B.E.D.E

Baby Explodey Dragon Eggs. What started as a lazy Friday afternoon brainstorming game mechanics has turned into a pet project and narrative obsession of mine.


Backstory:

‘Twas a Friday afternoon, and we’d just polished off a big contract. Chris had been with clients all day and was exhausted, and I’d all but run out of work to be going on with, so we decided to take the afternoon to play with some random game mechanics and see what we could do with them.

Chris had come up with the moving wheels. It was a simple demo involving rotating 5 sided disks which worked like a combination lock. After toying with ways to implement this we came to the idea of having to guide objects down through a series of gears, the teeth of which would either stop the object or let it pass. A few silly ideas later I landed on the idea of dragon eggs, the reward of cooking them being the carrot, the danger of them exploding being the stick.


Baby Exploding Dragon Eggs

Very much a working title, but one I have grown far too fond of. We’ve taken to calling it Bede. The premise is simple, you are a chef tasked with the preparation of the freshly laid eggs of a mother dragon. Dragon eggs are an exquisite delicacy if prepared right, but are as volatile as the elemental lizards within them, and will hatch quickly if left unattended. Unfortunately your manager has paid little attention to your complaints about rats, and so as well as cooking the eggs you must deal with the pests that frequent your kitchen.


[pic: sketches of dragons]


Gameplay

The player sits at the centre of a geared mechanism. One by one, eggs (or possibly rats) drop down from the pipes at the top, and the player must guide them to the appropriate cooking implement at the bottom by turning the gears. player needs to avoid breaking the egg on the spikes, or waiting too long and letting it hatch. spikes are used to skewer any pesky rats that could otherwise ruin a meal. each level has it’s own rules and victory conditions, for example it may be to cook 10 eggs without fail, or to score as many points as possible in 30 seconds.

 

 

Samsung Gear VR

Our target platform for Bede is VR, specifically the Samsung Gear VR, but also making it available for Oculus, Google Cardboard, and a non VR PC version. I’d also like to make a 2D version for mobile, but that’s a distant dream at the moment. I like the Gear as the touchpad gives us an easy way to set up a control scheme which is simple to pick up and doesn’t require any external controls.