We're Like a Hot Dog In Search of a Bun

After looking at this image and snickering for a moment, I quickly realized that we are the hot dog. We have a meaty game development substance to us, and are in search of a bun to present our meat in a way that is easy to grab and consume. Not only that, but we're not sure exactly what kind of hot dog we are and therefore what kind of bun should hold us. We just stand there, intrigued by the opportunity we see before us.

So the search continues to find our proverbial bun. With regards to that, a lot has happened in the past couple weeks.

After Dinowaurs was turned down, we sent it over to Jim Greer and the folks at Kongregate. They seemed pretty interested in the idea, but were thinking more about the game being a multiplayer experience. Finding that out was exciting, because our original idea was for the game to be a multiplayer game. So now we're working on editing the pitch to be multiplayer. Hopefully they'll enjoy what we've come up with.

Then, all three of our pitches sent to Adult Swim were shot down. However, there was a glimmer of hope. They seemed to really like one of our ideas in particular - Hitchhikémon. As the name suggests, the game is based on the Pokémon franchise. In Hitchhikémon, you cruise the highway, picking up Hitchhikémon who seem like promising additions to the team and battling other Hitchhikémon masters. You must order your Hitchhikémon to fight from the roof of your speeding truck while avoiding oncoming traffic, road debris, and civilian drivers. Utilize strategic thinking to decide what weapons they'll use in a given fight to develop their skills into a true killer.

So basically, the game is like Pokémon, but instead of walking around, you drive in your truck. Not only that, but you fight with your hitchhikers while you're still driving - and you have to avoid obstacles. It's every hitching stuntman's dream game.

The problem with this game is that the name is a pretty big part of what makes it funny, and considering the ridiculous size of the Pokémon franchise, attempting an obvious parody would be pretty risky for Adult Swim. The good news is that we're quickly closing in on the kinds of things Adult Swim is looking for.

Mike continues to work on Melba Toast. What is Melba Toast? I'll leave the details to Mike, but for now I can say that it's our highly-optimized Flash 9 engine. And it'll rock your socks off. We've been debating on whipping up a really small game with it. Right now we're thinking of trying to clone Tanks from Wii Play. Man, that's such a great game. It has this N-type quality to it, where the mechanics are extremely simple, yet extremely well-tuned. Really, the game would end up a poor man's Tanks because of how hard that quality is to pull off. Stayed tuned to see what happens with that project.