Prototype Pitch and Shadows of Mordor

 My team pitched the prototype to an industry panel. Since the original inception of the pitch, the game has changed to the point that it is something entirely else. The mechanic still focuses on controlling a swarm, but the twin stick shooter was taken out and instead the player uses the swarm as their primary weapon. It's been definitely hard to keep up with each change that the designers want the swarm to do, and each change they want takes away from the properties of the swarm to the point that it feels more micromanaging. Swarms should never be micromanaged; instead, they needed the player to give out general orders to the swarm under their control, and they execute the algorithm for the swarm state that they are in. Even talking to other people who I trust give a frank evaluation, wanted the swarm to be more macromanaged, than what was presented. They also wanted the twin-stick shooter back, as now the right stick is worthless.

After the pitch from the industry panel, we felt good about the presentation and felt that the game has a good chance of making it through and being selected to be made to production when Spring hits. I'm not stressing much and just planned to relax during the weekend. When I got home after the presentation, I was ecstatic to find that Amazon finally delivered Shadows of Mordor, a game that I was really excited to play. The last game I played was Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, which was 2 months ago. Playing through Shadows of Mordor, I definitely could tell what all the comparisons to Assassin's Creed was. For all intents and purposes, Shadows of Mordor is exactly like the Assassin's Creed series: from stealth, to finding viewpoints, the overworld map, even to assassinations. However, despite all its similarities, Shadows of Mordor is a really fun game and I feel that it does stealth better than the Assassin's Creed series. Exploring Udun and Nurnen is really fun and reading the encyclopedia (what Assassin's Creed has for places, events, and people) about the world of Middle Earth was really fascinating. I love Tolkien novels, including the Similarion, and seeing this expanded universe in the game form was something, I've been looking forward to since getting tired of the same old rehash game of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I haven't finished the game yet, but everything I played makes me excited to finish the game and hope with anticipation what Monolith comes out with next.