Behind the Making of Beast Farmer:Swamp Chicken Edition

Back in 2009, we began development on our first property Beast Farmer. At the time the mobile market had just begun, and our cell phones were slowly becoming a mobile entertainment system. This presented an interesting opportunity for us. While our plan was to always make a large scale game, the App Store allowed us to go to market one beast at a time. Beast Farmer: Swamp Chicken Edition is the result of that decision. Little did we know that we were not only taking a journey into a scary unknown platform, but by accident were also going to push the visual limits of mobile games before it.

Swamp Chicken Cast

Creative Director Matthew Fernandes had spent months creating the creatures that would inhabited the Beast Farmer universe. But the choice now was which one would star in our first iPhone release. When 3D lead Ken Vass joined the project, he immediately took a liking to the Swamp Chicken character. So the challenge was set to bring the lively concept designs to life. Coming from animation, Fernandes was aiming to create a look to the designs that was not seen in most games. It was critical that if you were to care for these creatures, that they needed to feel alive. Using a pipeline that resembled an animated feature, Fernandes and Vass began a journey to building these creatures one pixle at a time.

Bird Squawk

Going into the making Swamp Chicken Edition, we really wanted to push the look of the game by doing 3D animation, rather than the flat 2D games we are accustom to in mobile content. Of course this presented many challenges from a technical perspective. iPhones typically have a limited amount of memory to draw from, making most games to date simple in it's look and feel. We were not only making game characters that were hi-poly models, but we were animating at 24 fps, in 7 mini games, resulting in hundreds of frames the device has to recall during game play. It was clear we were making a game that may, or may not work on the phone. We had already spent months modeling the characters, so going backward and starting from scratch was not an option. Not wanting to compromise the look, or organic movments the challenge went to our programmers to find a way to make it work.

Swamp Chicken Concept Sketch

Every great game starts with a single image. It's often this first image that creates a raw feel for the direction.
While some things might evolve and change, it often starts here. The challenge is to have this loose free feeling that comes through in the art, translate to the rest of your game. When we would get lost in the design process, we would often refer to this first image to get us back on track.

Swamp Chicken Stages

The design challenge with Beast farmer, is that it's not about the look and behavior of just one beast, it's many growth stages of that same beast. This would require understanding the natural evolution of the creature that would make sense to the environment it lives in. The Swamp Chicken is a prehistoric bird that lives in a deadly boiling bog. So naturally it would have to be tough enough to survive predators , agile enough to make its way through obstacles, and cute enough that kids would want to have it as a pet.

Veteran Swamp Chicken

When we got to the end of the chickens stages of growth, we felt something was missing.The pay off needed to be bigger.
So in the final moments we quickly designed a fourth stage for the beast to grow. The result was fantastic, and it gave an open ending to our game. Who knows how big this beast will end up getting in the updates to the game.

Teen Chicken Screen Shot

Beast Farmer just isn't able the characters, but also the environments they live in. It was important that the world felt real, even for the iPhone version. Thought went into every leave, flower and tree bark that grows inside the swamp. This makes the Swamp Chicken feel right at home.

Teen Chicken- Head Shot

New software is made available to artists every year, creating new possibilities for cross-platform media. We took the approach to the models in the same way we did for past animations projects. Focusing on every wart and scratch. Switching between Maya and Zbrush, 3D lead Ken Vass was able to accurately bring the characters to life in great detail uncommon to games.

Swamp Chicken Maya Renders

Animations

When lead animator Ryan Carr joined the project, he was given the task of taking the chicken from model to living creature.
Our goal was to create the feeling you were playing and animated movie, but our challenge was the limited virtual memory
of the device. It took a lot of test to find the frame rate that worked. Finally we have to reduce the frame rate to get everything to fit, but these early tests set the tone.

Battle Arena- Screen Shot

The game is unique in that we are mixing Tamagachi with other games like Super Mario and Street Fighter. But these styles of game speak to different types of gamers. The challenge was to make the games feel connected and satisfying for different demographics. We feel that we were able to successfully create a balance of games that keep the player involved and on their toes.

Battle Bird Concept-Sketch

Battle Bird- 3D Model

Swamp Yeti- Concept Art

We never ended up using the Swamp Yeti in this version of the game, so he'll have to get some love on the blog

Crab Apple- Concept Sketch

Crab Apples are giant crustaceans that live in the oceans of beast planet. Every year they storm the beaches and enter into the Boiling Bogs of Doom looking to feed. Young swamp Chickens can fall prey to these creatures if they do not pay attention.
we felt this was a perfect enemy to bring into the game play.

Crab Apple- 3D Render

Bog Walker-Concept Sketch

Bog Walkers are evil mermaids that live in the dark waters of the Boiling Bogs. Originally this character was meant to live in the
the arctic, but we felt he needed to make his unveiling in our first game, thus he has gone from the Arctic Mermaid to the Bog Walker.

Bog Walker-3D Model

Jade Dragon Concept Sketch

Jade dragons are made of jade stones and live in the lava pits of the bog. But in fact they are flaming parasites, that can build themselves armor out of jade stones, and can shift their appearance on command.

The Jade Dragon-3D Model

3D Modeled Sidescroller level 1

Building a convincing world was a priority for our game. The side scroller designs were the biggest challenge when it came to modeling. There were only two levels to build, so the demand to make them high quality was critical. After being modeled and textured, each asset was exported and brought in to Photoshop to compose the matte painting. Great backgrounds often go unnoticed, because we accept that they are a part of the world of your characters. But if you begin to notice the BG's, it means something feels out of place. I think we have done a great job in making people not notice the painful work that went into these.

3D Modeled sidescroller level 2

Swamp Chicken sidescroller concept art