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GamesOnDeck: 'Postmortem: I-play's 24: Agent Down'
by Brandon Boyer [Mobile Phone]
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March 13, 2007
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The latest feature for Gamasutra sister mobile game news site GamesOnDeck presents the first part of a postmortem of I-play's 24: Agent Down, the sequel to the 2006 BAFTA-award-winning 24: The Mobile Game based on the hit Fox television series 24.
A companion piece to producer Jonathan Kromrey's developer diary run earlier on Gamasutra, part one of the postmortem specifically covers what went right during the development of Agent Down.
Describing the development of Agent Down's 'stage within a stage,' Kromrey says the main stage of the game's adventure unfolded from a simple minigame from its prequel:
"Where its predecessor was more of a "choose your own adventure" style of gameplay which took the player to various locations (the San Diego Naval yard, secret warehouses, highways, a SAT-COM map of the city, etc.), one of the most important (and challenging) changes was to present the player a consistent game stage in which the story could unfold yet still retain a high level of variety and a seamless flow of events. To do this the player assumed the role of agent Jack Bauer and we compressed all of the action to the depths and inner secrets of the mysterious and government headquarters of the CTU.
Not only was the choice to have the player actually "be" Jack (something we had heard players wanting to do in the first game), but to be inside CTU was like being a kid in a secret-lair candy shop! With help from the 20th Century Fox Mobile group as well as 24 show writers and producers, we were given a tour of the 24 set that involved schematics and details about CTU that we still cannot reveal (or we'd find ourselves killed - shh!). Let's just say that we discovered that there's a lot of CTU that the general public doesn't know about!
This decision led to the creation of the Action/Adventure mode - or, simply put, playing Jack as he moves through CTU to solve missions. While it was most similar to the "Infiltrate" mini-game from 24:TMG - where players only needed to avoid detection from hostiles to get to the lit goal area in the time allotted - in 24: AD this game was retooled with engine improvements, new enemy AI, and other features so that it could hardly be called a sub-game, but a full game mode in its own right. "
You can now read the full GamesOnDeck feature on the subject, with more from Kromrey on the new minigames prototyped over a space of three weeks that would progress Agent Down's plot (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).
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