Indies vs Pewdiepie Game Jam Update #2!

Few! It’s over. Those were three really intense days – especially Sunday (non-stop development from 8 AM to 12 AM, except for a brief running break).

Unfortunately, I didn’t actually finish a game.

I finished a very promising prototype of a game that implemented a whole bunch of new tools and ideas I’ve never been able to use before. But I didn’t actually finish a game.

Here it is on GameJolt: Super ‘Splosion Fun Time Go!!!

The game’s a half-baked mess, but it’s got good parts:

• The under-the-hood AI and character control system are really solid and flexible
• A complex implementation of Esoteric Software’s Spine runtime let me make some really cool procedural animations
• The art I was able to finish is (for the most part) high-quality and stylistically unified

I also recorded 19 hours of twitch footage which I’m using to make a timelapse of the entire development process. (It’s really cool to watch an empty source file explode into a 2D-shooter over the course of 7 minutes. The video is sped up by something like 120 times.)

Would I do this again? Maybe. But I’d do a few things very differently:

• Keep the features list to a minimum, and take a very rational, this-is-cool-but-we-probably-won’t-have-time-for-this approach to cutting from the final design document.
• Solidify game mechanics before art. It doesn’t matter if your game looks pretty if it doesn’t play well.
• If possible, I’d work in a team. I might have finished this project if I had had twice as much time to split between art and code – or if I had had another person sharing part of the workload. (Double productivity = more possibilities.)

Have I learned anything? Not really, or at least not anything life-changing. But I do have a cool base project to work from and the beginnings of some very high-quality art assets I could potentially sell on the GameMaker Marketplace. And I’ve also gained a few YouTube subscribers from my Update videos. (I think the timelapse will really bring in views once it’s uploaded.)

It’s been a crazy weekend – thanks for coming for the ride.

Advertisement

Dungeon Mage Cinematic Trailer and Almost 1500 Downloads!

In celebration of reaching almost 1,500 downloads on the Windows Store (1,490 to be exact), here’s the cinematic trailer for Dungeon Mage!

It took a lot of time finish, and it’s not perfect, but it’s interesting. A gameplay trailer is also on the way. For those who want to know, this trailer was animated in Blender 2.6.

Dungeon Mage Released on the Windows Store!

Dungeon Mage

It came a little late, but after three submissions for certification Dungeon Mage finally made it onto  the Windows Store! You can download it onto your Windows 8 machine for free here:

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-US/app/c287985d-c3c2-4e0c-8a59-2c1070adccfe

A lot of work has gone into this game, so it’s great to finally see it available on its target platform. I’ve already found a few bugs (especially when the game is running on Surface tablets), so expect to see some fix updates soon.