[App....] Matchoo! Making education fun, and looking for help!

[anonymous_user_602b70da]

Hi All,

After a successful desk job (GTAV, RDR2, Midnight Club, Formula1, Playstation 1 onwards…) I quit to contcentrate on a market niche that seems to exist. Basically it seems that educational gaming lags far behind the state of the art that we the industry are capable of delivering.

Even the words “Educational Gaming” bring on a drab sensation, not the visceral experience that we know and love.

I’ve spent the last two years building an App using Unreal. This App is intended as the YouTube of Educational Gaming, with users skinning our gameplay with their content.

At this point in time I’m working towards a Beta candidate for iOS, with a limited test release planned in Flashlight and once stability is verified going on to a public beta. I’ll be looking for funding to take Matchoo to the next stage.

But I’m a sole programmer, and Matchoo is basically a technical demo of what it could be. Matchoo needs your help to shine!

What is Matchoo?

• Matchoo is a marketplace of educational content
• Users both create and use that content
• We the game designers build fun gameplay elements to challenge players to learn the user generated content
• We can use the power of Unreal.
• Due to the broad nature of its intended appeal Matchoo will be non violent (and non offensive). Exploding inanimate objects like meteorites would be okay.

At what stage is Matchoo?

• Matchoo is functional and an initial version will go live soon.
• Users can create content in an in App editor and publish it to the in App Marketplace
• Users can find, download and play content in game, some of it is fun.
• I have about 7 working minigames from dry learning oriented games (multiple choice, odd one out) to more gamey games based on classic arcade modes. These are more proof of concept than anything else.
• Matchoo will get to market.

Who am I looking for?

• Content designers
• • Build art and animations for backdrops that respond to game events
• • Build different VFX packages that end users can assign in their packages.
• • 2d art for in game displays, UI, game mode HUDs
• • 2d art for demo packages
• • Blueprint creators… not quite yet My intention is to allow entire minigames to be built in blueprint but there is a couple of weeks work to get this working that I haven’t got to yet!
• Gameplay programmers
• • Build gameplay “Sectors” for Matchoo, each sector is a minigame, space invaders, pong, tetris etc. Anything that we can build to get the user to match items together in imaginative ways.
• Systems programmers
• • Blueprint hookup - Matchoo uses blueprints to some extent but I’d like to be able to build entire minigames in blueprint.
• • DLC data pipeline. It exists, but could be extended considerably.
• • DB work, file caching, UI, Update support etc.
• Platform specialists.
• • Android support. I just haven’t had time to get on it. Matchoo works on Mac, PC and iOS (tested on iPhone and iPad). Android will require some custom camera / photo album support and custom keyboard support plus whatever issues a new compiler and platform throw up.
• • iOS support. Matchoo runs pretty well on an iPhone, but could be slicker. An iOS specialist with some Objective C experience could really help out.
• • Desktop support. This is a fairly big unknown to me as my career has mainly been console orientated. Matchoo runs fairly well
• User Experience programmers
• • General App User Experience.
• Multiplayer engineer
• • Start making game modes multiplayer friendly. Build competitions.
• • Preferably using Unreal tech but may need to look outside the box for this.
• VR. Matchoo should support VR!!!
• • This is actually of huge interest to me, when I started thinking about VR in the context of Matchoo

What’s in it for you?

• Are you trying to break into the gaming industry - having shipped content is a bit foot in the door and Matchoo will ship - possibly with YOUR content.
• Matchoo will be fun, and with some help could be a major product.
• You could make some money.

Compensation

• Matchoo is not earning money at this point, but the intention is that it will both earn money and gain funding.
• Assuming this happens we’ll be looking for contract based content creation, and possibly full time employment, depending on funds and requirements, having your foot in the door with established experience in the project will give you a leg up on this.

So - if you’re interested shoot me a PM or respond to this thread. You can also email me at thomas dot shepherd at matchoo.org.