"Show me the money!"
Jerry Maguire (1996)
So I'm working on a new game.
The story begins in 1986, when Ariolasoft published a game in Germany called "They Stole a Million" [More info on Lemon 64]. It's a game where you plan and execute heists. You have to buy plans, information about the swag, hire a crew and a fence. Then you plan the job on the blueprints and hope that you were clever enough to come out of this with enough money for the next job.
Buying information about the target and the swag.
Hiring a team and then going to the planing phase ...
After reading the reviews, it was clear that it was a game I wanted to play - badly. So I bought a copy of it on tape. And I played it. For Weeks.
But I discovered that without Excel (or extensive notes) I could not get beyond the 2nd heist. I always ended up short of cash. And Excel wasn't a thing back then.
Years later, when I started making games again (Flash!) the game's "simple" idea still fueled my imagination, but I didn't want to do a port or just remake the game with new visuals, I wanted to add my own twist to it. And make it "easier". First, though, I made other games (and then no games for quite a while).
BUT I already had a name:
Rein. Greifen. Raus.
When the idea of making a new game came up, I explored some old ideas, but none caught my attention for long enough to go beyond "early pre alpha greybox" state.
There still was this heist game!
The C64 game was far too complex for a "fun" game, and I had to reduce the complexity, while keeping the idea intact. One thing I wanted to remove was the need for an Excel sheet to crunch all the numbers, I also wanted to get rid of the planing phase - even though it was the main part of the original game.
The main gameplay loop should be:
- Pick target
- Buy infos about the target, swag, alarm
- Pick a team
- Pick a fence
- Scout the target [optional]
- Do the heist in real time, repeat if needed
The current demo level with a lot of debug info, showing movement and (stub) interactions.
For testing, I'm going to use the first target of the original game: "H. Humbug & Son Antique Coin Shop" (and maybe keep it in the game as tribute to "They Stole a Million").
See you next time ...