Jungle Speed - 2009
On completion of Spiderman: Friend or Foe, NLG decided to take on a new direction with a reimagining of a popular European Board Game called Jungle Speed. Our Head of Business Development, Sean Murch, had recently joined NLG and brought with him his vast experience of publishing relationships through his previous company called Playful Entertainment. NLG created two products through this partnership with Sean. The first being Jungle Speed and the other being Ticket To Ride.
We used a similar approach to development as we did on Spiderman. Much of the art content would be created using external development with our China Studio. What was unique with the China Studio is that it was a subsidiary of Next Level Games, not an independent studio as with most outsourcers. We had a duplex building where one side was the development studio and the other side could be used for management or business travel. One of my biggest regrets in my career was that I was given the opportunity to travel and stay in China to help run this outsourcing studio. Looking back now, this would have been a tremendous opportunity. Even raising our young children there would have offered a unique perspective on culture and raising a family. I turned down this opportunity, mainly out of fear of the unknown, and Justin Dowdeswell took on this opportunity with his family. Justin and I would later work together at Relic Entertainment.
In the early days of Jungle Speed, we spent hours upon hours playing the tabletop board game and getting to know the ins and outs of the product. Jungle Speed's Art Direction was handed to a terrific concept artist, David Enciso. David's character designs were a perfect match for this game. We outsourced much of the environment art and characters, and I, in addition to being the Production Art Manager, handled the character rigging for the product. I had dabbled with some character rigging at the end of Spiderman Friend or Foe and felt comfortable wearing a couple of development hats on Jungle Speed.
Partway through the development of Jungle Speed, Next Level Games changed its studio location from Yale Town to a brand new building on Robson Street in downtown Vancouver. We were a block down from the beautiful downtown library and one block up from the soon-to-be newly renovated BC Place Stadium. It was an exciting time to be at NLG. Spiderman had received very good reviews, and the Metacritic scores for Jungle Speed were respectable. However, there were much bigger things to come for Next Level Games.
Meta:
Paul Goad. Game Development Credits. Jungle Speed: Nintendo Wii
Paul; Goad; Jungle; speed; nintendo; wii; next; level; games; nlg