Crayon Physics (the prototype) lacked a bunch of features, because I locked myself out of my apartment and lost two days of development. I couldn’t get access to the computer that had the source code until June 1st (the release date).
Originally I started working on a bigger version of Pluto Strikes Back. It wasn’t until the second week of development that I decided to start working on Crayon Physics Deluxe. Reason for the swap was that I thought I could do Crayon Physics Deluxe during the summer. Oh boy was I wrong.
The only reason I started working on Crayon Physics Deluxe was to get a free pass to the Game Developers Conference. I figured that I could do something that I could submit to the Independent Games Festival and get in to the finals, because if you’re an IGF finalist you get a free GDC pass.
I changed the physics engine of the game, one week before the IGF deadline.
Crayon Physics Deluxe destroyed my education. When the summer of 2007 ended I took a 6 months break from school to finish the game. When the game made it to the IGF finals, I decided to take another 6 months break. After the summer of 2008 the game wasn’t still finished so I had to take another 6 months break and eventually another one this January. I doubt that they will allow me to finish my degree.
The name “Crayon Physics Deluxe” was picked when I was filling out the IGF submission form and it had an input field for the name of the game. I had to modify the title screen after submitting the game.
I was disappointed when Crayon Physics Deluxe won the grand prize at the IGF. I wanted World of Goo to win, because I think it’s a better game and because Kyle Gabler is my idol.
My mother wasn’t too impressed with Crayon Physics Deluxe, she told me that the game looked like a five year old made it. And I should have used a paper that wasn’t all wrinkled and I could have used a ruler to draw the lines so they would have been straight.
I’ve started sending out the full version to all the pre-orderers. If you’ve pre-ordered the game before January 4th you should receive a download link to the full version within the next 24 hours. Happy playing.
Here’s the room in which the work on Crayon Physics Deluxe was started. Notice the huge amount of junk lying all around. That’s because it’s a storage room (at my parent’s place) used to store all my old computers and other junk that I’ve collected over the years.
The post-it notes contain small TODO lists. This is taken right after I submitted the game to the IGF. Two weeks before this there was only one post-it note on the monitor.
Picture of Old Bastard. Compiling the game on the old bastard takes a little over hour.
Post-it notes from the last two weeks of development.
I was going to post this small segment from the talk that I gave at MIGS few months back. It explained how the prototype of Crayon Physics was created and what the influences of that game were. Unfortunately the audio quality of my MIGS recording was so poor that I couldn’t get anything useful out of it. To fix this problem I re-recorded the audio and slides. Unfortunately when I recorded it by myself it came in twice as long and way more boring than the original.
(I have to apologize for the poor production values).
The music played a really important role in Crayon Physics (the 5 day prototype), not only as something that set the mood for the game, but it actually influenced the content of the game as well. Back in May 2007 I asked Austin Wintory (he did the soundtrack for fl0w) to create some kind of a soundtrack for the prototype. I didn’t know what the music should be like and Austin was really busy at the time so the whole kinda just collapsed and nothing came out of it.
During the last two days of development I was surfing the web for something suitable that might work with game. At the time I was thinking of cheery children’s music, but I wasn’t really happy with the association of cheery children’s music and crayons. It felt cheesy and I didn’t want to make a cheery, bright, loud children’s game. So while I was surfing for suitable music I accidentally stumbled on the song Lullaby by _ghost. It was love at first hearing, I knew that it was the kind of music that the game really needed.
The song is also in the full version of the game (thanks to _ghost, skoria and Brad Sucks for allowing me to use it).
The other thing that I stole from Bit Blot (the other one being this 7 day behind the scenes journey idea) was Alec Holowka’s awesome music. I didn’t actually steal it, I just forced Alec to compose me a song for Crayon Physics Deluxe. Ever since I played Aquaria I’ve been a huge fan of both Derek and Alec, because they created such a beautiful game. So it was awesome that Alec was willing enough to do a song for the game. The name of the song is Afternoon Snooze 🙂
The last song in our short soundtrack came as a total surprise to me. It’s from Stian Stark and it’s called Crayon Dreams. Stian emailed me pretty late in the development and offered one his tracks for the game. And I was surprised to hear how well it fit the style of the current main menu in the game. Thus we made a deal and I’m happy to announce that Crayon Dreams is one of the tracks in Crayon Physics Deluxe.
Hi, my name is Petri and this blog used to be about the 7-day games that I created every month. Long time ago, I released my first real game: Crayon
Physics Deluxe
