Registered: Apr 2012
Location: Canada
Posts: 2

What would you like to see in a Curling Video game?

Hello Members of the Curling Zone,

I'm currently developing a curling video game for digital sale- and would really appreciate some feedback on what you would like to see in a 'dream' curling game.

My questions for you:

What platform do you prefer? (PC, Mac or XBOX)

What is the maximum you would pay for a well reviewed curling game?

Which curler do you think best exemplifies the sport today- both in international recognition and raw talent?

What feature have you never seen before that would really make the game worth buying?

Current Features:
- Multiplayer (hot seat, or internet).
- Multi-game tournaments.
- Quick match, jump right into a game.
- Tests of skill
- Novelty game modes (e.g. skins)
- Win tournaments and challenges to unlock custom team colours, awards and furniture for your home curling rink.

And to wet your appetite, a few early images of a curling rink in the game:



(Gameplay purposely not shown yet)

I look forward to reading you feedback :-)

Last edited by Rambus on 04-11-12 at 09:20PM

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Registered: Feb 2009
Location: Ottawa
Posts: 900

Body checking and fighting.
Not allowed in real life, make it so in a game.

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Could have the world curling tour or the Brier playdowns with actual players. I'd pay $60 bucks if it was actually good. Put Glenn Howard in it. Check out the online curling on flyordie.com. It's very realistic for an online game. Would be a good start to a real legite game.

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I prefer X box, although the platform doesn't really matter to me. I would pay $60 if the game was good. Kevin Martin is the most successful and most recognized curler out there. In terms of features I would like the ability to play other well known teams. Not so much multi-player but the ability to play a Brier for example would be awesome. Most important for me is the realism. The rocks should act like real rocks and the sweeping should make a big difference in the result of the shot. Good luck with the game!

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Registered: Apr 2012
Location: Calgary
Posts: 16

I'd think Kevin Martin or Glenn Howard for the cover, and if I had to pick one it'd probably be Glenn. If you wanted a woman it would have to be Jen Jones, although she has so many (unwarranted) haters that it might not be the best choice.

I'd pay 60-70$ for a quality game.

I'd prefer PC, but only because I don't own a console. I think you'd be silly though not to make it multi-platform if it was an option.

It'd definitely be a huge plus to be able to play with real players and teams, I remember playing fifa over winning eleven in the past just because they had all the real teams and players.

The ability to unlock not only 'custom furniture' for your rink, but improved equipment (sliders, brooms) would be cool.

Some sort of multi-season franchise mode as in other games like madden would be real neat. ie you make a character (or choose an existing player) and try and build a team around them, adding free agents between season and competing with other teams to recruit quality players that graduate from juniors (like drafting in the NHL/NFL). Heck on that note you could even start your character out as a junior and graduate to men's/women's.

Real events would be a plus but I could understand that licensing could be an issue. Some sort of faux brier by another name with a similar structure would be just as good though. Mirror the season to real life; the first half of the season is for cashspiels, the second half for playdowns.

Varied player stats for players for hitting accuracy, power, draw weight, sweeping ability, etc. would be neat.

Having different ice conditions from one venue to another in terms of curl and speed. ie playing at the national championships gives you a nice 4 feet at curl and fast ice but playing in the timbuktou men's spiel only gives you a couple feet of curl, and slow ice.

I could probably go on but I feel like I'm rambling so I'll stop.

In a nutshell though, if you tried to do for curling what madden does for football, or the tiger woods games do for golf, you'd have a great game.

Last edited by linz on 04-12-12 at 05:10AM

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Registered: May 2011
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Posts: 161

Would be cool to replay famous shots selecting from the games of various international stars. Just how hard was that 8 foot raise???

Platform is a hard call. I would tend towards Android and iPad tablets. That will also give you phones, a nifty user interface, and an accepted low cost e-comm sales model.

Not sure about the nude curling idea - shrinkage on the men's teams could be a seriously embarrassing issue depending on ice conditions .

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Registered: Mar 2009
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 85

Current Features:
- Multiplayer (hot seat, or internet).
- Multi-game tournaments.
- Quick match, jump right into a game.
- Tests of skill
- Novelty game modes (e.g. skins)
- Win tournaments and challenges to unlock custom team colours, awards and furniture for your home curling rink.

If its as realistic as granite2, and it contains all these features id definetly play 60 bucks for that game. But only if its on the PC. I dont have consoles.

The best thing would be if u could play against the real teams and do a career mode where u could play on the world curling tour and all the big tournaments in Canada and the rest of the world.

I think i would play a lot of skins games against kevin martin.

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Registered: Jan 2009
Location: Devils Lake, North Dakota
Posts: 2

I would like to see the option to create your own team using past legends of the game with some of today's superstars. I'd pay $60-80 for a great curling game. The best platform to put it on would be a computer.

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Need to have ability to easily play against other human opponents online. Playing the AI over and over gets tiresome.

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Registered: Oct 2011
Location: Scotland
Posts: 6

There is a pretty good game (Rocket Games?) on Nintendo DS that has a Japanese team against other international teams. The game play is pretty decent.

It would have to have all the international teams for me (not from Canada), so Scotland, Sweden, etc, or just have those teams and players available, Tom Brewster, Niklas Eden, Eve Muirhead etc.

I like the idea of a Fifa 12 style career mode. Also online against other players would be immense, and for that it would ahve to be Xbox360 or Playstation3.

Realistic game play in terms of the stone movement on the ice.

One thing I think very important that hasnt been mentioned is the viewing angle. I think for playing the shot it should be just like the player doing it, ie 2ft off the ground aiming at the brush, after that the view maybe changes to the other end, and the skip view is taken, standing up, or you could change to being down low to get perspective, with a longer view to judge stone speed. Maybe the AI sweepers could call out the weight zones, 1 through 12, on easy mode, but not on hard mode.


Just some ideas. I will pre order already if it has anything like everyone else has mentioned - as long as it has international playing options, ie I don't want to be a Canadian player - I want to beat them -
if only Tom had made that last shot at the 10th

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Registered: Dec 2003
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Your screenshots show a curling club location. I would like to see a stadium option with full stands to emulate Brier or Olympic settings with crowd noise and fan reactions. An empty curling club can get boring fast.

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Registered: Apr 2012
Location: Canada
Posts: 2

Thank you for the great feedback so far.

To address some points raised by you:
- I probably won't get rights to things like the Brier for the first release- but I can create a 'similar' tournament.
- Currently teams have stats that affect their performance. But as Linz suggested, I may add individual player statistics.
- Unlocking new brooms, sliders and outfits will be supported.
- I currently don't have ice conditions, but this is something I will try to add.
- Spectators will be allowed in multiplayer games. Given enough time I hope to make it so on a single server (rink) multiple games can be happening simultaneously.
- Sweeping is currently implemented.
- The curling club will not be empty, it will be filled with drunk spectators.
- I'm planning on charging 20 dollars for this game, so its excellent to hear that I'm not going to be over charging.
- I will add a feature that lets you set up curling scenarios (famous shots) and easily share them with each other.

Keep the great feedback coming!

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Is it possible to make this game compatible with iPad?

Also important to get the physics right I.e. dag effect

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Registered: Mar 2005
Location: Redneck Saskatchewan
Posts: 1503

Humour. Fun. The option to dip behind the scoreboard for a wee nip. (The ability to kick somebodys stone if that person has gone over the hogline....And the fight that follows.) Most curlers have a great sense of humour. They are not the dour, miserable robots that are emulated on certain curling websites by certain dour, miserable posters. If the game is technically perfect, but the characters have no personality, then the game is boring and will fail. My two cents that could make you millions.

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There are two keys, that no other curling game has created.

- one, having the stones act correctly with the geometry and precision of realism. The best game to date is flyordie.com - however rocks jump forward when hitting a stone and when you tap a rock it moves much too far. As well, peel weight is inaccurate - however, it's still the best game to date. These little things are VERY important - they need to be exact, actually very exact. If you don't know these things, get a professional to help you. Correct angles are also key, for doubles and moving of stones - it has to be very real.


- two, playing outside of a curling rink - where you can upgrade, to small tournaments or cash events in a curling facility, to a Grand Slam or provincial in a 1500 to 3000 seater, to playing at a stadium. Unlocking these with progress. That with being able to create a various types of plaers would be great.

I'd pay $100 or more if the game was outstanding.

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they fixed the rocks moving forward on nose hits on playcurling.com (flyordie)

Need bonspiels! Triple knockout formats and such and to be able to play them online.

Real players would be cool and a career mode.

But yeah, for the game to be good, the physics need to be very real. Otherwise it's not curling.

Jon

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we definitely need this on PC as well. A mouse is good for curling games. Can be used for sweeping, maybe accuracy during the slide i.e. Takeout Weight Curling 1 and 2.

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Oh and a Skip only mode but it ALLOWS you to throw two rocks in a row somewhere in the order (you should be able to order your team however skip could play lead, vice-skip could play 2nd, etc this would add some depth to the game, maybe even have a 5th player).

But yeah, every Curling game I've played, you either throw all of them or none and just skip. If the AI was good enough this could be fun, because then you'd have to clean up after some missed shots etc.

Also, would love to see co-op multiplayer. One could control sweeping while other throws etc.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Unregistered
There are two keys, that no other curling game has created.


- two, playing outside of a curling rink - where you can upgrade, to small tournaments or cash events in a curling facility, to a Grand Slam or provincial in a 1500 to 3000 seater, to playing at a stadium. Unlocking these with progress. That with being able to create a various types of plaers would be great.

I'd pay $100 or more if the game was outstanding.

---

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Registered: Oct 2002
Location: Omaha, Nebraska, USA
Posts: 1713

Don't forget mascots amongst the crowd (Slammer, Scottie, Brier Bear).


Cut scenes between tournaments (let your imagination fly on that one...perhaps on the same level as "Men With Brooms").

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Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:

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Originally posted by AK267
Don't forget mascots amongst the crowd (Slammer, Scottie, Brier Bear).


Cut scenes between tournaments (let your imagination fly on that one...perhaps on the same level as "Men With Brooms").

---

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as far as sweeping I'd rather see just a single button push, maybe a few different speeds of sweeping you can use, but your sweepers should have stamina bar, that can easily be regenerated but if you throw three rocks or something in a row and gotta sweep "every inch!" each time, the next rock, your sweepers shouldn't be as energized. Get what I'm saying? I hope so.

A few rocks of not sweeping so hard and such, maybe some time used to think can bring their energy back, as curling isn't all that intensive but for short periods it can be and if play double and triple header matches, that's tiring of course and could be model in as well.

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Registered: Jan 2004
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Posts: 1441

I think the most important thing to focus on is good AI strategy. Granite 1 & 2 were enjoyable games, because you knew the computer would call a relatively good game against you.

Takeout Weight Curling, even though the graphics were better was far less fun because the computer's strategy was far worse than what you'd see on your average Friday night league.

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Registered: Feb 2011
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Realistic physics and responsive controls. I want the difference between a rock thrown to the button vs the top of the 8-foot to be very precise. Most curling games get this wrong, where throwing the correct weight has much more to do with chance than anything else. The rock should move at the correct speed, curl the right amount at the correct point in its trajectory, sweeping should have the correct effect, etc.

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Registered: Jul 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 23

One thing to watch out for that exists in flyordie is that the thrower "hits" the broom every time. This takes away from the realism of the game. It would be good to be able to set skill profiles for players where some might have better weight control
..better on the stick...better/worse hitters, etc.

This would make the strategy element more important

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