When do you call it quits on a project? When you realize it’s not working for you, or for anyone else? Perhaps the work is too much, or the assets needed too expensive. Or maybe it’s due to the creator being a complete moron the first few times around making the game before something snaps and it actually starts to look promising. Folks, that moron is that guy I am.

The Oil Blue was supposed to be a quick one month in-between project before Liquisity 2, yet here I am in March, still struggling with the game’s core mechanics (though I can thankfully report that’s not the case anymore, but I’ll come back to that in a minute).

The first time around, I pledged that I would make the game in a new 960×600 resolution, giving me a nice amount of space and supporting the widescreen standard. What I didn’t realize at the time was…man, that’s quite a bit of extra space. And that extra space was driving me nuts. What would I do with the side areas? Why were they driving me crazy? I felt the need to fill up all available space with graphical elements and HUD for the player. But nothing ever looked right to me.

Not only that, but I still had zero idea on how to display the core concept of drilling for oil to the player. At first it would be an old computer monitor with 8-bitish graphics, but coming off of greenTech I knew that would be somewhat of a copout. So I decided to do a “clean” presentation with plastics and a marker-type look. Basically, the player would see a plastic box filled with dirt, and would be a representation of the drilling area. With each dirt area hit, the user would need to increase the amount of pressure on the drill…so they would need to do the math and add the pressure manually. Add too much/too little, and the drill breaks.

I didn’t like the visual look…it seemed cheap, lazy, and had all the charm of a 10th grade biology schoolbook. But the idea of adding pressure to the drill was neat. Yeah, I thought, it would be fun to have all these elements go on at once (having to repair machines, sell oil, drill, etc.) and trying to do math at the same time. It’s kinda like I’m making math fun!

And that’s when it hit me like a sack of potatoes. Making. Math. Fun. Yeah, let me slap that on a game descriptor and watch the money roll in. The idea of math being fun almost made me throw my computer out the window. So, I started from scratch. Take 2.

This time, I had the idea of using “holographic projectors” for the users to view and use for drilling. There would be a drill moving back and forth, not controlled by the player. But this drill can be stopped by hitting the space bar…stop on a green square (representing oil) and you’ve got oil! Stop on a hazardous red square, and you’ve added pressure to the drill. Too much would damage it. Again, the style I was using was too simple, kinda boring, and the gameplay wasn’t engaging in the least…mainly because I had turned it into a game of chance. The idea of stopping a sideways moving drill at just the right moment sounded good in theory, but only if the player had complete control over it…because if they didn’t, what’s the point? It’s like making a racing game but controlling the car for the player, and asking them to just control the gas/brakes at the proper times. So I threw all of it out, again. Take 3.



I was getting frustrated. I knew the idea of running an oil island with a ton of stuff to do would be fun, but if I couldn’t find a way of making the oil drilling unique, engaging and fun…well, it wouldn’t work. The art is 90% done, the music is done, everything is waiting on me, and I couldn’t seem to grasp a way of not only having good gameplay, but having it displayed for the user that wouldn’t cost me even more money to get art assets for. It was depressing.

But, last week, I took a crack at Photoshop (which I seem to be getting a bit better at) and I’ve finally designed the display that looks solid, the gameplay that’s fun, and the strategy that’s dependent on the player. Finally, it’s really coming together nicely. Here’s a sneak preview at the new oil drilling display (all mouse based):



So that’s why you haven’t seen much of Oil Blue, mainly because I kept restarting the whole game. But now I have the mechanics, I have the assets, I have a clear path, and it’s go time. The game should go in beta next month, and I can’t wait to share more. Woo!