The Full English Creating A Casual Browser Based, Point And Click Adventure
Taken by Drew Wilkins and Robert Sloan of Fish in a Bottle, this talk very much did as it says on the tin, as the two guys talked through the process of making a point and click game as an introduction, almost a prequel, to the animated Channel 4 series Full English. The idea was to use the scatological humour-filled game to advertise the upcoming series, yet, although proud of their end product, ultimately failed in that respect as it was the show that ended up pointing people in the direction of the game. With quite a specific brief, this untried approach proved tricky, with stories of the game going over budget and being hard to edit due to the integrated nature of each puzzle or scene. The idea was to appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike so that the shows prospective audience could get used to the characters before the show hit. Despite not getting the numbers it has aimed for, fan and production company feedback was positive and the pair insist that should they be given another opportunity, they have learned so much from this attempt that next time would be more successful. Influenced by games like Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, the pair underestimated the time it would take to make the game, which had a regimented legal process due to the depiction of real-life celebrities (though it turns out Kuato from Total Recall appearing from Pippa Middletons behind is fine). There were also problems with pacing. With the game being 4 chapters, the pair suggested they were dissatisfied with the drawn-out tutorial chapter and as such lost users before the more exciting part of the game has begun. Furthermore, as the whole game was developed in Flash, it was too big to send to gaming portals and therefore was only accessible on the Channel 4 website.