Go Live (or Die Trying)

As some of you already know, we just released the next chapter in the ever-expanding MilMo universe. It's called MilMo: Mice & Maniax. This time we move into a slightly darker area of the imagination, and it's been a blast to work on. Games don't exactly develop themselves, of course, and so we've had to make some critical decisions these past months. This post is going to delve into the hows and whys of the new expansion.

It all began with the wrap-up of Summer Tide Saga, the first MilMo adventure. The Saga begins on Lightmill Island and spans a vast summer archipelago. With the release of the Alien Ruins level and the last of the major bosses, that world became complete. Summer Tide proved to be a great way for the team to find out what MilMo is about: what kind of gameplay belongs in the game, how levels should look, sound and feel and what kind of stories take place on them.

Work in progress of the Mice & Maniax splash screen

Earlier this summer we sat down to begin work on the next adventure, and the first thing we did was to assemble a team of imaginative people to write and draw some high concepts. High concepts are usually very visual and most of the text consists of headers and bullet points. The idea is to get a quick feel for the flavor of some different ideas.

Once we had several solid concepts we sat down to compare the pros and cons. Did any of them feel right? Were they visually engaging? Were these ideas doable? Junebud is a small but creative company and we don't have unlimited development resources. It's tempting to stay close to what's expected and focus on doing it well. It's also deceptively easy to grab a wild, crazy concept and just go, only to find out half-way that there's no way to do it well, or even complete what you've started.

We had some very exciting ideas on the table and a decision had to be made. In the end we went with the path that inspired us most. All the cool possibilities of having your game character shrunk, the environments, the enemies, the puzzle of figuring out who (or what) the non-player characters were made us throw caution to the wind. Some ideas are like that: too good to pass up on.

Introducing a new kind of non-player character: the mouse

While Summer Tide Saga is an idyllic world of high skies and long beaches, where you spend your time beach combing or uncovering mysteries, Mice & Maniax is a darker, more sinister world of hidden threats and heroic deeds. Because Mice & Maniax involves so many new effects and visuals, we've had to do a lot of head scratching. Hopefully, the results speak for themselves.

The plot: a fun tool for writers

Plot-wise we've wanted to make this new adventure clearer, more immediate. The setting, the people and the deeds that need doing should all gel together better than before, to tell the story of the mad scientist and his corrupted house. We decided to go in a more immersive story-telling direction, which made our game writer quite happy.

On the topic of releasing new content, I have to touch on the issue of Halloween. I'll admit it, I'm a huge fan. I love the time of year, I love the visual props of Halloween, I love Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, I love John Carpenter's original Halloween movie and, well, I love monsters. We've known for a long, long time that we wanted to release a big update for this Halloween, and we wanted that update to have a certain ominous, creepy feeling to it. But as a game developer, the most challenging part about Halloween is that it won't move. It is where it is, when you look in your calendar, and that means it's a deadline that can't be bargained with. The entire Junebud Crew has worked long hours indeed to make sure we could bring Mice & Maniax to our audience in time for Halloween, and I am immensely proud that we did.

Future projects. We have them.

We have so much stuff in the pipeline (gameplay features, stories, graphics and events that we really want to do), that everything we do means there are hundreds of things we don't develop. Mice & Maniax rose to the top both as a concept and as a technical challenge. All things considered, I can safely say it's a worthy update. Think of it as a promise of all the great things to come. One of my favorite aspects of MilMo is that it's a 100% living project. Everything and anything about MilMo could change at any time, and the game grows with every week and every month that goes by.

When I worked with boxed titles that were sold in stores, there was a single, huge deadline at the end of the project. That resulted in a “gold master” disk that was shipped to the publisher, who made lots of copies. Then the copies were shipped to brick-and-mortar stores. If you made a mistake, you had to make a patch and put it online (or before that, burn on a CD and ship it with popular gaming magazines). Working fully online, fully live and developing a game with the players along for the ride is a beautiful way of making games. Every day at the office is an adventure and any idea can be made into reality and shipped at almost any time. Instead of hulking final deadlines, we work with many small deadlines and get to see how people like the game after each one.

Awesome stuff in the making

MilMo is an awesome project and we have a lot of surprises we can't wait to spring on you guys. It's more like your favorite TV channel, where you get new stuff every week, than like a favorite movie that you watch, and then watch again a couple of years later. What's not to like? Stay tuned.

All the best,

Ola 


Ola Holmdahl is a game designer and CEO at Junebud. Ola's previous career includes teaching game design, doing game design and creating concept art. In a previous life he was a freelance artist and an academic (but not at the same time).