Goodest Boy
The Beginning: Dogs are loyal companions since the dawn of civilization. We have learned how to domesticate and co-exist with them, and they became our sense of pride and joy. Sometimes they are also the source of stress, but they balance it out by being cute and just being dogs doing dogs stuff. They truly are man's best friend.
Though they are very good at watching the house and the neighborhood, sometimes they are too good at it that they don't know how to stop and just become a nuisance. Sometimes my dogs are like that. I still love them though. Why am I saying these things about dogs? Because this is exactly what gave me the idea for this silly game that I love so much.
The Idea: One night as I was trying to think of a new game to make, my dogs were doing their dog stuff, running around the backyard and barking at anything and everything that passes outside our gate. I couldn't focus. I couldn't think straight about mechanics or design. Literally their barking is overpowering my thoughts.
The loudest ones are Tintoy, Gordo, and Pillow all competing for first place, and some of the runner-ups are Kobi, Patchi, Basti, and honorable mentions are Luna, Chichay, and Cassey. The quietest one is Poncho.
Anyway, they were barking so loud something suddenly clicked. A dog barking at everything game! Well.. not even a game, just a silly mechanic on a mobile format really. I coded it immediately, of course while they are still competing who is the loudest. After about 20 minutes, I have the prototype. I don't know if I'm a genius or stupid by coming up with this game but I don't care anymore, I love it.
The Design: The design was simply a dog behind a gate/fence, and then the people and cars and other animals are passing by the other side, and your task is to be the best neighborhood watch. How? Well bark at anything and everything of course, like a really good boy, or girl.
I added a scare counter system where it counts how many people and animals and cars you have "Scared" by barking. Is it challenging? It was never meant to be. Is it satisfying? LOL YEA. And so a new game was barked into existence.. I mean brought into existence. I showed it to my dad and he couldn't stop laughing with the sillyness of the idea. Success!
Closing thoughts: This was not the first time I came up with a game from a random unexpected event, one of my games called Slashfall I came up with while washing the dishes. So now, every time my dogs are doing their dog thing, I don't get too stressed anymore. Who knows, maybe someday they'll give me other ideas! Now I'm waiting for my cats to give me some ideas but they are mostly just sleeping.. maybe a game about cats who can sleep longer?? We'll see.
