:: Brocolis Untitled ::

As promised today I’m going to talk about Urban Race, a project started 2 months ago by the now closed studios Elsewhere Entertainment (10Tacle Studios Belgium). Screenshots and more recently videos have been posted on gametrailers.com and other websites so I guess I can comment on the project a little bit to give it more context. We started Urban Race project end of April, considering the financial crisis 10tacle AG was, Yves Grolet, our CEO, decided to gather key people of the company and to talk about a B plan.

The B plan was to create a smaller and simpler project taking advantage of the technology we created for Totems. We wanted to take the best of what we developed in those two years and create a funnier setting and an overall “over the top” game. The idea was a light and humorous tone mixed with an instant action based gameplay. There we came up with a quirky racing style game, a mix between Mario Kart, Burnout and Assassin Creed. Not to say that the team found the game concept refreshing. Taking into account the situation we were, this can be considered as a miracle.

The business model we planned for this project was to release it on Steam and, like TF2, have regularly updates with new content such as levels, characters and items.
Here is the pitch of the project; it’s coming straight up from the game concept document I wrote:

“In a contemporary, humorous, violent and quirky universe, sportsmen are dueling in a new kind of discipline called “Urban Racing”. It is a blend between Parkour, a fluid, efficient and acrobatic physical discipline, and aggressive and violent takedowns of opponents using the environment and handy weapons. In takedowns, the more the opponent is humiliated, the better. Races take place in urban environments mixing various styles (industrial, city, ruins). The first player to end the race is the winner. There is only one rule: pain but no blood.“

To talk a little bit about the ambitions we had for the project, everything was created around the idea of “having fun with friends”. For example we planned to create a game mode where players are able to throw grannies on the path so they kiss other players. If you get caught by the granny you lose. We had more than 15 game modes as fun as this one.

Here is the video posted on gametrailers, this is a 2 months work pitch video intended to be released for potential publishers or editors only. It was never planned to be released for the public.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/38222.html

Talking about the video, I’d like to comment it a little bit. The big jump over the bar is just a collision bug making the character flying away, this is not the proper behavior, this has been fixed but I don’t know why the person who did the video kept that bug! It just looks ridiculous.

People on the internet complained about the animations, that they were not very fluid etc. I agree that some animations are still stiff because we were in the middle of changing the animations for something more realistic. Nearly all Totems animations tree was planned to be changed for this project. But again to show the potential of the title we used some of Totems animations and blending between the two styles didn’t always work.

Another problem people complained is the speed. When the player uses adrenaline, he boosts his speed (in the video it is when you see the blur effect). It was just still an early gameplay mechanic prototype.The running animation was the same as the normal run but played twice as fast which creates, I agree, a goofy look. But when you develop a game, the very first steps is to show that the game has potential, that it corresponds to a funny experience and that core mechanics are working well. That’s what we did with this run, it is there just to test an adrenaline rush mechanic, see if it works and gives more depth to the game. Of course it was planned to change the animation in the following weeks.

Other people complained about the lack of realism of some animations, that Mirror Edge was better etc. For me it is simply because we don’t want to be as realistic as ME, it is not the same game, the same goals. Except bugs, we have an “over the top” philosophy for this game. This has been chosen to maximize fun factors, remove realism constraints and to justify the Chihuaha and other crazy items you can use in the game.

I hope that it makes things clear about the progress of the game and what was this video about. Hey by the way, talking about the Chihuahua it was our game’s mascot. For us the Chihuahua was like the homing missile in Mario Kart, thrown in the air, seek and bite some asses, hahaha.

Anyway I don’t know what will happen with the UR licence. Let’s hope a very rich publisher/editor will fund the project. Wait and see.