The Project
Pinching Pigeon was the second project i worked on with Mini Mammoth Games, and the Sixth project that the company took on in 2020. For this project i took on contractors from outside of the company to complete the programming, art and sound needs of the project. The game is a fun infinate runner about a pigeon running a muck in a food court. It has some pretty standard runner mechanics with a meta around highscores built over multiple play sessions.
A Juicey Focus
On the surface, Pinching Pigeon looks like a generic infinite runner. You collect points, build combos and aim for the highest score. However, our goal with Pinching Pigeon was to focus on the mayhem that the player causes throughout the court. Plates fly through the air and smash on the ground. Patrons flail their arms in panic and other food court items flop around as you bash them out of the way.
And Flexxx!!!!
Our hope is that the mayhem and the narrative of “Pesky bird causes havoc” will reinvigorate the genre for new players and old. Only time will tell.
No humans were harmed in the making of this game…
The Troubled Development
Pinching Pigeon was a fun excperience, but there were some problems. During development our contracted programmer was repeatedly unable to meet the needs of his contract. this was caused by an unfortunate mix of life events and personal priorities, and was accounted for as part of the risk assessment for the project. As such, i was able to work with the contractor to create a set of milestones to bring him back on target, and the rest of the project went smoothly after this point.
Overall, Pinching Pigeon was put together on time, and will release on schedule. Its a fun little game, and I’m proud of it.