作者：John Romero

来到迪士尼这样奇幻的童话森林里你会有什么样的感觉？而这也是我希望《Ravenwood Fair》玩家能够感受到的。

去年我萌生出了制作一款社交游戏的想法，我女朋友Brenda便将我的这一想法告诉了她的雇主（游戏邦注：总部位于旧金山的社交游戏开发商Lolapps）。在2010年8月份的时候我开始咨询一些相关内容，并在几天后着手设计游戏，与开发团队一起致力于《Ravenwood Fair》的开发工作。一开始，我的工作只涉及一些绘画风格而设定游戏的美术方向，但是后来Lolapps美术总监Christine MacTernan便接管了美术设计这一部分的内容，而我则开始创造并编程音效，与一位伟大的作曲家，即来自于Game Audio Alliance的Aaron Walz共同制作了游戏的循环配音。Walz真的很了不起，他能够非常顺畅地演奏玩整首歌曲，所以他才能够创造出如此优秀的音乐。

我们的整个开发团队阵容很小，只有4名程序员，2名概念设计师，2名动画人员，1名界面美工，1名制作人员，以及Brenda和我。总共算起来只有12个人。而且我们最后的游戏的发布日期为10月19日，这就意味着我们只有2个半月的时间去实现所有的构想。虽然这个时间限制着实能够累坏许多社交游戏发行商，但是也有一个好处，那便是整个团队都会为此非常努力地工作。在我出现之前，这个开发团队已经为其它的游戏概念奋斗了7个多月的时间，所以我并不担心时间不足这个问题。

当我来到Lolapps并与其高管见面时，他们告诉我，我可以创造任何游戏，只要它能够赚钱并且能够在9月30日之前发行即可。也就是说我只有不到2个月的时间去完成所有工作。所以我知道自己必须加快脚步并尽快想出游戏方案，我决定快速体验下Facebook游戏《FrontierVille》，并连续三天玩这款游戏以揣摩它的设计模式和盈利模式。随后，我们便发现了一个很有帮助的引擎，它能够非常快速地在屏幕上勾勒出许多图像。我从团队主要编程员身上了解到获得游戏原型需要反复进行多次的编程，所以我将会更加重视这些代码，并让它们能够更好地在游戏中发挥最大作用。

我们很快便想到了游戏设计理念。即游戏将发生在一个童话般的故事中，并在一个笼罩着可怕气氛的森林里一步步展开。因为Facebook上最火的游戏要数商业模拟游戏，所以我希望玩家能够在游戏中拥有属于自己的小生意，而且我希望这种机制又与Facebook上的其它游戏有所不同。我觉得让玩家在游戏中创建市集便是个不错的主意，因为Facebook游戏迄今并未出现任何有关于嘉年华，马戏团或者市集的题材。我的想法是：既然你想要为参与者建造一个活动地，那么为何不能够让他们真正在此做一些有趣的事呢？有什么能比迪士尼乐园更加有趣？想象一下为了在佛罗里达州的奥兰多市建造一座真正的迪士尼乐园，我们必须开拓一大片的野地，而因此破坏了短吻鳄以及其它野生动物的栖息地；虽然我们想要在这片土地上建造一个美好乐园，但是短吻鳄等野生动物却在密谋着如何要回属于自己的领土。我认为这是一个很不错的游戏题材——只要我消灭了一个可怕的森林，我便能够建造一个属于自己的市集，而游客可以到我的市集中参观，并使用我所创造的一切东西，我也能够因此与他们进行交流。这就是我们游戏设计的基础，于是我们便召开了第一次座谈会，制作人以及各项工作的相关负责人都记录下一长串我们需要马上开工的任务。

8月过后，我们仍然致力于游戏系统的基础工作以及整体的美工修正中，完成了《Critter Island》（游戏邦注：现在Facebook已经关闭了这款游戏）工作的Brenda便加入了我们的开发团队。Brenda立即投入游戏任务关卡，地图布局以及部分教程的开发工作中。我们分工行事，她从游戏的后部分做起，而我则从前端做起，同时我们需要确保能在中间部分汇整这两部分工作，并在9月30日之前顺利完成游戏。

在9月末的时候，虽然确定了发行日期，但是在游戏的后期工作中我们仍需要对其进行重新审视以及优化，因为我实在不希望发行一款还未准备妥当的游戏。我们都知道，Facebook上的很多游戏都是还未完善前便推出市面，并在发行后再进行调整。因为我们并不是来自Facebook这个新兴领域，而是奉行“只有一次发行机会”的理念，我认为给玩家留下良好的第一印象非常重要。因为发现游戏中遗漏了一些必要的系统，而且说实在的，在10月份之前发行游戏真的太赶了，让我们的成员每天都神经绷得紧紧地，所以我决定将游戏的发行时间往后推。在10月份的每一天都有人在询问我们“游戏能发行了吗？”等问题。终于，在延长了19天又四个小时之后，我们圆满地发行了这款游戏。我之所以一开始便拒绝了各种采访，是因为我希望在自己有足够勇气让游戏印上我的名字后才让它与大众见面。最后，在10月15日的时候，我们终于对游戏的状态感到满意，并接受了科技博客VentureBeat的采访。

虽然游戏发行了，但是我们的开发团队仍然在认真工作着。我们还需要去填补游戏中的诸多漏洞，并修复一些潜在的问题。在Facebook上发行游戏有一个好处：这里有好几百万的玩家并且每周还有成千上万的人涌进来。Brenda和我在2011年2月25日正式结束了与Lolapps的合作，所以我们便能够挪出全部时间去管理我们共同创办的新游戏工作室Loot Drop。

3月初的时候，在AppData的前15名Facebook应用排行榜上，《Ravenwood Fair》名列第15。这个榜单涵括了Facebook上的所有应用，并不只包含游戏（游戏邦注：当时在Facebook上大约有12万5千款应用程序）。《Ravenwood Fair》是所有非Zynga游戏中的第一名，所以这确实是款很不错的游戏。现在，每个月在不同社交平台上有超过2千5百万的玩家在玩这款游戏，单单Facebook平台就有1千1百万的玩家，并且有超过1百万的Facebook玩家每天都在玩这款游戏（游戏邦注：这是2011年3月份的数据）。我从来没有想过自己能够开发出一款玩家数量比《魔兽世界》多两倍的游戏，而我也很感谢Brenda和Lolapps能够给我这个机会，并且多亏了整个《Ravenwood Fair》开发团队的协助，我才能够顺利完成这款游戏。

《Ravenwood Fair》相关花絮：

除了John与Brenda，整个《Ravenwood Fair》团队中的其他成员都未曾参与过任何游戏开发工作。

玩家能够在这款游戏游戏屏幕加载中看到Frontier Jack的残骸（游戏邦注：Frontier Jack是《Frontierville》这款游戏中的一个非玩家角色），以及我们将埋葬Frontier Jack的一份告示。几乎每个看到这种提及《FrontierVille》游戏元素的Zynga成员都喜欢上了这个设计，我们的这种做法算是延续了游戏开发者相互提及对方作品的精神。《Duke Nukem 3D》中就含有大量此类引用内容。

玩家可以在游戏中分别找到我与Brenda孩子的名字：Maezza，Avalon，Donovan，Mike以及Lillia。我甚至将我的祖母Socorro的小名，Suki也添加到游戏中去。

Huginn是《Ravenwood Fair》中一个良师益友的角色，他有一个弟弟名叫Muninn。这两个角色的灵感都是来自于挪威神话，传说欧丁神的乌鸦将会飞到世界各地，为他带来世界上所发生的最新消息。

而游戏中一座被称为Thunderbox的附属建筑，是源自澳大利亚一座类似的建筑的名字。

“Dirty Donkey Pub”也是命名自美国加州奥克荷斯特市的“Dirty Donkey Tavern”。

《Ravenwood Fair》并不是我的第一款可爱风格的游戏。早在20世纪80年代，我开发Apple II游戏时就已采用这种风格，我之前在Monkeystone Games所制作的游戏也属于这种情况。

我们之所以在《Ravenwood Fair》中设置了“油炸饼马车”这个元素，是因为我有部分的墨西哥血统，而且在像迪士尼这种主题乐园中也常常能够看到这种“油炸饼马车”。

而会出现“超级甜玉米”也是因为我和Brenda都很喜欢吃这种食物。

所谓的Dopefish小摊当然和PC游戏《指挥官基恩4》中的角色Dopefish有关。

“The Fettucine Bros.Cannon”取材于《猴岛的秘密》，Ron Gilbert和Tim Schafer这两个制作人真的很棒。

“The Mystic Wagon”的存在也是来源自《Ultima 4》这款超级优秀的游戏。

“Ravenwood Castle”原本应该被叫做“Dark Castle”（与经典的Mac游戏《Dark Castle》同名），但是因为我们美工为其设置了大森林的风格，所以我便不得不称其为“Ravenwood Castle”了。

游戏中的“Muscle Mania“也曾经出现在《Chrono Trigger》的“Millennial Fair”中。《Chrono Trigger》算是我最喜欢的一款游戏之一。

“Sarlacc Pegball”始于《星球大战》。

设置了“Toader game”也是为了表达对于经典街机游戏《Frogger》的尊敬。

装饰品“Ursoc the Amazing”是受到《魔兽世界》中的“Ursoc boss”的启发。

装饰品“Apollon the Mighty”源自传说中的神。

当这款游戏最初发行时，我们都可以从众多装饰品中看到早前游戏设计的影子。

命名为“Gaea”的装饰品是参考一尊备受争议的“海狸”雕塑，我认为这真的是一个很有趣的隐含引用。

“Ing-Frey”图腾参考了许多挪威神话。

保护者“Feathertop”参考了Nathaniel Hawthorne经典短篇小说中的角色。

“Sincere Pumpkin”保护者引自《It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown》这部电影——“The Great Pumpkin”将会在万圣节前夕拜访最真诚的南瓜地。我最初的想法是如果玩家有19个靠在一起的南瓜，我们就会让一个巨大的南瓜幽灵随机出现。而“19”这个数字则是我们的游戏发行日期，而刚好我们的发行月份是10月，正是万圣节的季节。

游戏中带有魔法的“Vitalin”最初来自《指挥官基恩5：末日机器》这款游戏。

设置“睡眠药水”的灵感便是来自于《睡美人》，但是在这里被纺车扎到手而睡着的设置换成了喝药水。

游戏中的第一个探索过程命名为“Secret of the Forest”，而这也是我最喜欢的游戏《Chrono Trigger》中的歌曲名称。

游戏中藏在深山老林中，有待玩家挖掘的建筑，也指向了《文明》这款戏中的相关信息。

最初，我用《Ravenwood Faire》来命名这款游戏。这就导致大家都对这个游戏议论纷纷，而要求我们进行“A/B测试”，并因此因此浪费了许多不必要的讨论时间。最后，大家决定去掉原先“Faire”中的“e”字母。之前我之所以会使用“Faire”这个单词是因为很多人认为这款游戏是关于文艺复兴时期的市集。的确，这款游戏的背景是中世纪时期，这也是个以市集为主题的游戏。所以我便在所有单词后面都添加了一个“e”字母，如市场“Ye Olde Shoppe”。随后我设计了扩展包，并将其命名为“Ravenrock Mine”，也就是说直到最后都有“e”这个字母的出现。但是后来我们发现“Ravenrock Mine”其实是《上古卷轴》世界中的一部分，所以我便将其改为“Ravenstone Mine”了，幸好最后都保留了“e”。

游戏中的保护者名称最初叫做“超级装饰物”。因为我认为装饰总比“栅栏”，“树木”或者“岩石”等酷多了。这些装饰物将与你的拜访者在市集中舞蹈。所以我们便设置了很多装饰物，它们不像“Vitalin Cannons”，但是却会慢慢朝这个方向变化。在开发过程中，Brenda告诉我每次离开游戏她都有一种不安感，因为她的拜访者可能会被出没于森林中的一些怪兽而吓到。所以我们需要想出一个好办法让玩家能够安心离开游戏。所以我便决定在充满怪兽的森林中安插“超级装饰物”射击球，并且它们都带有“Vitalin魔法”。Brenda也表示这么做着实安心多了。于是，在我将“超级装饰物”更名为“Vita-Decos”的几天后，我又将其更改为一个更有意义的名字“保护者”。这些保护者因为都具有Vitalin魔法，所以能够对玩家起到保护作用，并且隐藏在游戏中的众多岩石中。在地图的边缘，你也可以在岩石中找到Vitalin的存在。

“Crittle Bear”这个名字来源：当决定蘑菇为玩家分配给动物拜访者的食物前，我一直在纠结哪一种食物更适合这些动物拜访者们。“Crittle”是“Critter”与“Vittles”的复合词。在游戏中，“Crittle”指的是一种小小的棕色三角状（有点像狗粮）的食物，而我也是在网上看到这个单词。但是后来我发现这个单词是乡村居民称呼一种兴奋剂的方言。所以我便决定使用蘑菇作为食物，而因为那些熊看起来就像喝醉了似得，所以我便将其命名为“Crittle Bear”，好像他们误食了很多crittle并会对拜访者发动攻击。

“Domovoi”是来自俄罗斯的民间传说。“Domovoi”作为一种友好的幽灵住在房子里，但是因为Ravenwood以前的居住者离开了，所以这些幽灵也不再是早前的Domovoi，它们变得很可怕，并会不断攻击新来者。我想这些“Domovoi”是在保护它们之前主人的房子吧。

Grock是20世纪早期一个非常有名的小丑，所以我将其命名为“小丑怪人”，你可以在我的许多命名中找到早前的一些回忆。

当你建造了一座“姜饼屋”时，一个叫做Hansel的拜访者出现了。但是这却违背了我的初衷。起初，我将这个拜访者称作“纽伦堡”（Nuremberg）。为什么？这里我并没有影射任何纳粹内容，仅仅是因为纽伦堡出产的姜饼一直很有名气。在我们快要将这个姜饼屋内容推出之前，Lolapps的一位上司要求改变这个名字以免冒犯玩家。但实际上，你玩PC游戏《德军总部3D》的时候会因其名称而不快吗？

雪怪“Bumble”是命名自圣诞歌曲《Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer》。

在某一个晚上，我们的编程员想到让Huginn戴上一副单片眼镜，所以用户界面美工便为它加了这种眼镜。也许Huginn原来看起来就像是一只年轻的大乌鸦，但是戴上单片眼镜后，它便瞬间可爱了许多。而且这个形象也能让看起来比较聪明。

在游戏中我们设置乌鸦飞出森林并越过“摄相机”的场景是参考《The Secret of Monkey Island》中第三章节的一个场景，你能看到一只小鸟飞过摄影机并降落在岛上，虽然我们在《Ravenwood》中也采取了类似的做法，但是总体看起来还是非常有趣的。这与游戏《LOOM》当中Cleric的头颅Chao砍下并飞进摄像镜头时相似。如何让乌鸦显得更加真实就需要动画师的反复修改与校正。确实，在我们得到真正想要的形象之前确实需要费不少功夫。

创作《Ravenwood》的主题歌也花了我们不少时间。我联系了Soundrangers询问他们能否为我们这款特别的游戏创造一些原创歌曲。因为我们曾经麻烦过他们帮忙修正《Critter Island》中的歌曲，所以这次我们想知道他们是否也能创造一些原创歌曲。很快地，他们便来到了Lolapps，我们就此展开了相关讨论。我明确地告诉了Aaron Walz我想要什么类型的歌曲。当我在选择游戏音乐时，我总会提供给作曲者一些参考音乐，并告诉他们我在寻找的音乐是怎样的，以及为何这些参考音乐如此重要。而《Ravenwood》的参考音乐叫做《Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms》，是日本女作曲家Yoko Shimomura为任天堂游戏《超级马里奥RPG》（1996）所创作的歌曲。很巧的是Yoko Shimomura的生日与《Ravenwood》的发行日期一样，并且我们还同岁（她比我早9天出生！）。她所创造的这个歌曲节奏较快，但是其中也融入了一些吓人的曲调，所以我才选择它作为《Ravenwood》的参考音乐。而我希望Aaron能够创造出类似于此的音乐。Aaron花费了一个月左右的时间终于创造出类似于Yoko的歌曲，并且这首歌曲也具有自己独特的韵味，所以我很喜欢。

最初，在我们的游戏屏幕加载过程中我也设定了一首歌曲。仿佛能够把玩家带回中世纪时期的市集中，真的很棒。但是不幸的是，这首歌曲的播放占用了太多宽屏空间，所以我便重新制作了“Ravenwood Signature”音效，以便玩家能够尽快地完成屏幕加载，进入游戏。

“巨大的雪人”Daglow是以游戏产业传奇人物Don Daglow而命名。

如今“鸣谢”这个字眼已经很少会在社交游戏中出现了。我们很遗憾地看到，许多编程员，美工以及游戏设计者的工作都不会为他人所知。但是在为Lolapps开发《Ravenwood》的过程中，我和Brenda都始终极力为这款游戏的开发者争取“鸣谢”的资格。在我们自己的工作室Loot Drop中，我们也会始终坚持让他人看到“鸣谢”内容！（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Ravenwood Fair Post-Mortem

By John Romero

What would it feel like to actually make Disneyland in a magical, fairytale forest? That’s what I wanted to find out with Ravenwood Fair.

I wanted to make a social game last year, so my girlfriend Brenda told her employers (Lolapps, Inc., a social game developer in San Francisco, California) that I was interested. I started consulting in August 2010, designed the game in a few days, and got the team working on what I decided to call Ravenwood Fair. At the beginning, I did art direction toward a painterly style until the lead artist, Christine MacTernan, totally got the look and took over from there. I created and coded all the sound effects, and worked with a great composer named Aaron Walz from Game Audio Alliance on the game’s looping soundtrack. He did an excellent job, as the song can be played infinitely without annoyance – the true test of a great composition.

The team was very small: four programmers, two concept artists, two animators, a UI artist, a producer, Brenda and me. That’s only 12 people. In addition, the game launched on October 19, which means it took 2.5 months to go from concept to ship. This causes many a social game publisher to gasp, but there’s a good reason for it: the team worked very hard, and they had already been working on several game concepts for 7 months before I showed up, so they were already “at speed” and no ramp-up time was needed.

When I arrived at Lolapps, the owners told me I could create whatever, as long as the game would make money and launch by September 30. That was less than 2 months by the time I started working on it. I knew I had to hurry up and come up with a concept, so I quickly identified the best game on Facebook at the time, FrontierVille, and played it for three days so I could understand its design patterns and monetization model (I had been following the social game space since 2009). Then, I got the scoop on the engine we were using and found out it was really fast and could draw a ton of graphics on the screen quickly. I learned from the lead coder how much code had been written for the previous game prototypes, so I needed to use as much as possible to keep moving forward and not go backward much.

The idea for the game appeared very quickly. The setting was going to be a fairytale/storybook/magical place that floated in the air and was occupied by a slightly scary forest. Since the biggest games on Facebook were business sims, I needed to have the player build their own little business, and I wanted it to be like nothing else on Facebook. I thought a Fair would be a really nice obvious positive goal for the player to build, and there wasn’t a carnival/circus/fair sim on Facebook……yet. My thought was this: when you’re building a place for visitors to come and occupy, why wouldn’t you want them to be doing something really fun while they’re there? What’s more fun than Disneyland? I imagined what it must be like at a high-level point-of-view to actually RUN DisneyWorld in Orlando, Florida – to have to carve out a bunch of wilderness packed with alligators and other denizens, and then have to build a fun place in the middle of that – and KEEP it happy and fun, all the while the alligators and beasts want their place back. I figured that would be a fun game to play – as I cut back a scary forest, I build a Fair, visitors come and use all the things I’m building, and I get to interact with them in a light fashion. That was the basis of my design, so we had our first meeting, and the producer and leads wrote down the long list of things that we needed to start working on immediately.

After August, we were still working on the foundations of the game systems and entire art overhaul, when Brenda joined the team from Critter Island (it had been shut down by Facebook). Brenda immediately started working on the quests, the map layout, and the tutorial parts of the game. She had to basically try to get all the final parts of the game together while I was still working on the foundational stuff, and we had to make sure that they would meet in the middle and the game would be complete by September 30.

Near the end of September, to make the launch date, the game had been re-scoped and re-prioritized so much that it wasn’t going to be anything I’d want to play if we shipped it in that state. Facebook games are well-known to ship incomplete and get fixed post-launch. I’m not from that world – I’m from the world of “You only launch once” and the first impression is extremely important. There were game systems missing that absolutely needed to be included in the game for the design to harmonize, and it got very tense at the end of September with the execs pressing for launch and me holding the game back to make it great. Every day in October was a “Can it ship?” day. It took 19 more 12pm-to-4am days to get the game in a state that I’d launch. In fact, I held back on doing interviews about the game until I knew it was going to be something I’d put my name on. Finally, around October 15, the game was quality enough for me to do the Dean Takahashi interview in VentureBeat.

The game launched, but the team kept working. We had lots of holes to fill, and obscure bugs to fix. The launch on Facebook went as good as a launch could possibly go: millions of people played the game and hundreds of thousands still join every week. Brenda and I ended our consulting with Lolapps on February 25, 2011 so we could concentrate full-time on our new startup, Loot Drop, Inc.

Just recently at the beginning of March, Ravenwood Fair made the #15 slot on the AppData Top 15 Applications list – this list is of ALL applications on Facebook, not just games (over 125,000 apps are on Facebook). Ravenwood Fair is the #1 non-Zynga game, and that’s quite an accomplishment. Currently, over 25 million people play Ravenwood Fair every month on all social platforms (over 11 million on Facebook alone), and over 1 million play every day on Facebook only. I never thought I’d see the day that I would make a game that doubled World of Warcraft, player count-wise. I’d like to thank Brenda and Lolapps for giving me the opportunity, and the Ravenwood Fair launch team that worked so hard on the game.

Ravenwood Fair Trivia Time!

Except John and Brenda, the team that developed and launched Ravenwood Fair had never made a game before.

The loading screen graphic has Frontier Jack’s skeleton buried underground – it’s a reference to FrontierVille, and a statement that we were out to bury him. Most everyone at Zynga saw the reference and loved it, and it continues the tradition of game developers referencing each other’s work in a fun spirit. Duke Nukem 3D had a TON of hilarious references in it.

The names of my and Brenda’s kids are in the game: Maezza, Avalon, Donovan, Mike, and Lillia. I also included my amazing grandmother, Socorro, nicknamed Suki.

Huginn is the mentor of Ravenwood. He has a brother named Muninn. They both come from Norse mythology and are Odin’s ravens who fly around the world and bring him news of everything that’s happening.

The outhouse is called a Thunderbox because that’s the name Australian’s have for it.

The Dirty Donkey Pub is named after the Dirty Donkey Tavern in Oakhurst, California. Brenda and I visited the final location of the legendary Sierra Online game company and when we entered the legendary location into Foursquare the Dirty Donkey was nearby.

Ravenwood is not the first cute game by me. That honor would probably go to almost any of my 1980′s Apple II games. More recently, my games at Monkeystone Games.

The Churro Wagons are there because I’m part-Mexican and Disneyland has churro carts, too.

The Super Sweet Corn stand is there because Brenda and I *love* to eat it.

The Dopefish Stand is there because……..well, it’s the Dopefish!

The Fettucine Bros. Cannon is there because it was in The Secret of Monkey Island, and Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer are awesome.

The Mystic Wagon is there because of Ultima 4, one of the best games ever made.

Ravenwood Castle was supposed to be called Dark Castle, after the classic Mac game, but the artists changed the look into a tree-thing, so I had to name it Ravenwood Castle.

Muscle Mania is in the game because it was in Chrono Trigger’s Millennial Fair. Chrono Trigger is one of my favorite games of all-time.

Sarlacc Pegball is there because…….uh….STAR WARS.

The Toader game is an homage to Frogger.

The decoration named Ursoc the Amazing comes from World of Warcraft’s Ursoc boss.

The decoration named Apollon the Mighty comes from the legendary strongman.

When the game first launched, many of the decorations were from the previous incarnation of the game’s design.

The decoration named Gaea is a reference to a controversial beaver statue – I thought it would be a hilarious hidden reference.

The Ing-Frey totem is a reference to more Norse mythology.

The protector named Feathertop comes from a classic short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The Sincere Pumpkin protector is a reference to It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown – wherein The Great Pumpkin visits only the most sincere pumpkin patch on Halloween Eve. My original plan was to have the game check to see if the player had 19 pumpkins close to each other, and if so, make a great pumpkin ghost randomly appear. The 19 was a reference to our ship date, since it was in October.

The magical substance called Vitalin originally appeared in Commander Keen 5: The Armageddon Machine.

The Sleeping Potion is a reference to Sleeping Beauty, but no need to stab your finger on a spinning wheel – just drink the potion.

The first quest is titled Secret of the Forest. It’s the name of one of my favorite Chrono Trigger songs.

The buildings hidden in the forest for the player to uncover are a reference back to the game Civilization.

Originally, I spelled the game’s name Ravenwood Faire. This resulted in a big discussion over the name that entailed A/B advertisement testing, and numerous wasteful discussions. Eventually, they decided to keep the name but drop the ‘e’ on Faire. The big hulabaloo was that people would think the game is about Renaissance Fairs. Which, evidently, is bad? The game takes place in a medieval time. It’s a Fair. So, to compensate, I named the market Ye Olde Shoppe with an ‘e’ after each word. Then, I designed the expansion pack and called it Ravenrock Mine – that’s Mine with an ‘e’ on the end! Later on, we found out that Ravenrock Mine is a part of the Elder Scrolls world, so I renamed it to Ravenstone Mine. Still, with the ‘e’ on the end. As of right now, it’s still not launched – and that’s another story.

The protectors in the game were originally called Super Decorations. I wanted to have decorations that were way cooler than fences, trees, rocks, etc. Decorations that danced with the visitors in your Fair. So, we created a bunch of them and they don’t look anything like Vitalin Cannons, but that’s what they turned into. You see, while in development, Brenda told me that she didn’t feel good leaving the game because her visitors would be scared by the forest and the monsters she left there. She wanted something that would make her feel that it was okay to leave the game. So, I came up with the idea to make the Super Decorations shoot balls of Vitalin magic at the monsters and scary forest. That made her feel better. Then I renamed the Super Decorations to Vita-Decos for a couple days, then changed the name to something that made sense: Protectors. They’re alive because they tap into the Vitalin that’s in the very rocks of Ravenwood. At the edge of the map, you can see some Vitalin in the rocks.

The Crittle Bear got its name like this: before settling on mushrooms as the food you get as a drop in the game, I wanted to come up with a food that the animal visitors in your Fair would eat. The word was a merger of Critter and Vittles: Crittle. The food in the game was going to look like little brown triangles (probably like dog food) and was going to be named Crittle until I looked up the word on the net. It turns out that Crittle is urban slang for Crystal Meth! So, I decided to go with mushrooms for food (they live on trees anyway), and since the Bear looks like he’s messed up, I named him the Crittle Bear since he’s probably been doing too much crittle and now he attacks visitors.

The Domovoi is from Russian folklore. Domovoi typically live inside the house as a friendly spirit, but since the previous occupants of Ravenwood have up and left, they also left their Domovoi, who is mad and attacks you, the newcomer. Supposedly, the Domovoi is still protecting the previous master’s house.

Grock was a famous clown in the early 1900′s, so I named the clown monster after him. Many of my references are to refresh the memory of those who’ve gone before us.

When you build the Gingerbread House, a new visitor appears named Hansel. This was done against my wishes. Originally, I had named the gingerbread man visitor Nuremberg. Why? Well, not because of the Nazi trials, of course, but because Nuremberg has been famous for centuries for its gingerbread! At the last minute before rolling the gingerbread house content out, one of the owners of Lolapps had the name changed to prevent players from possibly being offended. Were you all offended by Wolfenstein 3D?

Bumble the snow monster is named after the character in the Rankin/Bass Christmas special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

One night, some coders came up with the idea of having Huginn wear a monocle, so the UI artist added it to him. I thought that having Huginn look like he’s a young raven, but wearing a monocle, would be cute. Like he’s trying to act smart just by wearing the monocle.

The crow that flies up and out of the forest and past “the camera” was influenced mainly by the scene in The Secret of Monkey Island where you actually reach the island in chapter 3 and see a bird fly past the camera and down to the island – the reverse of what I do in Ravenwood, but still very cool-looking. It’s actually similar to the scene in the game LOOM where the Cleric’s head is ripped off by Chaos and flies into the camera. Making the crow look as good as it does required a lot of animator revision and direction. It had to be redone a few times before it looked the way I wanted it to.

The development of the Ravenwood Theme song took quite a while. I contacted Soundrangers to see if they could create original compositions to spec. We had just gotten them to modify the title song that I had picked out for Critter Island (it was in the music section on Soundrangers’ site) and I wanted to see what they could do with an original piece. Soon, they came to Lolapps and I had a meeting with them where I explained to Aaron Walz exactly what kind of song I wanted. When I’m choosing music for my games, I’ll usually give reference music or a specific reference song to the composer and tell them what I’m looking for and why the reference song is important. With Ravenwood, the reference song is called Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms and was composed by the amazing Yoko Shimomura for Nintendo’s game, Super Mario RPG (1996). She was born the day Ravenwood Fair launched and during my birth year (9 days before I was born!) The song is a little fast for something that is going to play a million times, but the way the song is very positive with just a hint of scary (as a reference to the scary forest) made it perfect for Ravenwood. I wanted Aaron to compose a song JUST LIKE IT. After almost a month of work on the song, it sounded nothing like Yoko’s song, but had its own unique identity and I love it.

Originally, I had a song playing during the game’s loading screen. It sounded just like a medieval Fair and was really great. Unfortunately, it took too much bandwidth for most folks playing the game, so instead I created the Ravenwood Signature sound to play as soon as the loading screen came up.

The Giant Snowman named Daglow is named after Don Daglow, a legend in the game industry.

Putting credits in social games is not done currently. It’s very sad to see so many coders, artists and designers not getting credit for their work, something they could see on MobyGames. At Lolapps, Brenda and I fought hard for credits in Ravenwood. Just type the word ‘credits’ anytime you’re playing the game. At Loot Drop, however, credits will always be viewable.（source:planetromero）