this we can create a full game from this prototype within a month easily!" This was the points where things went "horribly" wrong. At this time we didn't had an office where we could easily communicate. Every communication went by mail or instant messaging. We were both still students, busy with school assignments and graduating. So we worked on Lightwatch off and on. Once in a while we did small parts of the game which was really going slow. Eventually we entered some sort of demotivating loop because of the lack of progress we were missing motivation to create new content. On top of that, the fun prototype we created was losing all it's fun for some reason!

It was time to overhaul our concept and the way of working. We asked Sandra da Cruz Martins to provide the game with some smooth 2D graphics and Bart Delissen to implement a suitable soundtrack. The great content they both provided caused a big boost of motivation for us to develop it further. We started adding different features like upgrades, high scores and of course the different enemies. We also wanted the game to be break out of the single screen you see all the time. That's why we came up with the rainbow narwhal phase! A colorful unique phase where you can boost your high score. The game was really getting some body now ( this was already 8 months after the start of Lightwatch! )

Suddenly there was that 6 month graduation project including a big thesis which needed full attention. Lightwatch was almost done but we couldn't find any time to finish to last parts of the game. In my opinion finishing a game is the most difficult part in the creation of a game. There are always some nasty bugs you want to get rid off. There are always some parts you want to tweak or polish, but there must be a point where you say it is enough, it's time to wrap this thing up!

After successfully graduating we had amounts of time again to work on Lightwatch and finally finish this. Eventually we learned a lot from creating this game, we encountered loads of pitfalls but we finished our first game!

Although the game is done, you can't play it yet! We are currently looking for a sponsor that is willing to adopt our twinkling little game for their online gaming portal! The game is available for sponsors here at FlashGameLicense.com.

There are some giveaway codes to check the game already, if you want to preview the game send an email to Tim with your request or questions about Lightwatch.

For more information about the game itself you can check the game page here