Toxers

Toxers: Escape from Metropolis Island is the first rpg style game I’ve done, again in conjunction with Rob Donkin (panda games, Dreamerz and Brain Wave). The original concept was by my friend Cathy McBurney, the design doc she came up with was about 5 sides and was originally a game about a team of marines called “the toxers” who were armed with a set of toxic chemicals for killing bugs that had overrun the city.

We ended up changing the design somewhat from that as the combat system Cathy had come up with was a little bit complex to program and having looked at other turn based fighting games. The design of the rest of the game fairly closely followed Cathy’s doc in terms of searching a number of areas to find money, tools and characters.

It took a while to make from start to finish although it wasn’t all done in one go. We were lucky enough to sell the primary license of the game to mochimedia who were a great help on the final polish of the game, we also have included their coins system so players who really like the game can buy extra goods, such as weapons, tools or money. From the first week of people playing the game the play stats have been great, the average player is engaged for over 40 minutes, with 20% of players playing for more than an hour at a time. Which is at least double what successful game such as steambirds, or soccerballs have done.

It’s been 2 weeks since the game went live now and looking at the game fresh again its one of the ones I am most proud of on the art side, the city screen was a bit of a labour of love and I really enjoyed adding loads of the details, and the same went for all the city area backgrounds. We are presently working on a kind of different themed sequel, but this time much more rpg oriented.