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[mekapuppers]

First Post - A Look Back at the Beginning

Hello frendos! Cassie here, bringing you our very first Dev Blog post. We wanted to tell our story thus far and give you a look into what development has been like on MEKA Puppers. It certainly has been an exciting trip and there’s a fair bit to cover, so strap in! Or take a comfy seat with some tea or hot cocoa and relax. Whatever you’re feeling like.

Beginning of August 2018, we started to really dig our feet in with development. This is when I started on the team! At this point, JP had already put together a small proof-of-concept prototype to build on. It consisted of a singular test level, minimal UI, a rough sketch dog character 3D model (which would later become our good boi, Scout), and the beginnings of a Mek editor. Looking back, the game didn’t even have a win or lose condition yet, which makes me chuckle a little. But the foundation was ready, and we were excited to build up from there.

A little bit of a side note; this game was originally going to be a fairly different beast. We were planning on launching on mobile plaforms, and releasing it as a freemium game with gacha mechanics. We realized pretty early into development that due to some complications, we weren’t going to be able to do that the way we had planned. So, we switched over to making MEKA Puppers to be launched on PC and macOS (and hopefully consoles, fingers crossed). This meant changing gears in a few places.

For starters, the game would have to be MUCH more narrative and progress-driven. Since Mek parts would no longer be collected via gacha mechanics, we’d have to switch from items being a random-drop to having a way to purchase them with collected in-game currency or through progression (spoilers, we ended up doing both). We also had to make considerations for changing the screen orientation from portrait to landscape, and for controls switching over to mouse from touch. Not to mention, we had to determine how much we’re selling the game for (and trust me, thinking about that is fairly nerve wracking). These were challenging hurdles to jump, but I like to think we handled them well!

Heading into winter, we were looking to prepare for conventions. We wanted to start building hype as well as gather as much player feedback as possible. We were overjoyed to hear that one of our favourite cons, MAGFest, had accepted our application to their indie games showcase, and we got to work straight away on a demo version of the game. The demo included 5 levels, which were designed to introduce the main plot of the narrative, an improved mek editor, and a selection of parts and pilots to customize with.

We also had to think about marketing, which meant designing a banner for our table, as well as materials to give away to people. We ended up putting together some pretty fun items; buttons featuring the faces of our beloved pilots (and Katsu), 3D-printed magnets of our corgi pilot, Toast, and wearable papercrafts of Katsu’s own mask. We had a great time showing off the game, generating interest, and gathering feedback from players. We learned a lot about what we could do to improve the game.

It’s been a good chunk of time since then, and we have made quite a few additions and improvements. The garage and Mek editor received some SUBSTANTIAL upgrades in terms of functionality, polish and readability. In general, the UI and quality of life have seen improvements, based off feedback from the demo at MAGFest.

We’re particularly excited about the addition of the foundations for our level up (lvl PUP!), abilities and skill tree systems, the Mek parts shop (run by a Very Good Boy who we have yet to name), and most importantly, a feature we’ve been wanting to add for a long while, the Pupper Park, where you can see and (GASP!) pet all of the doggo pilots you’ve befriended! Because, come on. If your game has dogs in it, you should be able to pet them. Very important.

We also wanted to sprinkle in a few small details that add to the charm of the game (enemies say things like “ouch!” when they take damage now. Almost makes me feel bad for them). We’re still in alpha, but the game really looks to be shaping up into something pretty solid. Honestly, looking back while writing this post, I realize how much we’ve managed to accomplish, and it feels pretty good.

We have lots left to do! The environment art has been given some TLC, and is continuing to be improved on as we speak thanks to our new hire (Keep up the good work, Danni!). We’re also going to gradually add new Mek parts and pilots, and roll out new attack types and effects for weapons. Pilots’ abilities and skill trees are going to be fully fleshed out so that your pilot choice makes a difference to the Meks you deploy. We've started to improve on Mek part models, and are going to do a boatload more visual improvements to things like pilot models and animations. Narrative is going to be hugely expanded on as well (can’t wait to tell you about the surprise twist involving… actually, maybe I shouldn’t spoil it).

Eventually, this will all add up to some closed alpha (and beta) testing! One of the things we decided we wanted to do pretty early on is to build a community around the alpha and beta testing of the game, not only for the sake of finding and stomping out bugs, but also to gather feedback from our players. We want to know what kinds of things people want to see in MEKA Puppers when it releases. We’ve already got a discord server (It’s right over HERE btw) ready to go, and we’re looking forward to interacting with our community there over the course of the game’s development!

Of course, we’re going to continue to post WIP and behind-the-scenes content regularly on our social media, our discord, and right here on this dev blog page (although going forward the updates won’t be NEARLY as wordy… probably a good thing, huh?), so stay tuned for those! And, we’ll be looking to do more convention appearances, so we’ll be announcing those as well. If you happen to be attending any cons we’ll be at, feel free to swing by, say ‘henlo’ and try out the demo! We’re always happy to chat.

Whew. That was a real doozy of a post. Thanks for sticking around ‘til the end! I can’t wait to show you what we have in store for you as we continue on this game dev journey. Onward we go! And remember to be good to each other.

-Cassie Game Designer @ Galacanine Entertainment Software Inc.