Keep your nuts, gentlemen.

HITNUT: I need this nut! » Devlog

3 years ago by games2humans

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New is forgotten old, only better! When will the squirrel come for your nut? Hit with nostalgia for mobile games.

Warning (offtop). We have been developing the game for 9 months. We spent more than $ 10,000 (when the amount already exceeded above, we stopped counting money)

Remember the time when from mobile games there was only an immortal snake and a ball on the top gadgets from Nokia? At that time, at the beginning of the 2000s, disks with collections of flash clips and games that carefully collected on hard disks and were inherited went around hand-in-hand. And among these hundreds of megabytes came across real masterpieces of animation and gameplay. For example, the Yetisports series. Have you brought an old school? That's just the same. And today, on the operating table, a clone (in a good way) of this legendary line of toys.

Some people are irrevocably in love with Sonic X and a Sapper. Moreover, it is not even known what people liked more (we won’t take into account screams about “checkers”). There are people whom you don’t feed bread, let’s listen to the retro-wave and watch Knight Rider, but there are simple fans of metro calls from the beginning of the 2000s, who often get to the point of applying their mania and creating something lamp-like. How did this happen with the game HITNUT: I need this nut!

Where do walnut dreams come from

The golden age of small games with a straightforward storyline and cute graphics came at the height of flash animation, the year so in 2001-2002. Any self-respecting animator then did not hesitate to draw something authorial, unlike others. So there were black-eyed masterpieces from Joe Cartoon and depressing, but bewitching cartoons from Kol Belov (they, by the way, opened the band Theodor Bastard). The immortal Happy Tree Friends appeared at this particular time and spoiled the psyche of a whole generation of Millenials (or vice versa, tempered it so that now they are not afraid of any vicissitudes of fate).

At that time, various arcades began to be born in large numbers, in which there was a minimal plot, and the emphasis was on time-killing (that is, killing time), pleasant animation and memorable main characters. Remember the game about a brown ram and a flock of sheep? Or maybe games like Hateful Chris or Alien Hominid? A maximum of violence, a minimum of meaning, but they dragged on so much that Diablo and Fallout faded into the background. And along with them, with these small games with a simple storyline, the Yetisports series ran, the main occupation of which was throwing penguins with a snow-white big-footed creature. What else could you do there? Nothing! But this did not prevent the game from finding its fans in every country, because the gameplay was so highly addictive that it could be equated with prohibited substances. At children's parties, teens competed who would throw the penguin next. After lessons, sorting through his flash collection, almost every child did the same, then switching to Chupa-caps sets (tears of nostalgia are provided for you).

After a couple of years, everything ended abruptly. Flash games gave way to mobile entertainment and social networks, and a collection of cartoons and arcades was covered with kilobytes of dust.

Almost 20 years have passed and the world has irrevocably changed: neither you need to strip stripes, nor download pictures of obscene content, because the video could only dream of. However, people are tired of too complex games, too naturalistic graphics, too much use of donate in gameplay. And, of course, in the wake of the memories of that time, the idea arose - what if we do the same, but in a slightly different way? So a lot of modern rethinking of the “classics of the zero” was born, including HITNUT: I need this nut!

What is there under the shell?

So, the idea came up to revive the spirit of the game the dawn of flash games. Where to start? From which game to choose. After much and painful deliberation, it was decided to take as the basis the same series of Yetisports games, namely that part of it, when it was necessary to throw the penguin at a distance. Who threw further - he won. Great idea! But now she lacks any customizable parameters, such as impact power, the number of bonuses collected, and so on. Perfectly. There is an idea, a concept. The point is small, come up with a setting and the main character. We needed someone fast, someone cute and someone from our latitudes. Who could it be? In the end, the squirrel became the winner. Show someone who doesn't like squirrels?

Further, imagination and the desire to do something good have already gone into the matter. The gameplay took shape: the squirrel needs to look for nuts (and it is desirable to find gold) and jump as far as possible with the help of animals that are represented in one or another climatic zone. More zones, more prizes, more levels and all kinds of bonuses - this is the recipe for a successful game. And do not forget to do all this in a faint animation in the spirit of you-know-what-time, when computers were big and games were small.

Of course, there were some difficulties: the game engine was written from scratch, like all the animation and characters. No one could even think that this is so time and cost-effective. However, the result exceeded all expectations - from the neatness of the characters sometimes you want milk with cookies. Take a word!

What is the salt?

Squirrel so lovely

First, when creating the game I wanted to do:

a small program that can be pulled by devices of any power;
a product that representatives of all age groups will appreciate;
offer for both mobile platforms;
plain but cute plot and numerous settings, as well as levels.

Looking back, we can say that all plans were 99% successful. The little squirrel has become such a memorable character that the next step suggests itself, to open a merchandise store with characters and game locations. But before that, it is still necessary to develop and learn.

Get my nut back ! (>_<)

What is there now?

easy gameplay;
smooth animated graphics;
nostalgia for the games of the 2000s;
traffic savings (the game takes up less than 50mb);
the ability to level characters;
Hundreds of levels with increasing difficulty;
5 locations (biomes) with a unique landscape and inhabitants (forest, desert, beach, city, winter);
simple but interesting plot (like WoW Molten Core);
the game is completely free, but it has in-game purchases.

Of course, not everything is perfect. Among the minuses, you can notice the focus on tablets, a small (so far) amount of content and long periods without active interaction with the game. All this will be fixed and finalized soon.

Where is the squirrel going?

Crazy squirrel

There is still a lot of work (as with any project), but we hope that already you can see the amount of energy and energy invested in the project. It will appeal to all nostalgic for zero, all who at that time grew up and learned the basics of computer gaming. And to everyone who wants to spend time somewhere without looking at people in the windows and not turning over the news feed again.