Fox Party
Release type: Incomplete
Release date: 2001
Levels: 14
Author: John Brandon
Related games: Foxy Dimensions, Fox World
The third of three Foxy games. This reverses the pragmatism of Fox World by proposing an even less likely genre for the Foxy Dimensions cast and resources: a party game.
After the pragmatism of Fox World, John Brandon took back the reins from his brother Robert and steered back toward the horizon of wild ambition. And how.
As Robert did with the previous game, John turned his Foxy Dimensions resources to a new task. Whereas Robert tried nobly to work the material into something possible within the available tools and engine, John chose an even wilder target than before: a competitive party game, in the vein of Mario Party.
The basic framework is a board game, whereby landing on certain squares under certain conditions leads to an action-oriented mini-game. You might throw darts or play a round of whack-a-mole, or try to navigate an obstacle course. In the case of Fox Party, the games are a one-on-one fighting match (naturally enough); a side-scrolling go-cart challenge; an archery course; and a racetrack for a remote control car.
In aid of this ambition, John produced the usual high standard of material -- very appealing sprites and intruiging situations -- then trailed off in an elipsis when it came time to assemble the material. It's easy to see why; there's no clear way to make this game work. Oh, you could get clever. There are ways to make a die roll. There must be a way to play with counters and level transitions and some invisible trickery to allow players to take turns racking up a score. That, however, would take some high-level hackery well beyond the scope of an isolated designer. Even then, it wouldn't be quite what he intended here.
So the Foxy trilogy is complete, with three largely impractical yet fascinating experiments. Aborted as all of these plans may be, the optimism here should inspire a new way of looking at Game-Maker. No, none of these games quite work -- but, they might have. Maybe there's a way. Nothing brilliant ever came out of playing it safe, and here the Brandon brothers have blazed a new trail. Where it leads may well be up to you.
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Contents
Story[edit]
N/A
Instructions[edit]
TBC
Credits[edit]
Designed by
- John and Robert Brandon
Engine and Tools by
- Recreational Software Designs
Compiled by
Background[edit]
John Brandon:
- My DBZ inspired Saiyan Fox characters in a Mario Party inspired party game.
- The party aspect was never developed, and frankly would probably be impossible to develop as multiplayer/multi-character games didn't seem to be possible in GM. I think at the time I figured I could get around this by having people take turns, but that's no fun for a party game. The concept was doomed from the start.
- I mostly just wanted to work on some quirky mini games with my fox characters and have a joke with my friends.
- I started work on some mini games: archery, go karts (a side-scroller; dodge obstacles), and duel (fighting style game based on work we'd done with Foxy Dimensions). There are playable demos of each, in various stages of completion.
Availability[edit]
Prior to this archive's online presence, this game is not known to be publicly available.
Archive history[edit]
On January 21st 2010, Rob Brandon pseudonymously responded to a Reddit thread with a passing comment about Game-Maker. When pressed about his history with the software, he replied that all of his games were stored on a couple of defunct computers, either inaccessible or destroyed.
Over 31 months later on August 23th 2012, John Brandon commented on a YouTube clip that he had found an archive of his and his brother's old games. The next day he composed a long e-mail describing the contents of a jumbled collection of gameware files, adding up to an ostensible sixteen games. All of the games were in pieces, many of them incomplete.
Over the next five months, through regular consultation, the games were all reassembled as well as the materials would permit. The games were reconstructed or otherwise recovered on the following dates:
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Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Fox Party (114.6 kB)
