Big Move Announcement #3: We won the MSC pitch!

Level up! My team has just won the MSC IP Creator's Challenge pitch. We have been awarded a grant of RM 50,000 to create a game within 6 months, along with two other winning teams. That's seriously the first time I received a freaking big cheque lol, size-wise and finance-wise.

More photos of the pitch are available at http://cmc.msc.com.my/event_detail.php?ID=242. Man I look so stupid in the first photo :S Thanks to Sora for the link!

The team celebrated in Chilis One Utama. You have no idea how hard it was to hide that cheque while walking towards the restaurant. Not something you wanna show to the crowd you know. Though after dinner, Nyin waved the cheque all over the place :S

(L - R)

My close sisters, Leeyean (Interface Designer) and Leenyin (Art Director). Nyin was the interface designer for Ballistic Wars (except the crappy main menu, done by yours truly :P). Yean is the artist for the upcoming Puzzerella Pizza game, which is coming out... uhh, soon *sweat*

Beside them is one cool guy.

Daim (Character Designer) couldn't make it for obvious reasons, so we connected to his hologram projection unit in Tokyo. He created those ball-ish characters in Ballistic Wars.

The one showing the thumbs up in style is Aidi (3D Modeler and Animator). He has the word "future" written all over. He also created the enemy ships in The Last Canopy.

And Adrian (Lead Programmer) is new to the team, so everyone say hi! He's my good friend whom I've known since college days. And he just continued WoW! Hooray!



Let's talk a little about the game. No Straight Roads is an arcade shooter that was inspired by arcade titles such as Rail Chase and House of the Dead. Basically we will spoon-feed the action for you. We'll change the camera angle and add rich visual narrative to the playing experience.

All you do is just move the mouse to shoot and drive. You only do one of the two at any given time. No matter how intense the action or point-of-view is, you just need to use your mouse to shoot and drive. That's what makes the game casual enough for everyone to play.

The game is also inspired by Gurren Lagann and Speed Racer. In other words, it's gonna be an AWESOME experience. The car is gonna skid on the walls, its movements are clumsy and we will have crazy boss battles that needs your wit to defeat them.

No Straight Roads will be in 3D, with the characters being 2D (billboard images in 3D space). It will be downloadable on the PC. I have a partnership link with a New York-based publisher at the moment, so I will use that to propose this game as a console downloadable as well, on PSN, XBLA or WiiWare.

The screenshot above is done by Leenyin. She did a great job compiling everyone's work to create such a vibrant and exciting scene.



The story is set in a future post-apocalyptic world where an evil company reigns to take advantage of the situation. They are called Straight Roads Inc. Hence the game name.

Ayola (the girl on the right) is part of the rebel force (hmmmm this is starting to sound familiar...) that opposes the company. One day, she fought them on her bike, but lost completely. Trying to run away, she hailed a taxi that belonged to Marty (the guy on the left). Reluctantly, he let her in, and drove the taxi out of the city. The game starts here!

Of course, Daim did the character designs, which are excellent as usual :)



And this is the futuristic taxi that Aidi built. His sense of how the future looks like never fails to amaze me, and he has put a lot of thoughts to come up with such a sleek-looking car. Kudos!

I still haven't figured a name for the car yet. Anyone have any ideas?



And this is the logo of No Straight Roads, done again by expert visualizer Nyin.



Nyin has also done an amazing job with the pitch document, taking everyone's drawings and my writing, then montaging them nicely into a great page layout. This is a one-page preview of the pitch document, and no doubt it has helped a lot to win the hearts of the judges.

So yea that's the game. I couldn't have done it without this team chock full of talent and dedication. Ah to be surrounded by geniuses, I'm so blessed. :) Thank you so much, team! We have finally done it, though the true work starts now! Korekara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu. (I shall depend on you guys even from now.)

Oh speaking of which, Daim with a beanie reminds me of a game character...