Pie-Parazzi was developed over two weeks in June 2008 by Derby Games Studio for BBC Blast. The game design concept was produced by pupils of Swanwick Hall School during a competition organised by our client. We had previously spent three days implementing two prototypes of the strongest candidates in Game Maker.
The prototype phase gave us a good idea of how the games would work in practice. The runner up (by Chellaston School) was a scrolling platformer called ‘Eco Warrior’, in which two teams of two competed against each other above and below ground to collect tokens and powerups. As such it would have been a much easier game to implement, but it was felt that it lacked depth and had not been pitched particularly well. Therefore Swanwick Hall’s ‘Celebrity Game’ was chosen for full development, despite the prototype itself being less polished than its competitor.
The game was to run on a Windows platform, but it would have to be shown and played on the Derby city centre big screen (rather large but also rather low resolution). It had to support four players so we decided that Xbox360 controllers were the way forward rather than crowding the keyboard.
This post-mortem is from my point of view as Project Manager and Programmer.
Posted by Henry 
