The Journey Galoop has taken during development is almost as exciting as the journey the little Galeps embark upon themselves. Galoop has gone through many (and when we say many we mean a lot of) changes from where the project started out and has become a much loved game for the Horizon Team, as the team changed and the studio formed each member has put a little of themselves in to the game and it has become a labour of love for us.
The initial concept behind the game was based on a bedtime story designer Kevin Tapping came up with for his children which saw our little Galep happily popping together to form fizzy drinks and inspired one version of a game. However as the team was forming, as both a challenge to our new developer Mike Connell and also to give the Galep an origin, Kevin came up with the idea for a prequel, based on a variation of the old “match three” genre but as the game developed and the team grew in confidence, we started to see numerous twists to the original genre appear to give it an identity of its own.
Over time we have released a playable version of the original proof of concept on the PC built with Game Maker which was an instant success and the feedback we received from almost everyone was…”This would make an awesome game on the iPhone”, and so we decided to do exactly that.
We started to change the graphics and layout to suit the resolution of the iPhone and had to make numerous changes to the overall layout of the screen based on the physical size of the iPhone but after looking at a few engines with which we could deploy from we finally settled on Unity as a means to converting our proof of concept from PC to iOS.
In making this transition we’ve also started to look at the story in order to make a full featured commercial product people would feel glad they had purchased. The design has been ramped up and what we can say is the game will now tell the whole story in one package, which we hope will be a charming story and an adventure where you love the little Galeps as much as we do.
In the meantime while you wait, you can help us to spread the word and help our little galep friends to get around by visiting www.galoop.co.uk and adopting one of the lovable little creatures for yourselves.
