Martian Panic - Behind the Scenes

Martian Panic (developed by N-Fusion Interactive) is a short game for the Wii, that has a longer history than you might expect.

WIP cover left, Final cover right

The original design emerged in 2007. A demo was built in Unreal Engine 3 that featured a stationary player-controlled turret, with Martian invaders attacking on all sides. The look was colorful, but more gritty than the cartoonish version that eventually shipped on Wii.

This demo contained two levels:

The Boardwalk

The Drive-In

The Unreal game design was pretty different from the final game. It focused on the player team holding a single location with a turret that could rotate 360 degrees. You had to protect and recruit civilians, keep your forcefield powered up, and eventually take out a Martian mothership to win the encounter.

Colorful UI overlays with different weapon types were generated:

 

And lots of concept art was created:

This version of the game was developed internally and pitched around to several publishers. It was a good conversation starter, but no one signed on at the time.

At this point we were still excited about the game, but we needed to make some technical changes. The Nintendo Wii was selling like crazy and we had an opportunity to develop our own technology to produce Wii games, without licensing an engine.

Martian Panic was the perfect test case for this technology. So, N-Fusion Interactive's newest engine/editor "N-Room" was born. And the Martian Panic game level "Cornfield Abduction" became the best "vertical-slice" test level to prove things out.

Martian Panic: "Cornfield Abduction" Game Design

 

 

YouTube Video: The Day The Corn Stood Still

It's fun to compare the original design sheets with a playthrough of the final version. A lot of the original concepts made it through to final!

N-Room Technology Advances

N-Fusion Interactive's "N-Room" (game engine & editor) technology was built to support the feature set for Martian Panic. As it developed, the Cornfield Abduction level became a great demo for publishers. This attracted publishers for a variety of publishing deals, and Martian Panic itself ended up taking a backseat. Two other Wii titles were eventually developed and released before Martian Panic went into full development. Those titles are Go Play: Circus Star, and Medieval Games.

Here are some more images of Martian Panic in development:

Old Main Menu

Old concepts for commentators, Martian Overlord, and Scientist.

Pre-visualization renders (not playable) of the Drive-In level.

Screenshots of the Drive-In, first playable version. These screenshots were taken in editor, and you can see the "camera nodes" placed throughout. These determined the gameplay camera movement/placement and contained gameplay scripting information (enemy spawn triggers).

Screenshots of the first playable version of Area 15 military base.

Comparing Unreal Martian vs the version that shipped using N-Room.

More Martian concepts.

Lost Levels

Martian Panic had an unusually long list of incomplete levels that were in development at one time. I think this was because the original demo level, Cornfield Abduction, was in development for such a long time, as the tech evolved. And because of that we didn't have a great metric to determine how long a level would take to develop when we went into full production.

Optimism bias would lead you to believe you could make additional levels somewhat faster than the vertical slice (demo) level. But, how much faster? Answer: not fast enough!

I manage to find screenshots of several levels that made it past pre-visualization and into first playable stage. But unfortunately, they had to be abandoned so that more effort and resources could be allocated for the levels that would ultimately ship.

Here's a list of lost levels, starting with those pictured above:

• Atlantis
• The Capital
• Funland
• Easter Island
• Hollywood
• Mars (intended as the final level)
• Hoover Dam
• Stonehenge