Warthog have been letting their imagination and creative juices go wild over the last few months to develop new IPs that will stand up and be counted. This is in response to industry reacting more and more to the lack of daring to be creative, a fear of testing new IPs and the loss of originality when we start to go down the route of "Now that's what I call game number 42 in the series of bland sales bets".
From the outset, they have thought long and hard about the characters they are developing, drawing upon well-known aspects of our culture and heritage.
A fine example of this is a game based on a rebellious awakening in an Orwellian future England; when a new dawn of anarchy and chaos has arrived in the form of new age Punk Rockers who turned up and stuck two fingers up towards the old guard who has taken control of the future. (for our US audience: two fingers = the middle one)
Johnny Whatever is a reluctant punk hero fighting the Iron Royals, who have enslaved the people of New London. Johnny Whatever combines rock music and pulse pounding action to deliver a completely unique style of game play where music is your weapon. Harnessing the untapped power of DirectMusic in conjunction with a complete suite of next generation graphical effects, Johnny Whatever is a genre defining title" a 3rd Person Riff Shooter!
Warthog also looked towards Japanese Anime for inspiration during the development of their next original IP. The blueprint for this game was clear: it had to have classic gameplay, unique style and originality. Milo is a game where the world of colour is used to create a unique playing experience. Milo is a cute character with a cheeky smile and along with his pet (a colour-shooting Chameleon) he brings back colour to a world that has been touched by the Evil hand of Darkness, stripping the world of colour in its wake.
Warthog are also developing for Sony's Next-Gen handheld video game system, the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The first game will be Sticky Balls; a totally original game that is as easy to play as it is fiendishly difficult to master.
Sticky Balls has been described as ‘an exercise in pure gameplay’. The game has already become part of a University Degree course in game design, even before its first release. The early prototype even attracted the attention of the prestigious British gaming publication Edge.
The game is played on tables of various shapes and with a number of differently coloured or patterned balls. The player can shoot any of the balls on the table, rather like taking a shot in pool, causing it to roll across the table surface, rebounding off the edges but as opposed to pool they ‘stick' to the other balls when they touch. As you get deeper into the game, the balls can also have different properties such as being pegged down to the Table, on fire, in liquid, or pre-‘stuck' to other Balls, etc.
Sticky Balls has a simple set of rules which can be adapted to an almost unlimited number of game modes.