Ninja Rally is a really sweet looking and original title I’ve been working on here at Gamesville since early January. Some people have heard me bandy the name about and asked about it. Well, it’s been rejected from the App Store twice now for some rather small and simple reasons that were easy to address, and we’re awaiting approval once again. Yet excitement has been building, so I thought I’d say a word or ten about it.
I’m really excited about this game for a few reasons:
1) It’s my first TGB title. I’ve been working with Torque for years but never had a good opportunity to use the 2D version, called Torque Game Builder. Although it came with a really large number of gotchas as an early technology, I had source code access and was able to make tons of engine modifications to make all the good stuff happen. This meant I was able to contribute a lot back to the other devs working with this technology and that always makes me feel worthwhile.
2) It’s a multiplayer game! It’s WAN playable and a surprisingly fun head-to-head experience. When I first cranked up the multiplayer with my manager after a few minutes of intense rallying and battling I could feel the adrenaline in my blood. The gameplay really draws you in, quite a feat for a ’simple’ game. Different folks even have different playing styles which totally come through in the gameplay.
3) The artwork and sounds are FANTASTIC! I used all caps there, in case you didn’t notice. My teammates Amber and Ryan cranked out all the art and sound respectively, with Ryan doing GarageBand sessions and recording fierce Ninja yells in secret corners of the building here. Amber brought a very special talent to bear on the Ninja Rally storyline, with obvious results. What made it all so special was in certain moments when we knew we had just the right feeling, and bringing it all together we just got that “wow, that’s just..awesome!” kind of feeling. Not many of those moments come out of an average day job 
4) It’s got a good story!! Just when we thought we had the project fleshed out, the Ninja story guru from on high scribed down in stone tablets what was to be the Ninja Rally story mode. We made room for it in the project plan and got ‘er done. After some editing and creating a story engine, the Story Mode added a whole new level to the game and I’m so glad we did it in retrospect.
It was a boatload of work but probably some of the most fun project work I’ve ever done. We are going to wait and see how people accept it, and where it goes. It’s very exciting to do this whole waiting thing, wondering how your game is going to hit the world after putting so much into it. I’ve been through enough death threats and one star reviews with CastleGuard to weather anything, and some people will always hate your work, but I have a special feeling about this game.
We took a few weeks of beta testing and tweaking, picked things apart and put em back together, but it was well worth it, and I feel like we created something wonderful as a ‘game task force’. Because of that, even long after the cries of HYAH! have faded from the halls of glory, I will still see Ninjas rallying in my dreams.
When the durn thing gets approved, I’ll post a link. Until then, check out the awesome NinjaRally.com site!