We’re really excited to announce that Rugby Nations 2013 is in development for iPhone/iPad and Android. This new version of Rugby Nations, we hope, will blow you away. We’re literally building it from the ground up, with much improved visuals, much improved AI and some new game modes to keep you entertained for tens of hours.
Once per week, during development, we want to share some of the hard work that goes on at the coal-face of games development to give you an insight into how a game like this is put together. We’ll be sharing some details of design decisions, artwork processes, player AI challenges, audio production and, nearer to completion, video footage of the new game in action.
Before we jump into all this we really want to thank all of you that have been playing the previous versions of the game and have spent the time to leave user reviews on the various stores. You guys (and some girls) are what motivate us to make better games. We want you to be enthralled and deeply immersed in the rugby world we create. We therefore welcome your feedback, whether via Twitter, Facebook or email, as it is really useful to understand what you want from the game. We may not have the time to implement everyone’s suggestions but promise to consider all feedback seriously.
Now onto some details about Rugby Nations 2013….
First we need to address the name of the game. The previous game was titled Rugby Nations 2011 so, you may ask, why are we skipping a year? The reason is that this year the game will be released a little later than it was last year. OK, it’ll still be released in 2012 but the game will spend most of it’s lifetime in the year 2013. It therefore makes more sense to call it 2013 than 2012. We know it might seem a little odd to skip a year but we promise we won’t call next year’s version 2015! 
The very first thing we did, when considering what features to add for the new game, was to go through all of the user reviews of Rugby Nations 2011 and make a list of the most frequently requested improvements. This list broke down into four main areas:
1. Increased accuracy/realism of the rugby simulation.
2. Improved controls and increased options of how to play the ball.
3. Improved visuals.
4. Improved audio and add audio commentary.
It was therefore very clear we had to perform a major development effort in order to address all of these points. In RN2011 the AI code wasn’t as flexible as we’d have liked and that limited what we could build on top of it. This is why we took the decision to start development from a clean sheet and totally overhaul the game from a game-play AND presentation standpoint.
So, this is not a quick update of RN2011. We’re consulting experts in the sport of rugby to enhance the game-play and provide a much more realistic simulation, we’re using advanced graphics techniques to display the 3D graphics and we’ll be polishing the game-play and visuals until it is almost unrecognisable from it’s predecessor.
We hope you’re as excited by the prospect of this new version of Rugby Nations as we are.
We’ll be back next Friday with a post about how we’ve been creating the rugby player visuals. Look out for that and in the meantime – keep the feedback coming!
Here are a few ways to get in touch with us (click on links to access):
Rugby Nations Facebook page (www.facebook.com/rugbynations)
Distinctive Facebook page (www.facebook.com/distinctivegames)
Tweet us @distinctivegame
Email us: info@distinctivegames.com