Wik & The Fable Of Souls is a 13MB downloadable game for the PC, it is difficult to pick a single category or genre that this game fits into, to try and do so would seem to limit a unique experience that some have described as a “2D platform/action/adventure game that’s reminiscent of Abes Oddworld”.  Whatever Wik is, it’s quite different from the type of game you would normally think of as a casual PC try before you buy downloadable.

The game was released in September 2004, and was developed by Reflexive Entertainment Inc. based in Lake Forest, California.  Reflexive has been around since late 1997, developing both mainstream PC titles for publishers and smaller self funded downloadable games.  During 2003 the successful Reflexive Arcade website was created, and by the end of that year the development and publishing of downloadable games became its primary business.  With a staff of 11 full time employees; Reflexive now focuses on the staggered development of 2 self funded projects at a time, and a team dedicated to further the development of Reflexive Arcade.

Screen shot from the BugEater one day quick prototype.

What made the BugEater prototype a lot of fun was a new mode of play which we termed MouseParty™.  We had 8 people crowded around a single PC, with mice plugged into every USB port on every USB hub that we could find laying around the office, a crazy click-fest ensued where everybody fought to rescue the most bugs before the level finished, it was complete mayhem and it was a lot of fun!  Out of the 6 or so quick prototypes we had short listed at the time, BugEater was chosen for full development.

 What went right:

The In Game Story.

One area of the game that remained almost constant from initial conception to the final product was the back story.  Originally conceived by the projects producer and lead programmer Simon Hallam, the back story revolves around a bunch of cute little grubs that appeared scattered across the land overnight, each possessing a magical endearing quality that tricks the maternal instinct of almost all the creatures of the land into taking one back to it's home to nurture the cute little mite.  Once back at the creature's home however, the grubs less cute side rears its ugly head, its antenna jabbing the unsuspecting unfortunate that took it home, and over a period of time draining its life force away.  The grub enters a chrysalis stage for a while before emerging as a monstrous creature, which rampages through the lands on its way back towards the place where it instinctively knows it came from, a place where its parents long ago decided not to be around while their offspring undergo this pubescent transformation.The natural order of things would have the new generation of these monstrous creatures literally taking the place of the old, but the elders found that by sneaking their grub offspring to some far off place immediately after the mass communal berthing, which occurs once every ten years, puts this gruesome burden upon that local population rather than their own.The hero of the story is named Wik, a forest dweller who lost his family to the marauding transformed grubs as they worked their way back home the last time the grubs appeared some ten years ago.  Wik is not about to let the grubs destroy every creature and the land where he lives again, so he comes up with a cunning plan.  He decides he will collect as many grubs as he can find, keeping them all in the magical backpack that he has strapped to his faithful mule Slotham, and together they will journey to wherever these little monsters came from, releasing them when he arrives so that nature will take its natural course at the cost of the grubs parents rather than upon the land where he lives.The story was meant to be told in a fairytale book style from day one, but since we knew we could not afford the download space required to ship with audio of an actor actually reading the story aloud, we knew that we would have to rely on the art style and music being something extra special to pull a player along with the text of the story.

 It turns out that those cute grubs are actually mean little buggers…

Composition of background art and foreground play elements.

We were happy with the back story, the original BugEater prototype was great fun as a MouseParty™ game (more about this later), and we had decided to go with a dark fairytale theme that would unfold as the player progresses through the game.  These factors, coupled with the 6 month compressed development cycle and 15MB download size limit pointed to this project being an ideal candidate for play action that takes place on a single non-scrolling background frame, once this decision was made we began experimenting with art styles for the 3 environment types that the back story called for, a forest, some underground caves, and dark creepy vines.We figured 70 unique game play levels would be enough to tell the story, and also give the player a good sense of value for their $19.99 purchase.  We knew that there was not enough time or space in our maximum 15MB download for 70 uniquely painted levels, so we set about developing techniques and tools that would allow us to compose our game play frame from a palette of pre-rendered art pieces.During pre-production, the lead artist on the project Jeff McAteer would take hand painted elements and models rendered using 3D Studio Max into Photoshop to compose them with filters and effects, building atmospheric concept images.  The programming team took note of this and began developing an in game level editing system that allowed entities called props to be easily placed, rotated, scaled and colored on multiple layers, with basic filters and effects that could be applied as required.

 Early sketches illustrating the importance of a strong focal point.     The Caves environment concept.

 The Forest environment concept.     Creepy Vines early concept.

User Interface Development Tools.

The level builder/editing system was a great success, the next logical step in its development was to create more specialized 'props', which we could use as buttons and other interface elements, and a powerful visual scripting system.  Within a short period of time we had an in game tool that we used to not only build every game play level, but which also enabled artists and level designers to build every piece of the products user interface, something which had traditionally been manually hard coded by programmers at Reflexive.Building the user interface for the game in this way not only allowed the artists to get closer to the process than they had been before, it also allowed us to build a much more comprehensive interface without tying up limited programming resources.

The same tools used to build the levels for the game were used to build all interface screens.

Main Character.

A few of the many main character experiments.     The first time the character was named "Wik"

Early concept sketches for Wik's faithful companion.     Slotham as he begins to take the form we now recognize.

Mouse only controls.One of our primary goals from the day pre-production started was that this should be a mouse only game; we wanted to keep the control method simple and intuitive.  To that end the player controls a mouse cursor during play, pressing the left mouse button shoots Wik's tongue towards the cursor, while the right mouse button makes Wik jump in the direction of the mouse cursor.From the beginning of pre-production on Wik we knew

Everything Data Driven.Data driven player model, keep tweaking until it's fun.  86 User Editable properties on Wik style sheet.It was so easy to change the mechanics of Wik that the file was locked by the producer.The addition of gravity was a turning point in the development of the project..

86 user editable properties define how the main character behaves.

What went Wong:

Initial play mechanic.  Single player mode is more important than MouseParty

The Stinky Cheese experiments:

Odor de la stinky cheese…

In early versions of the game, Wik did not pick up grubs and toss them into Slothams magic backpack the way he does in the finished product.  Instead, he had roped a large chunk of "stinky cheese" onto the back of his faithful mule Slotham.  This was the only thing that Wik knew would lure the Grubs into following Slotham instead of executing their diabolical plan.The smell of the stinky cheese was represented by a green colored particle system, the movement of which was managed by a surprisingly complex real time fluid dynamics simulation.  As Wik moved around the level, the cheesy smell would be carried along by the movement of air around him, creating swirls and vortices in his wake.How could the grubs resist this pungent yet graceful green cloud?  Well, they couldn't, that was sort of the whole point of the exercise.  Once Wik moved in such a way as to waft several of the green particles over the grubs' antenna, they were forever under the spell of its stench.  A thin tendril of particles would then curve from the cheese on Slotham's back to each grub that had ever 'smelled' it.  The grubs would do everything in their power to move closer to source (sauce?) of the cheese and follow Slotham off the level once caught in its spell.

Glow Power.Glow power was meant to be a dynamic and visual representation of how much the player character had been moving around

Omission of bosses.  Images.

The Hornet Queen boss character.    In our early original game plan there would be 4 boss characters Wik would encounter through the game.  The Hornet Queen would appear towards the end of the forest level set, the Spider Boss would flash her fangs towards the end of the caves, a giant Scorpion appeared at the end of the creepy vines level set, and the end of game ultimate uber-boss was the Lord Of The Grubs

Spider Boss attack animations.

Sticky screen edges.

Skill play mode.

Should have had a more intelligent tutorial system.

Had compatibility problems with OpenGL post release, switched to software only rasterizer using a heavily modified version of AGG.

Level editor not intuitive enough for mod community to get into it.

Given the 6 month development time and maximum 15MB download size budget this project was initially allotted, it is important (although often difficult) to keep a good perspective on the scope of the project, and vital to take regular reality checks, these are things which are of course important on any project but can get you in trouble far more quickly on a smaller project.