Designing the Joystick Johnny Interface

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As promised, I put together an annotated slideshow documenting the progression of Joystick Johnny from prototype to final product. You can see most of the awful graphics, dead ends, and stupid ideas I came up with along the 10-month development cycle. The pages are arranged so you can easily compare each version.

Hopefully this will serve as a bit of reality check for those of you who are setting out to make your first (optimistically scheduled) game. On the surface, Joystick Johnny is a pretty simple game. The prototype was made in a weekend, and contains almost as many minigames as the final version a year later. But you can see how time-consuming it was to develop, especially when trying out new ideas.

For example, it wasn't enough to just have the idea for a "Video Virus." It took a lot of trial and error to figure out what role it played in the (constantly changing) game design, and also how to make it interesting enough as a character. There were a lot of times, even going into the 8th and 9th month, where I considered cutting out the Virus, and just let Johnny play games for a less colorful reason, or no reason at all. It would have saved a lot of work, and sales-wise, it probably would have made no difference at all.

Actually, if I had taken Joshua Dallman's early advice and stayed closer to the initial design (single-level games, ultra-simple graphics), I could have finished in 4 or 5 months, versus 12. And looking back at the prototype now, there was enough charm in that design that I probably could have been happy with a smaller title.

But this was my first "real" game, and I had a lot of things I *had* to have in there, like a cheesy plot, arcade remix-style music, multiple levels, an 80's style boss scene, online scoreboards, hidden treasures, etc etc. Each piece, on its own, was not a big deal. But added together, that's a ton of work for one person doing everything on his own. (I did eventually hire someone for most of the music, which was a great decision.)

At about the 6-month mark, I had to commit to making this and nothing else because I only had enough savings for a little over a year. I figured it was a choice between releasing a polished game that I was happy with, and releasing a couple of smaller, crappier games. At the time, I figured there are enough small, crappy games out on the net already (my own freeware games included) so I committed to Joystick Johnny (though it's a bit of a cheat, since it contains 28 small, crappy games =)

Well, the good news is that 1) I finished -- that's a huge deal. And 2) I made the game that I wanted to make. Maybe someday I can add "3) It sold like hotcakes", but it's still too early to tell.

At this point, I'd like to be able to say "here's what I plan to do in the future", but right now there's not much a future, since my funds have run dry. So my career as an indie game developer will be on indefinite hiatus as I re-enter the working world.

So if you know of anyone looking for a skilled web app developer, preferably in the Bay Area, drop me a line. =)

Thanks for reading,
Joe