It is…
Namco/Bandai California versus Japan developed original IP game for iOS. Saw limited success state side but was well received in Japan at the time and was followed by a web comic series.
I did…
I was the Creative Director at the time and that role included Character Design guidance, Game Design contribution, Art Director and ultimately contributing artist. This was my first direct experience using Unity to build a game which in hindsight was a great experience for my career. I also created the particle assets and effects for in game. Finally, I edited game trailers for the website and App Store.
Deliverables
Art assets from either Maya, 3DS MAX, Photoshop, Final Cut. The final iOS submission for the App Store.
Results
The details
After publishing all the Namco standards like Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man into the App Store, the team in California started focusing on new IP. We shipped a MMO Billiards game (which I believe was one of the first for iOS), an ascending platform game (just like everyone else) and an interesting tangram (geometric shape puzzle) game. These all worked to some degree as people just wanted content in the still young App Store at the time. Ultimately, after the “peak” all of these titles followed the same bell curve in terms of sales. How can we make a tile that would have a lasting replay value?
With this is mind, we thought of IP that had lead characters that transcend the game itself. Mario, Sonic and of course our own Pac-Man live well beyond the the life of the original games they started in. So we set out to design something that was appealing to everyone and had a cuteness factor cranked up! Our game designer was interested in Kitsune. The name Kitsune in Japanese literally translates to a fox. As the Japanese culture had spent millennia coexisting with the many red foxes on the islands of Japan, it’s no surprise that the people there developed countless myths and legends about these clever and mysterious animals. The kitsune myths make an easy distinction between ordinary foxes and kitsune yokai – ordinary foxes have only one tail while the yokai animals have two, three, or even up to nine tails. What’s more, according to the Shinto myths, the more tails a kitsune has, the older and more powerful it is.
In terms of the environments, we needed to consider how to create a sense of tension when “leaping” from rocket to rocket. Also since Guy Fox (the main character) would fail by crashing into the ground, we did not want to portray road kill on the ground. With this in mind we decided to pursue and “islands” kind of feel for most of the levels and the player would have to traverse water to get to the next rocket. If they were not successful then a splash in the water would be their fate. It didn’t mean you could not crash into the ground, I just created a particle animation of dandelion spores to make “the end” more kid friendly!
And here is early gameplay footage showing the start of a level to the end jumping from rocket to rocket. Apologies for small resolution of the the 1st Gen iPad!
Once completing a level, the summary screen would provide all the necessary info to show how well you completed all the tasks.
Of course no iOS game would be complete without in app purchases. We created a good number of accessories for Guy in addition to power ups and other special effects!
The App Store
How do you stand out in the App Store with the sea of other apps? You get promoted in the “New & Noteworthy? section of course! We were fortunate to be featured for quite some time and this did help our sales numbers.
Web Comic
After we launched the game that could have been a wrap and our signal to move onto the next project. Fortunately, marketing decided this IP was good enough to be promoted in a new format for us, a Web Comic series. Namco/Bandai started a new website to promote the games they were creating and to also possibly generate a new revenue stream for web comic subscriptions. I’m not sure how successful it ultimately was for the bottom line but it did create a fan base for Rocket Fox in Japan that helped sustain interest in both the game and IP for a quite a while.
My involvement with the comic was for mainly visual sign off when we started. All story and production work was handled by our partners and they were so good I really didn’t have to do a lot!
The series ran for quite a long time, most definitely beyond the sales spike for the iOS game itself. All good things come to an end and with the Comic Series and Web site eventually hit the end of the road.
Finally, I wanted to share that although neither the game nor comics exist there is still a promotional item that could still be found in the corners of the internet if you look hard enough. Namco/Bandai wash big player in terms of toys, dolls and plush character promotions. For Rocket Fox, a series of plush toys were created and sold right around the launch of the product.
In summary, this was a fun project because it was very different for me. Sure I have shipped games and products that had a higher number of users or sales but this game reached such a large and different audience that I had never reached before. It was a result of a lot of hard work from everyone involved!
