Snapshot

I’m Kyle Pulver, and currently I’m half of Snapshot. So far I’ve worked on the game design with my partner Peter Jones, and I programmed and built the current prototype version of the game.

Pete and I had to work on a project for our big Senior Thesis presentation at Clarkson University. We decided that our project would be a prototype or a proof of concept game demo.

Our specific idea of doing Snapshot didn’t come until a week or two after. I seem to always have a game development flame burning, and Pete has a pretty strong passion for games as well, so we decided to put those two elements to work and get credit for them.

Pete came to me in a Biology class where he told me about this crazy dream he had where he was getting chased by a monster and he had a disposable camera for some reason. When he took a picture of the monster, it was gone as if it disappeared into the camera. We spent the next hour in Biology sketching up the initial designs of the game, and got to work immediately after.

The game is pretty early along in development, so we haven’t run into any big issues yet. The one thing we struggled with for awhile though was exactly how the photo mechanic would work and affect the game world. Ideas for having the camera be able to take pictures of anything, even background collision masks, was tossed around but proved to be a challenge not only to put together using the tools we had, but also from a design perspective. Balancing the player’s freedom, or perceived freedom, with level designs that contain puzzles with relatively set solutions is always challenging.

The game is pretty early along, so hopefully we’re able to spot what we’re doing wrong and correct it before we dig ourselves too deep!

Snapshot development so far has been a total of 10 to 12 weeks from our initial ideas to the prototype build we have now. We’re seeing what happens at the IGF this year to decide what Snapshot’s fate will exactly be, but right now we’re hoping to develop the game for about a year and shoot for a release date Spring or Summer of next year.

The prototype build of the game is made in Multimedia Fusion. Aside from that, we used a handful of Adobe products for most of our art related work.

I think the idea that players will be able to essentially deconstruct and rebuild their environment through the element of photography will make the game fun for a lot of players. Our expanded design of the final game has a lot of elements in it to try to please as many types of players as possible, but for now I think the tight level design and use of the photos in our prototype build is what currently sells it.

Hmm, not yet! We still have awhile to go. We’re staying somewhat hush hush about our bigger plans.

Snapshot development! I expect to be working hard on the project for a good year after Game Developers Conference, and I’m pretty excited. I’ve worked on some games before, but this feels like my first “real” game project. Other than that, I’ll probably be teaming up with some other indie developers for small game projects over the course of the year, as well as work on my own personal games in whatever is left of my free time. Games, games, more games. Hopefully I’ll also have time to eat and sleep.