Ultimate Kinect

So this video isn't going to make a whole lot of sense yet, but I wanted to post what I was working on!

Watching the Microsoft presentation at E3 I thought it was interesting how so many of the Kinect titles were on rails games. The more I thought about it, the more I decided that on rails experiences seem really fun to author - you're taking away the player's ability to choose where to go, so you can take him anywhere, and pull off a lot of things you can't do in standard 3D world games. You can also switch up his situation whenever you feel like it - so you could something like starting with an FPS where you're using your hands to aim, and then switching it over to a soccer game, where you're using your feet to kick. Granted, you have to build all of those mechanics and make them all work... :)

Anyway, I was daydreaming about it, and I thought it sounded fun to mock up a rough idea for a Kinect title that does this - the mechanics stay basically the same through the entire game, but you travel through a linear path of different genres of game. You start with a puzzle game, then it's a zombie killing FPS, then your weapon gets taken away, so you have to kick the zombie heads at the next enemy (like a soccer game), and maybe you even end up with some dancing and racing in there somehow.

I've gotten to the soccer transition so far, and then the video stops - there are at least 4 more sections that I want to mock up (soccer, high fives, dancing, racing). As far as the actual gameplay, it would be score based. You would replay the same sequence each time, trying to improve your score to beat friends. For each segment of the game you get a score based on how many guys you hit, or how many of the same colored puzzle pieces you can take out at once, etc - and if you reach a certain score you unlock the 'bonus' extra puzzle level or extra 15 zombies which also increase your score. Also if you fail to reach a certain score in 3 segments, the game ends (like Sequence in Geometry Wars). As far as Kinect goes, I'm trying to keep the input mechanics for each section as similar as possible to make it realistic if I ever decided to make it into a game. :) As part of the mock up I was thinking I'd video tape myself doing the corresponding Kinect actions to help clarify gameplay.



I'm not really sure if I would attempt to make it into a game - it really depends on whether or not I can make this mock up engaging, and seem like something that might be fun to develop further. Also Issam is really excited about the release of the Kinect SDK... so maybe ;)

PS - I'm really going to try to make an effort to start actually finishing some of these projects that I've been starting! :) Sorry for all the jumping around - as most people know, it's a lot easier to start new things than finish old ones. Going to try and break the habit.