It took them two years to create, but it’s finally here. The first ever paper craft game about a fish with an overbite: Derrick the Deathfin. How did Different Tuna Studio come to this? You can check out a sort of Making Of… after the click. But first a lesson in game design by Gordon Midwood. After making a few Flash games in the late 1980s Midwood turned his hand to the iPhone, where he made the non-multiple award winning rhythm game lilt line. This allowed him to secure funding for his present adventure, the aforementioned papercraft PSN extravaganza Derrick the Deathfin. Take it away Gordon.
“So Game Design is like Lego. I can smell what you’re thinking already.”
You probably assume game design is like Lego because:
- Everybody likes Lego
- Lego sort of looks like it would work in a platform game
- You have to put the right pieces together to make something greater than the sum of its parts
- Everyone can have a go
- It requires effort to make something beautiful
- Most often people make generic things
- If you are building something tricky it’s very tempting to piss off half way through and do something else
You are probably right about all of the above. But we believe there is another more important reason
why designing a game is like building something out of Lego, namely:
You have to weigh up the desire to chuck all the blocks you have on the top against the need to make
something balanced and enjoyable.
The Making Of Derrick from Different Tuna on Vimeo.
