Follow the development of Stable, a video game with a hand, blocks, boxes, chewing, and stuff.

Team of two

We're a team of two. My good friend from work, and me. He's a wizard who programs and challenge my ideas. I draw visuals, animate, and come up with all kinds of ideas. It's great!

Idea

Stable is a video game where you move a hand, Grep, to save blocks from their imminent death of Plop's bottomless depths (mouth), by sorting them into boxes. Until the end of time. Or when you're done with your break, and go back to what you do.

Sketch

I put the pencil to paper and drew quick sketches that focus on what you, the player, do in Stable, and how that looks in my head.

Incredibly rough ideas

When you reach a super secret special score, show a message on how to obtain a fancy limited edition physical reward.

Tube gets constipated and might explode when stuff get stuck in the tube opening. You need to pull the thing out of the tube end. Max amount on how much the tube can hold before exploding.

Achievements. Yep.

End-of-tube-tome. A thing that show things you've collected from the tube end.

Grep. Player character. Four fingered hand with two eyes and a mouth.

Plop. Non-player character. A worm like creature with two eyes and a large mouth. Main enemy of Grep. Plop eats blocks that Grep don't catch. Maybe Plop is related to tube?

Inspiration

Stable's visuals are inspired by the the Mickey Mouse hand that appear when you move over stuff that you can interact with on a computer, like grab, click, drag. Also, the clay chomping creature in the animation below. Do you know what it's from?

Stable's game play is inspired by Tetris, Bomberman, and the annoying claw machine that never awarded you with that toy at the bottom, that you totally needed as a kid.

Game feel

Game feel is all about the good stuff in a video game, how everything sound, look, move, collides, and flows. Game feel is what I think is the most fun about playing any kind of game, whether the game is physical on a board or cards, or digitally on a screen. In Stable, we of course want to mix all of this, so that playing feels fun and good.

Prototype

We have physics! When you drop a block into a box, they collide.

To do

There's a lot that goes into making a video game. Below I've written very simplified lists of what's done, doing, and to be done before Stable is done.

Earlier

• Visual concept.

Now

• Code.

• Visuals.

• Sounds.

• Play test.

• Pet bugs. Maybe step on a few.

• Feel.

Later

• Logo.

• Key art.

• Trailer.

• Play test.

• Release.

• Update.

• Repeat fun.