Grumpy Gamer

Here are some screen shots from Scurvy Scallywags in The Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty: A Musical Match-3 Pirate RPG or SSITVTDTUSS:AMMTPRPG for short. It will be coming out for the iPhone and iPad in a couple of months. I might have found a way to get xcode to build objective-c for Android, if so, we’ll port it there.

I’ve always loved match-3 games, there is something zen-like about playing them. Seems like whenever I’m testing out a new engine or code base, I always create a quick match-3 game.

A few years back, Clayton and I made a match-3 game called Realms of Gold that had a interesting way the board collapsed.

In traditional match-3 games like Bejeweled, when you match three shapes they disappear and the gap is filled by pieces falling in from the top. In Realms of Gold, the piece could come in from the sides or even the bottom depending on the type of match you did.

It was fun, but it was also a little confusing. The game was a RPG, but we were told by the publisher that no one wanted to play a match-3 RPG, so that part of the game was watered down. Of course, a year later Puzzle Quests comes out and sells a billion copies.

A little over a year ago I pulled a match-3 prototype out of the closest and started working on it. There was something about the way the board collapsed in Realms of Gold that I really liked. Clayton and I screwed around with it for a bit, then he hit upon a way to make the collapsing work a lot better. Rather than the type of match you made dictating the direction the board collapsed, have the board collapse in the direction you swiped. I made this change and it felt fantastic and very intuitive.

An odd side effect of doing this was you could move pieces around the board. So unlike Puzzle Quest - and just about every other match-3 RPG that sprang up after it - in Scurvy Scallywags you actually move your hero/pirate around the board and position her/him next to enemies to do battle. It creates this new layer to the matching that is a lot of fun.

We have close to one hundred different hats, shirts, heads, swords, etc you find and use to dress up your pirate. There are also ten different ships to build, plus a sea shanty you collect that is sung by real life pirate singers (they work for grog, quite inexpensive).

With any luck, it will be out in the next month or so.

You can also follow @ScurvyGit on twitter to see my live git commit messages.

Here are some behind the scenes photos taken during The Cave’s early development.

Each of our design weeks would focus on one area of the game. The first day was just to talk about overarching ideas, the character’s backstory, the purpose of the area and what the main goal of the player/character was. During that first day we’d just throw out wild ideas and see what stuck.

The next day we’d take all those crazy ideas and try to arrive on the core puzzles. We’d also start to sketch out what the area looked like and where the puzzles might go.

On the third day we’d look at what we had and make refinements. It was common to have most everything figure out by the end of the second day, with just one or two issues remaining. On day three we’d resolve those and have a day four if needed. We tried to design for only three days a week to let our minds rest (as well as get everything else done that needed doing).

This is Dave Gardner mapping out The Scientist area during one of our design meetings.

This is a shot of the whiteboard for The Miner’s area during day two.

Once the area had been designed, a quick grey-box was made using Maya. At this point we could run around using the game’s engine and see how it felt. This is a picture taken during one of our team walk-throughs of The Scientist’s area.

The camera is pulled all the way out so we can see the whole thing. You’ll notice the red text that calling out objects and the locations of puzzles. At this point, none of the logic for the puzzles is working, we’re just running around.

This is a picture of the beginning of The Island with The Hillbilly.

As promised, here are some behind the scene images from designing The Cave. J.P. LeBreton, Dave Gardner and I spent several months in a back room designing all the area and puzzles of the game. I have to say, it was the most fun I’ve had designing in a long time. J.P and Dave where amazing to work with.

This is an early layout for the Intro section. It’s much bigger than we ended up with and you will notice we had areas where players would be required to use each character’s special ability. This was also back when The CIA agent and The Mobster were still in the game. This didn’t make it past the greybox stage. After running around, it was clear it was way too big. We also felt requiring the training of the special abilities was not really needed.

This was an entire section that we cut. The original game was about twice the size of what we ended up with and this was one of the sections that didn’t make the cut. It never made it out of the paper stage.

Now that The Cave is done and unleashed on an unsuspecting world (ok, we did do a bunch of PR, so it wasn’t exactly unsuspecting), it’s time for me to move on from Double Fine and plot my next move.

So many games left to be designed.

I want to thank all the amazing people at Double Fine for all their hard work on The Cave. It was a true pleasure to work with every one of them over the past two years. So much fun. I will miss them all. And of course to Tim for creating the opportunity to come there and make The Cave.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to post some behind the scenes pictures we took during the game’s development and stuff like this…

That’s a complete map of The Cave exported from Maya by designer J.P. LeBreton. Bonus points if you can figure out what the pink dots are.

For the short term, Clayton Kauzlaric and I have been toiling away on another iOS side project that I’m going to focus on over the next few months. It’s called Scurvy Scallywags in The Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty: A Musical Match-3 Pirate RPG. I’ll post some screen shots in the next few days.

I also have that PAX Australia keynote to write. How did I ever let them talk me into doing that. So much fun. So much pain. Maybe I’ll just do a 45 minute Q and A session.

I try and keep this site kid safe… but…

I can’t believe The Cave is out and people are actually playing it. You thought I was joking and it was all an elaborate prank that involved making all these fake trailers and a big fake European press tour, but you were wrong.

• Steam (Mac and PC right now, with Linux coming next week)
• PlayStation Network for PS3
• Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360
• Nintendo eShop for Wii U
• Commodore 64

…or were you.

The Cave will be out on the 22nd on PSN and Wii U and the 23rd for XBLA and PC on Steam. It’s also coming out on the Mac and Linux! They should just change the name of the month to Cavuary.

It’s always hard to write your own about pages. I should have my mom do it, she always has nice things to say about me.

I started making games because I loved to program and I loved to tell stories and the two seemed to intersected nicely.

I wrote a program for the Commodore 64 (greatest computer ever made) called GraphicsBASIC that extended the rather boring built-in Basic that includes commands to gain access to the graphics and sound.

In 1985 I got a job working at Lucasfilm Games (now called LucasArts) porting Koronis Rift and Ballblazer from the Atari 400/800 to the Commodore 64.

In 1986 Gary Winnick and I created and designed Maniac Mansion.

During its production, I developed the SCUMM System (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion).

I co-designed the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade adventure game with Noah Falstein and David Fox.

I am also the creator and designer of The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. A game about a pirate.

I am the co-founder of Humongous Entertainment where we made some amazing adventure games for kids like Putt-Putt, Freddi Fish and Pajama Sam.

I was the producer of Total Annihilation.

I co-created DeathSpank with Clayton Kauzlaric and was the designer of the first two DeathSpank games.

I worked at Double Fine for a bit making a game I’ve had rolling around in my head for close to 25 years called The Cave. Double Fine was sold to Microsoft, who now owns The Cave, and once again I got nothing and someone else owns my IP. FU TS.

I released Scurvy Scallywags in The Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty: A Musical Match-3 Pirate RPG (or SSITVTDTUSS:AMMTPRPG for short) for iOS and Android.

I finished a new point & click adventure game called Thimbleweed Park and the completely free Delores.

I then went and made Return to Monkey Island in total secret.

Now I’m working on an action game Rogue-like-lite called Death By Scrolling released for PC in Q4 2025. Consoles coming Q1 2026.

If you missed the carnival this summer, all is not lost…

I knew The Twins were going to be trouble. I should have cut them.