Gaming Blog – The Shockwave Spark

I’m sure by now that some of you have noticed (at least I hope so) that Shockwave has recently undergone a slight face lift. We also added a slew of new games that you can absotively posolutely only find here at Club Shockwave. Now, I’m sure we made this all look easy. But honestly, trying to come up with great games that you, our loyal, wonderful, Shockwave audience will like has not been an easy task.
My name is Dana. I’m one of the game producers at Shockwave and I’d like to tell you a little bit about what went into one of the newest games for the site: Mahjong Panda.

When we decided to do a mahjong style game, we looked at several aspects to try to make the game different. Of course, we could have just put up any old mahjong game, but we wanted to do something that even we hadn’t seen before. The first thing we had to nail down was the theme. Although we wanted to go a little outside the box for some things, we were quite comfortable keeping the setting a little more traditional. Hence the theme, “Bamboo Forest.” Mahjong is supposed to be kind of relaxing, but also lend itself to a fast-paced matching frenzy, and we think the bamboo forest matches that well. That was the easy part; nailing down the next step was a little trickier…

All of the new exclusively exclusive Club Shockwave games strive to have a real sense of uniqueness. We wanted them to be easily recognizable as something you can only find here (did it work?). In Mahjong Panda, that uniqueness comes in the form of a super cute, cuddly, but needy, little panda. The idea of having a panda may not seem very unique, but the way players can interact with the panda is what makes the game different. We will get to that a little later. First I wanted to mention a few of the funnier parts to panda rearing.
Have you ever raised a panda? Me neither! I thought it was going to be fairly easy to figure out things that we could use for the “panda tiles,” as we call them. These are the tiles that the panda requests so that he can grow from a little panda into big panda. First thing should have been easy: food. Turns out, not so easy. Everyone knows that pandas eat bamboo. But did you know that bamboo makes up, like, 99% of what they eat? Me neither! That made finding food items for the little guy a little more challenging. Fortunately we also found out that they like to eat fish and honey, plus few other things we couldn’t use in the game.

We also wanted to have a little fun with the panda tiles. While we stuck to a traditional panda diet, when it came to fun, we just had to go a little crazy! Hence the teddy bear, hula hoop, and bouncy ball! Although I have never seen a panda in the wild, I imagine they might have fun with a hula hoop.

Okay, on to the whole “the way you, the player, interact with the panda is what makes the game different” thing (told you I’d come back to it). At first, the panda looks very innocent and innocuous. But, if you’ve played the game, you may have noticed something else about this furry little fella: The panda has a magical ability to completely transform your game play from strictly matching tiles, like in traditional mahjong, to actually making you war against yourself over “should I match one of its panda tiles even though he hasn’t requested it so that I can get a better time or should I wait ‘til he requests it so that I can grow him more quickly and get my rewards?!” Sneaky isn’t it? In essence, you can play the game 2 ways. You can play just like traditional mahjong , or you can focus on the panda rearing to get token bonuses, awesome trophies, and to just feel a little happier on the inside. The choice is yours… dun dun dun…

I hope you have enjoyed this little glimpse into the creation process of Mahjong Panda. Considering that mahjong is such a traditional game, it was a lot of fun to change it up a bit and offer our wickedly savvy Shockwave audience something a little different. Of course, you can only find the game on Club Shockwave (our new spiffy subscription service!), but we will continue to develop new groundbreaking games for all of Shockwave to keep you coming back for more. So stay tuned. It has been a pleasure to have you all join me for my first post on the Shockwave Spark. I look forward to hearing your comments and finding out what works for you and what doesn’t. And if you see me in the chat, feel free to say hi!

Cheers!
DanaOfShock