This was a game I designed for the Gameboy. Sheeeeh, designed this one, eight years ago now, so it was for the GameBoy Advance. It's called MANAMANIA. Basically a very lightweight strategy game. The idea was you have four 'bases' (see the cauldrens?) one for each competing wizard. The wizard needs to amass 'mana' which comes from collecting naturally sprouting crystals and dropping them into his cauldren. Using this mana power then (see the very slim, yellow, mana power bar on the left...and the spells beside it?) the player can cast funky spells on the enemy wizards.One of the must-have spells was 'hatch-a-gelf', which makes these cute little helpers who will automatically go and harvest the crystals for you, leaving you free to concentrate on zapping the enemy.
The game idea was instantly catchy, and at my boss's request I went on to do designs for a PS2 version. Sadly, it never passed first base with any publishers. I really would loved a game like this on my Gameboy though...fast, easy to get, strategic. Instead, for many years the Gameboy had only really awful licence-tie ins, Mario-kart, and Sonic. It's different now...there are some very good, absorbing, dare I say 'grown up' games on the Gameboy. Hell, you can get Sudoku on there now, which just goes to show there are a lot of older gamers carrying a nintendo around.
Manamania was one of my favorite stillborn games.
3 comments:
This is my sort of game.
I love stuff like this, EG: Bomberman etc..
these sort of games used to drive me nuts! plus I never owned a Gameboy in any of it's guises, never was a travelling gamer, hehe
Good idea though, and the Bomberman fans would have loved it!
I have an GBA, i use it when flying it passes the time on the plane, i cannot read when travelling make me ill, so these type of games save me from utter boredom
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