Pigeon Patrol: New Recruits

Concepting new types of Pigeon Patrol units.

The Pigeon Patrol, or “P.P.” for short, is our main antagonist, the primary nemesis of all pigeon-kind. They have a ridiculously big government contract and a seemingly infinite number of recruits. They are always doing everything they can to put a stop to The Pigeons and their zealous plans.

So far we’ve only shown one type of Pigeon Patrol unit—this basic bastard:

These are the generic PP recruits. They are in charge of everything from stocking supplies, to driving specialists around in those trademark yellow and orange PP vehicles, to flying the notorious PP Choppers and more!

But we needed more! More variety of units for more emergent gameplay. We needed some specialist units with signature abilities and behaviors, so the player could learn their enemy over time and adapt their strategies accordingly. We needed these units to compliment each other and create formidable groups. We needed to be able to ‘level up’ these units over time. And finally, we needed a clear visual language to communicate these differences to the player—even when the player is viewing the enemy from a distance as they fly in the sky.

So we concepted out some ideas…

First we started with the face masks…

…then we experimented with colors, symbols, and different clothing types.

Some of these got perfectly silly….

But we felt some of these changes began to lose the “Pigeon Patrol” feel, so we opted to keep things simpler—relying primarily on color changes to communicate different unit types and their roles. Plus different mask and gun.

And to ensure everyone knows these are Pigeon Patrol recruits, we slapped a giant PP symbol on their back. (Which just happens to make for some fun cosplay / merch ideas — wink wink)

But what do each of these units do? Which one of them has a cool jet pack to fly around with? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What special, high-powered, mini-boss units do we have in the works?

Well… you’ll just have to wait to find out.