
Another new game! Golden Robot and Hambo ended up being released almost at the same time (just because we had to wait on our sponsor before releasing Golden Robot).
The idea for Hambo came to me pretty randomly while watching TV. People often ask how I get my ideas so I’ll explain what happened with this one. I’d been thinking about doing a physics type game for a while but wasn’t too sure which direction to go in. Two adverts actually inspired this one. Firstly there was an advert for a bank which showed a load of cute little piggy banks running around and then the next advert was a Ferrero Rocher ad where an arrow was fired at a pile of chocolates sending them flying. Almost instantly my subconscious offered up ‘Pig Rambo’ and I knew straight away that I was onto a winner!
RobotJAM did the art once again (and came up with the genius name of ‘Hambo’ for the game). He had a clear vision of how he wanted the game to look before starting, opting for a cute style which suits the game nicely.
We worked pretty quickly on this one, going from idea to full game in about two weeks. The box2d physics engine made all the physics side of things nice and easy and Playtomic handled the level sharing so the majority of the work was in building the level editor (and making it simple enough for anyone to use) and then designing the levels.
We both made a bunch of levels (and my brother George made a couple as well) and then we weeded out the ones that we felt weren’t as good and arranged them into some sort of order.
I’m optimistic about how this game will go down. Initial statistics certainly look very promising (it did a pretty huge 385,000 plays yesterday). It’s rare that I’ll still enjoy a game after testing it over and over but this one I’m still coming back to. It’s great seeing what other people are coming up with in the user levels so be sure to make some yourself!
Play this game…