Expressing Personality Through Animations

The Party Animals team is going heavily into revised game mechanics right now, and we're hoping to have something to share on that front very soon.  In the meantime I wanted to show off some of the animations I've been working on in my free time.  These animations will show up on the world map as your characters go around and do actions.  They will be much smaller than they are right now (see previous post), but I work on them on a much larger scale to inject as much personality into the animations as I can, hoping that some of that will translate even when the animations are reduced.

For example, let's take a look at the candidate Crocopio Imperial.  Croccy is the scion of a political family and is absolutely loaded with cash.  He's so rich that even while moving along the map he's already throwing money around.  The gleeful abandon with which he throws around money is almost infectious.

And when it's time to start bribing, he gives you the whole sack of cash.

The Investigator, who is a staff member you can hire, is much more stoic. Even when he gets mad there's a minimum amount of motion. I worry that this won't read very well when it's reduced, but it's a risk I'll take, since I feel it is very central to the Investigator's character that he doesn't have any wasted movements.

Except when he's exaggeratedly sneaking around, of course.

Contrary to the Investigator, the Police looks like she once wanted to be a disco dancer, flailing he arms and blowing that whistle as she redirects traffic for your candidate's convoy.

She's equally as exuberant when she's able to conduct a campaign successfully on your behalf.

These are just a few of the candidates and staff that we're going to have in the game.  We have a bunch more in store for you, and I'm excited to start working on them already. It's a lot of work animating them all, but I hope it'll be worth it in the end.  Please let us know what you think!

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Explaining the GIF!

We usually try to keep our blogposts to a regularly scheduled once a month for the sake of consistency.  But this week I wanted to take a little time to explain the GIF that I shared with you guys last week when Marnel was talking about our AI.  So without further ado, here is the explanation:

• There are 3 characters right now, Mousey, Croccy, and Police Staff.  Mousey and Croccy are the candidates on opposing side, and Police is one of the Staff that you can hire for your campaign (she's the only one we've finished so far)
• The districts highlighted in red are Blockaded, which is the Police's special ability.  Your enemy cannot enter the district that is blockaded unless they pay the Police a bribe to get in (This only lasts one turn).
• At some point you see what looks like an avatar of an owl creeping slowly closer to the avatar of Croccy.  That Owl is a Kapitan, and Croccy has just given it a gift to improve his Relationship with the Owl.  As we said before, in this game you not only manage your relationship with the citizens, but also with their leaders.

Hopefully that's enough to whet your appetites but still keep you intrigued about what else is going in in the game!

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