Off-Road Velociraptor Safari

This is just too cool: Off-Road Velociraptor Safari game. Read that again. Who says game industry is all about sequels and safe licenses?

You drive a jeep with a spiky ball, and your goal is to chase down raptors and send them to the future, presumably to end world hunger. Or you can do stunts. And you the driver are a raptor, only you wear a hat and a monocle.

Just go and play it already: raptorsafari.com. It’s free.

Or watch a trailer if you want to miss all the real fun, or read a press release. Of course it’s made in Unity, in two months from start to finish.

To me, this is a perfect example of focus. Basically there are three things - 1) vehicle, 2) raptors, 3) physics mayhem - and that almost describes a game. Yes, there are crates and stunts and achievements and online leaderboards, but that’s just additional stuff on top of the core game.

Sounds like a good plan for making game prototypes:

  1. Think up a game idea and describe it in one concise sentence. The idea may be totally crazy, like in this case. I guess an idea like Velociraptor Safari would not fly in a pitch at any publisher, but that does not matter at this point.

  2. Get a small team of smart people. In Flashbang’s case, it seems they were 4 to 7 person team.

  3. Choose a game engine/toolset that will allow you to make your game fast. cough cough

  4. Do it!

All the above requires is a small smart team and groceries/rent for a couple of months.

Your original idea may be totally crazy, but with the actual working prototype at hand it might just work. Looks like Velociraptor Safari really clicked something on the internets (see Kotaku, JayIsGames, Destructoid, TIGSource, AtomicGamer, …).