Destroy All Cars is a game design I'm very proud of. I spent all weekend trying to think of an idea of a "smash 'em up" game then gave up and went to bed. The second my head hit the pillow inspiration came to me from absolutely nowhere! Instead of firing a rock at a castle or a ball at a tower, why not launch a car into loads of other cars? Then, instead of getting bigger weapons or balls or whatever, have an expanding garage of cars?
As soon as the idea of collecting cars was added, some customisation seemed obvious. Rather than just changing the colours, we've got 4 different paint jobs (or liveries) for each car. The game was quickly becoming much cooler and much more mainstream.
So I got to work. As is usually the case, I couldn't bring myself to write the document until I'd drawn a few pictures- knocking up a rough screenshot is always where I start from in a design. It gets it clearer in my head and really the old saying "a picture tells a thousand words" couldn't be more true. But once the picture was done, I did write a couple of thousand words to go with it...
Most of the document was nailing the game flow. Box 2d (an open source physics engine) and my screenshot pretty much took care of the gameplay. This was always going to be a project where the phrase "no-brainer" was used far too often, but with my good friend Squize doing the coding, it started to become even more common. I've worked with him loads of times before and he's perfect for the project. He is especially good at getting a game looking really professional and I knew I could rely on him to add plenty of love- particles, fireworks, a little bit of spit and plenty of polish.
Like most Flash games, this one didn't have a Hollywood budget. To keep costs down, it was just the two of us. I produced all the assets, although I did splash out on a musician at the end (another close friend who I've worked with on loads before- "Irresponsible Adult").
Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the best artist in the world. I used to be pretty good, and I did make a living out of it, but that was usually using less than 16 colours! But really, drawing cars and creating menu's? I wasn't going to pay someone else to do that...
The best part of early development was choosing which cars to put in the game. We obviously wanted a good range of different shapes and sizes, but I was also keen to have a classic line up to encourage the player to collect them all. The default car was always gonna be a 1969 Dodge Charger- it's every stuntmans favourite. It's the General Lee! We also wanted a good geographical mix too, so the BMW M3 seemed like a good second car. We needed 2 cars from the start to get the player used to selecting different ones.
About halfway into the project the idea of having the levels split between five different countries came up. I'd already drawn 12 cars by this point, each with four different paint jobs. Luckily only 1 of them didn't fit into this plan, so unfortunately for any Swedes playing the game, you can't drive a Volvo. The closest thing I could come up with to replace it was a big old Lexus (Japan was a car short!). Of course this did mean drawing another four stadiums, but it was one of those ideas that made everything ellse fall into place and was a big success in the final game.
Once all the cars were done, I was keen to re-enforce the fact that they were all classics. So each car has one paint job with a number on the side. The number is the year of production. See, this ain't just any BMW, this is a 1983 BMW E30 M3.All the vehicles are classics. Even the Ford Transit, honestly!
Then Spil dropped an obvious bombshell- we probably shouldn't use real car names because we didn't have permission.....So we changed them all and made them silly instead! It's still obvious to anyone who cares about cars what a Curvy Tingray and a Rodge Larger are anyway. I think it gives the game a bit of humour anyway so it's all good.
So, after a month of production the game was finally playable. I had no idea what it would be like and there had been no chance to get a feel for it until it was pretty close to being finished. This was not the best way to design a game! I like being hands on all the way through and tweaking as I go, but it didn't work like that. On paper, and in my head, it seemed like a cracking idea. But was it really? Was it fun? Was there skill involved or just luck? Did the complicated set of layered car graphics actually fit together? Had we wasted a month?
No. We hadn't. The game was spot on straight away. I think out of the 25 levels I only had to tweak a couple and re-do one because it was impossible! The next step was to add some achievements and release it....
Wow! A month later, we had a hit game! It got nearly 4 million hits on Spil's network in the first month and then popped up on front pages everywhere. Now a sequel is in early development and there's also talk of an i-phone version. All in all, a month very well spent!