Project Island - a LEGO Island fan-made sequel

[MineTimelapser 43]

Hello!
I am proud to present something started by some amazing people from RRU and me, called Project Island: a game project to bring Pepper Roni back for a final adventure!

 

 

What?
The aim of the project is to make a sequel to the LEGO Island series and combine the awesome features the old games had and add things we always dreamed of to the mix.
The charm of the island with it's quirky characters but with more freedom and exploration instead of only following set missions. A sequel also means a new island, new residents and new things to do.

 

Why?
The project started as a nostalgia-induced idea to make a little game around LEGO Island 2 but has since grown into something much bigger. LEGO Island has a special place in my heart and felt Pepper totally deserves to shine again and a lot of people seem to agree! This year also had the 20th anniversary of the original LEGO Island, so it seemed like a perfect time to make that happen!

 

Who?
Here's a bunch of people who helped set up the start of this project:

BrickBuilder
BasicKieran
ClefferNotes
DarkianMaker
Disko (Ben24x7)
Hamhock
LDD Mods (Oliver)
Lenare
LilEthan
Lordtobi
McJobless
Rex
RyanTheMic
Shadowblaze
Willphilin31
XelaCreations
Xir

 

Since we've just kicked off the start of the development of the game we're totally open for anyone who would like to join us on this journey, every bit helps! For more info on what specifically we're currently looking for, check out our website: (https://projectisland.org/apply/)

 

On our website you can also find more information on the project and a link to our own Discord:

https://projectisland.org/

 

Teasers
For the announcement of the project, we animated a few teasers. Click on the images to give them a look!

[Ben24x7 1,251]

We'll try our hardest not to make "LEGO Island 3 - Episode 2"

[Edwin 11]

This is great! Have you seen my request to join the project? 

[Jessietail 2,640]

What sort of game is this going to be? What inspirations does it take from each of the original games? What sort of gameplay work do you have to show so far besides some renders? What's your budget for musicians and voice actors (assuming you don't want to replicate that authentic LI2 VA quality)?

[MineTimelapser 43]

3 hours ago, Edwin said:

This is great! Have you seen my request to join the project? 

 

Thanks! I will check later, I think I have a few mails not followed up yet.

 

2 hours ago, Jessietail said:

What sort of game is this going to be? What inspirations does it take from each of the original games? What sort of gameplay work do you have to show so far besides some renders? What's your budget for musicians and voice actors (assuming you don't want to replicate that authentic LI2 VA quality)?

 

Really in a nutshell I would say the freedom and quirkiness of the first one, the adventure of the second and the collectables from the third.

It will be kind of like a LEGO Island game you know with throwing pizza and skateboarding but with a lot more freedom with what you do with your delivery-boy heroism. This means you can choose yourself what you'll be pursuing: being the fastest pizza deliverer for mama, exploring the island to collect pieces for your new car or just skate down the mountain all the time.

As for the game itself, development is in really early stages (as much as I know you hate hearing it). I'm not a programmer myself and had to open the gates to be able to properly kick that off and get more people on board to help with that. When we reach a point we've got enough to show, we will, but there's still a lot of work to do.

 

About the music and voice actors, I'm being rightfully blamed on spending too much time on that instead of the more important things to get the game going but it does also mean those things are coming along really nicely. We've already planned out some things to show more of this later (but keeping the focus on the game itself first).

[Jessietail 2,640]

18 minutes ago, MineTimelapser said:

Really in a nutshell I would say the freedom and quirkiness of the first one, the adventure of the second and the collectables from the third. It will be kind of like a LEGO Island game you know with throwing pizza and skateboarding but with a lot more freedom with what you do with your delivery-boy heroism. This means you can choose yourself what you'll be pursuing: being the fastest pizza deliverer for mama, exploring the island to collect pieces for your new car or just skate down the mountain all the time.

No offense but that just sounds like the first game without the other characters, but told in like one of those back-of-the-box descriptions to get kids interested without really describing the gameplay and story at all. Like, what is the exact gameplay style(s)? How long is this intended to be? If there's minigames like in the originals what's the plan with that? Are the other characters from the first game playable? Are there going to be multiple worlds like 2 or just on one main map like Island and Xtreme? What's the plot, if there is a single over-arcing one, or an unlockable one/more open-ended like in the original, or what?

 

18 minutes ago, MineTimelapser said:

As for the game itself, development is in really early stages (as much as I know you hate hearing it).

Well I mean. I'd just like to see some kind of concept, anything besides fancy pre-rendered stuff this early in development that doesn't really tell me anything about anything besides that you can render short animated videos.

 

18 minutes ago, MineTimelapser said:

I'm not a programmer myself and had to open the gates to be able to properly kick that off and get more people on board to help with that. When we reach a point we've got enough to show, we will, but there's still a lot of work to do.

After the CEO of DDI himself spent five years talking about his Rock Raiders sequel plans without really getting much of anywhere, I'm just a little skeptical. Most of the projects I ever see go anywhere start off with the dev(s) just showing random stuff off and continuing to do so as they make progress - even when there's ones that need help or funding they usually have something to show off as an example of what the full thing is gonna be like (aside from the scam ones of course). I don't really know how to describe what I'm talking about that's going on here that I'm wary of, just not really sure there's a whole lot of solid game idea here besides "lego island 4".

 

18 minutes ago, MineTimelapser said:

About the music and voice actors, I'm being rightfully blamed on spending too much time on that instead of the more important things to get the game going but it does also mean those things are coming along really nicely.

That doesn't do anything to answer my question. I just wanna know like, are you gonna be hiring professional VAs to emulate the acting in the original game, or just half-assing it?

[Ayliffe 1,784]

Could write a lengthy post here about how I'm intrigued but sceptical due to the lack of any actual proof of game other than character renders in the OP, but there's a really good tweet thread out there that already covers the subject really well so I'll just plonk that here:

 

 

So, uh, yeah - I would've personally worked on getting some headway with the actual game/a rough demo of what ya wanna achieve before going all-out with renders and teasers an' the like, but still - best of luck with the project innit. 

[MineTimelapser 43]

I totally understand your concerns, also seeing what happened to other fan projects around here it's not at all odd to be skeptical.
I got a bit more about our plans for the gameplay for you here. Keep in mind this is all subject to change, which is why I am a bit hesitant to go to deep into certain things but I hope it gives a bit more of an idea of what we would like to do. The scale/length is all up to what and how much we're able to do, and we will also develop it in a way that it still will be a fun game even if we're not able to do everything we hope to do.

 

The game will be flexible in it's missions, meaning you can do everything at the pace you like and progress in the way you want. It will be a lot more focussed around the world instead of it just being the place to walk from mission to mission. Well then, what is there to do?

 

One of these things you can do are character missions.

Some of the characters on the island have their own little line of missions fitting that character. Completing these missions will unlock something unique to that character, such as their vehicle becoming available for you in free-roam at any time. These missions will start out pretty easy but become more difficult and lengthy when you complete more of that character's missions. You can always find the next thing to do using the PDA or in the Information Center.

An example what one of the missions could be for Nick/Laura Brick, is something like an unknown criminal smashing the windows of the police station. The first mission might be to find clues around the area of what happend and several missions later you have to catch him in a wild chase.

 

Next to these missions there will be activities and events: things that aren't tied to a specific mission but can just happen at any time. Activities are things like racing on the racetrack, you can do this at any time you feel like but different to the missions; these activities will stay largely the same every time you do them.

Events are random happenings in the world such as an emergency pizza delivery you can decide to follow up, or not. Very few in the game should be really obliged but at the same time you will be helped to keep make progress.

These last things will be a big part of the game, we want to create a place you can enjoy yourself in and have enough things to do even without the character missions. We have a lot more plans and ideas to make this work like collectibles you can find by exploring, crazy abilities that Pepper can get, a radio system that will mock you for throwing pizza in the sea etc.

 

Hope this helps to get a bit more of a vision of what we want to do even though we're in a stage we could still scrap all the character missions and go full on sandbox-mode and just create a fun world to mess around in.

 

And again, for the project it would have been better that I was a good programmer instead of a guy who just makes fancy images. It totally isn't my intention to delude anyone into thinking we have got any more than we have or just make big promises and build hype.

We're still a fan game, and I'm just a crazy fan of LEGO Island wanting to create something cool. And yes, it will take time, and no, it might not turn out amazing but together we can make something that will do the series justice.

[DarkianMaker 31]

Hi, I'd like to add in on the discussion as well.

 

As seen in the list provided by MineTimelapser I am part of the team that is working on Project Island, my job is mostly programming along with my 3 other programmer colleagues on the team but I'm also involved with the game design part of the project albeit to share my views on certain ideas and to look at ideas from the creative perspective of the late Wes Jenkins. This is where the project shines in my eyes, we as a team can share ideas with each other and critique each other's ideas which results in the growth of our collective vision for the game we wish to show to the world.

 

Now the reason why we don't have anything gameplay related to show you yet is because first a team needed to be assembled, a strong base concept needed to be created, an engine had to be chosen and the whole jimjam before a team can truly start producing a game. And the production is starting right now, it might not be at full steam right now but not a single train starts at full speed while it may be its intention to go full speed. Don't pin me down on this but I think we could have something playable out before new year's eve

 

13 hours ago, Jessietail said:

13 hours ago, MineTimelapser said:

Really in a nutshell I would say the freedom and quirkiness of the first one, the adventure of the second and the collectables from the third. It will be kind of like a LEGO Island game you know with throwing pizza and skateboarding but with a lot more freedom with what you do with your delivery-boy heroism. This means you can choose yourself what you'll be pursuing: being the fastest pizza deliverer for mama, exploring the island to collect pieces for your new car or just skate down the mountain all the time.

No offense but that just sounds like the first game without the other characters, but told in like one of those back-of-the-box descriptions to get kids interested without really describing the gameplay and story at all. Like, what is the exact gameplay style(s)? How long is this intended to be? If there's minigames like in the originals what's the plan with that? Are the other characters from the first game playable? Are there going to be multiple worlds like 2 or just on one main map like Island and Xtreme? What's the plot, if there is a single over-arcing one, or an unlockable one/more open-ended like in the original, or what?

 

Without giving too much away on information because of spoilers and other stuff I will reply to this though.

The gameplay as planned right now will be very akin to LI2 and Xtreme, there will be a third person view, mini-games, main world activities, vehicles to be (ab)used and possibilities to customize the island somewhat. Exact length of how long the gameplay experience will be is not known yet, but if we implement everything we have planned right now it will not be a 4 hour experience. The minigames will obviously have a purpose to the game, mostly entertainment and adding diversity to the game experience. -. The plans are definitely to have more than one world like in LI2 but we want to give those worlds more action than LI2 did. -.

 

13 hours ago, Jessietail said:

14 hours ago, MineTimelapser said:

As for the game itself, development is in really early stages (as much as I know you hate hearing it).

Well I mean. I'd just like to see some kind of concept, anything besides fancy pre-rendered stuff this early in development that doesn't really tell me anything about anything besides that you can render short animated videos.

 

As stated above, development itself has only just begun and we simply haven't got anything to show yet but we do intend to have some core gameplay set up soon which could possibly be shown as developer diary content.

 

13 hours ago, Jessietail said:

14 hours ago, MineTimelapser said:

I'm not a programmer myself and had to open the gates to be able to properly kick that off and get more people on board to help with that. When we reach a point we've got enough to show, we will, but there's still a lot of work to do.

After the CEO of DDI himself spent five years talking about his Rock Raiders sequel plans without really getting much of anywhere, I'm just a little skeptical. Most of the projects I ever see go anywhere start off with the dev(s) just showing random stuff off and continuing to do so as they make progress - even when there's ones that need help or funding they usually have something to show off as an example of what the full thing is gonna be like (aside from the scam ones of course). I don't really know how to describe what I'm talking about that's going on here that I'm wary of, just not really sure there's a whole lot of solid game idea here besides "lego island 4".

 

It is fair skepticism as I too have seen the DDI CEO debacle go on for years but unlike him we have formed a team, made decisions and are ready to execute on them but I know it doesn't look like much yet because there is no actual tangible content besides the promotional material (which mostly has been useful for getting more people on the team) and I hope we can show actual progress which will build some faith in the project for ourselves and the community

 

13 hours ago, Jessietail said:

14 hours ago, MineTimelapser said:

About the music and voice actors, I'm being rightfully blamed on spending too much time on that instead of the more important things to get the game going but it does also mean those things are coming along really nicely.

That doesn't do anything to answer my question. I just wanna know like, are you gonna be hiring professional VAs to emulate the acting in the original game, or just half-assing it?

 

Well, we're not hiring people but VA is getting proper vetting by Timelapser and we try to get the voices to be as true to the originals as possible with our current resources and manpower. So we're not hiring people but we're not half-assing it. Music will receive the same kind of care.

 

13 hours ago, Ayliffe said:

Could write a lengthy post here about how I'm intrigued but sceptical due to the lack of any actual proof of game other than character renders in the OP, but there's a really good tweet thread out there that already covers the subject really well so I'll just plonk that here:

 

 

So, uh, yeah - I would've personally worked on getting some headway with the actual game/a rough demo of what ya wanna achieve before going all-out with renders and teasers an' the like, but still - best of luck with the project innit. 

 

Again, fair skepticism but we do happen to have a programming team of 4 people whose main job is programming the game. Actual progress is underway but with a project like this we don't want to half-ass it and release a nightmare.

[Xir 2,319]

I thought we had more than 4. Guess it might be all the applications we went through and have yet to still let more in.

[tomfyhr 16]

I am interested to see what kind of progress will happen one year from now.

 

Assuming that the rate of the progress is proportional to time... 

[DistrictToTheFuture 32]

On 10/30/2017 at 8:16 AM, MineTimelapser said:

(https://projectisland.org/apply/

This link took me to a 404.

[MineTimelapser 43]

3 hours ago, DistrictToTheFuture said:

This link took me to a 404.

 

Hi! Thanks for notifying about it.

 

The website is currently being re-worked and has a lot of missing/temporary stuff.

You can use the following link for now until the page is back up!

https://projectisland.org/contact/

 

[Venox 4]

Its been months since a progress update, this still a thing? 

[MineTimelapser 43]

1 hour ago, Venox said:

Its been months since a progress update, this still a thing? 

Yes, it is!
Fastest way to get the progress updates is through our Discord: 

projectisland.org/discord

[Brickome 117]

 

New teaser for the project!

[Cirevam 1,549]

Wohoho, well that WAS interesting! You know, I don't tell everybody this... but I saw a glimmer of hope that a good LEGO fan game could actually be made. Good trailer.

[Cyrem 2,239]

You're definitely not lacking in the advertising/animation aspects of things, awesome teasers!

[MineTimelapser 43]

We got our first update video out to showcase what we've been working on!
 

 

[FeebTube 3]

it'll be bigger than Fortnite and middle schoolers everywhere will learn to skate

[Cheeyev 3]

Honestly, seeing that, alongside the teaser trailer, was amazing, and definitely shows that you're all putting your dedication to this. I applaud all of you at the team for that.

[aidenpons 901]

Good stuff! I really, really, hope this goes as far as it can! You've got a lot together and I really hope you pull it through!