THE INCREDIBLE DOG
Back in 2011 we did a Game Jam at Halfbrick. We would go up, pitch our idea, and then if anyone was interested then we'd get to work on it for the week.
At the time physics puzzle games were very popular on iPhone - Cut The Rope, Angry Birds, Where's My Water? Halfbrick didn't have one of those. Growing up I loved games like The Incredible Machine on my PC, and would love to make a similar game to that for mobile. However, mobile games need really simplifying down due to the small screen size.
My thought was to create Incredible Machine style levels, which are mostly completed, but players needing to "Connect the dots" with lines that they could draw on the screen, and having a ball be able to roll down them.' Phil Larsen, the Marketing Officer at the time, suggested coming up with a name with 3 syllables, like Cut The Rope and Angry Birds. Lazy Dog was born!
I pitched the game at the Game Jam, Adam Wood (programmer for Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride) joined me. We made a very basic prototype using the Fruit Ninja "blade" tech for drawing lines. Crude, but the idea was there!
After the Game Jam, the higher ups suggested we go into production for the game. The A-Team, featuring James Barnes, Michael Dobele, Hugh Walters, Ben Marrinan, Emma Koch and others jumped onto the project.
Rebuilding from the ground up using Halfbrick's Mortar Engine, we made it extremely easy to create new levels, tweak the physics, and have some awesome visual effects with a neat felt aesthetic.
Cancellation
Unfortunately, the game got cancelled. The main issue was really that it was a great iPad game, but not iPhone. iPhones 5's were kind of small at the time, so drawing lines was fiddly and not super great.
Mobile games were changing rapidly. Making a great puzzle game for 99c wasn't working anymore. You needed to make a game that's Free-To-Play. Making puzzle games with a single, actual answer doesn't work well for a F2P game compared to a Candy Crush where randomization is built in.
Lastly, priorities were changing in the studio. They wanted another Fruit Ninja, Lazy Dog wouldn't be that, so we switched work on various versions of a "Fruit Ninja 2", which (our version) never came out.
So the game was quietly cancelled. We actually tried to get a "Lazy Dog Fridays" going where we worked on it every Friday to eventually come out, but that didn't last long. Then the team got split up and that kind of killed the whole thing.
REVIVAL
Lazy Dog went into development for some time, only to be quietly cancelled to focus on other projects. Until today!
Under the Halfbrick+ program, they've been releasing various prototypes games. One of them being Lazy Dog. I haven't worked at Halfbrick since 2015. Very few people who even worked on this originally are still there. But it must have been a good enough idea to release it now!
Lazy Dog has been ported over to Unity, given some polish, and released! The game now runs at a higher resolution and on bigger phones. It plays a LOT better on a Phone now.
The UI and some art has been. New logo, the dog has gotten an upgrade and animates, the results screen are new and very nice!
Outside of Level 1-5 (I think?), all are the original set of levels me and Ben Marrinan made at the time. All using the cannons. We made a ton of other mechanics and gimmicks, though no new level aesthetics, so we'll see if they keep updating the game!
It was the first game I was a lead on, and pitched, when I had only been in games for a couple of years. I was super new to the industry, and at the time it was a great experience. I don't earn anything now for it, but I hope people enjoy it!
Download for iPhone or Android phones
PROTOTYPE SCREENSHOTS
FINAL SCREENSHOTS
