Lightmaker Games: Eat Zombie Eat!

Lightmaker has taken its first steps into the highly competitive world of Gaming apps with the release of the eagerly awaited “Eat Zombie Eat” game under the newly formed Lightmaker Games label.

The game sees Norm, a happy go lucky zombie, in need of a healthy zombie diet of fresh meat and it is up to the player to provide him with those much needed arms, legs and other body parts.  In fact a good smattering of brains helps Norm to survive decomposition, but beware – junk food and boulders are not Norm’s best friends!

Project lead and developer Jon Gaukroger explained the thought process behind Norm’s adventures. “We wanted to make a game which was simple and addictive.  It was based on a flash game we made a few years ago which involved using the mouse position to move the character, however we were able to modify this to use the accelerometer capability of iPhone and iPods.”

The major challenge for the Lightmaker team was working out a way to get all the required animation sequences into the game-play without creating a massive file size for players to download.  Using a variety of tools including TexturePacker they were able to compress the animation sequences into a format which is low in file size, and quick for the graphics card to render.  The game has two sets of all graphics which means it works well in a standard resolution as well as with the HD graphics for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.

The team are already looking to release an upgraded version of the game and hook it up to Apple’s Game Center so that people can view a universal leaderboard and compete against their friends.  Social functionality will also be included to allow people to share both the game and its scores via Twitter and Facebook.

Watch this gaming space!!