“Project White Rock” for the N-Gage

Published by ikona on March 9th, 2007 in General

Hey gang, Ikona here, back from GDC with another hot session report. This one was a real eye-opener, since we got a rare glimpse behind the scenes of a new N-Gage game project that is unannounced and still under development.

The session was called “Designing Next Generation Connected Games”, and it was led by Scott Foe, best known on the N-Gage for producing Pocket Kingdom, one of the first massively multiplayer mobile games. He was also named as one of the “next generation of top gamemakers” in a recent feature published by The Escapist.

His session was aimed at fellow game developers, encouraging them to create games for the new N-Gage platform and offering suggestions on how to do that. To illustrate his points, he talked about the game he has under development — code-named “Project White Rock” — and shared some of the insights gleaned from it.

Along the way, he also dropped a juicy hint about whom he’s working with on this project.

A lot of you have been asking if RedLynx, whose High Seize and Pathway to Glory series are still some of the most popular games on the original N-Gage, are going to make games for the next generation of N-Gage.

Well nothing official has been said, but Foe did flash the RedLynx logo up there and said, “I’d like to announce\ RedLynx was working on this game with me, but I can’t” — so you can draw your own conclusions.

Nothing from the actual game was shown, so that’s going to have to remain a mystery for now, too — however I was able to ask around a bit and I’m pretty sure this is an original project, not a sequel to Pocket Kingdom or any of the existing RedLynx games.

He also hinted at the possibility that this new project could be both cross-platform and multi-platform — meaning that the game would work not only on N-Gage-compatible devices but also PCs, and that the gameplay experience on both would be equivalent.

All in all, one of the best sessions I’ve been to at this year’s show, and definitely of interest to any N-Gage fan.

– Ikona out