An Original Big Fish Game
Senior Project: 2009-2010
Big Fish Games is the world's leading online destination for casual games and
interactive entertainment. Based in Seattle, Washington, Big Fish Games offers
"A New Game Every Day!", driving over a million downloads per day and 25
million unique visitors per month at their online portal,
BigFishGames.com.
Big Fish Games Studios develops and publishes some of the industry's leading
brands including
Mystery Case Files,
Hidden Expedition,
Azada, and
Fairway Solitaire.
The problem presented was to create a game for a casual game player, with a
target audience of 30-60 year-old women. Other than a restriction on violence
(there was to be none), there were no other firm requirements for the project.
A survey of the target audience revealed high interest in story-based games,
games that involved mystery, and games that involved puzzle solving in addition
to item collection mechanics.
The solution consisted of building a game engine from scratch using
OpenGL
and a number of helpful libraries such as
Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL)
and guichan.
The game design philosophy consolidated the desire to play casual minigames
with a more-involved story. Minigames are how the player interacts with elements
in the story mode; unlocking a door will require completion of a minigame,
for example. Once played, minigames are unlocked in an arcade mode for later
play.
In addition to these two modes of play, there was considerable focus on
building a level editor to allow easy creation of specific games, which became
the main deliverable from the project. A demo level game was also produced to
show the capabilities of the engine, editor and some sample minigames.
 Level Editor
Demo Game
Mini-Game
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