Wednesday 27 October 2010

Duck with Strawberry Jam

Yesterday I attended the GameCity5 Strawberry Game Jam. Myself and a bunch of other guys hung out in a restaurant for a while and made some games, although I didn't get to talk to everybody as much as I'd have liked as nobody was really sure what was going on. Anyway, we jammed for 3 hours, and I came up with this-

Where's my Ducklings?

The theme, as you may have guesssed, was Duck. I'm quite proud that due to my utilisation of GameMaker, I was the only one to create a fully functioning game, although the other guys came up with really interesting prototypes as well. I had a blast and would totally do it again if given the opportunity.

In other news, work on Dread presses on and is going well. I'm also considering reviving Thalidomide and PsychoNoir as well, as I see those as having some real potential and not being especially difficult to work into full games. But Dread of course comes first, so we'll have to see.

Friday 1 October 2010

Returning to an old one

Hey chaps! There's been little word from me recently largely because there's been nothing to talk about. I'm still searching for work as a priority rather than game development, however my wife has started back at Uni this week so I'm expecting to have a lot more free time in which to fit in both job hunting and developing my game design expertise. I've recently got a hold of (re-been gifted with) a book on XNA and C# development, an avenue I'm interested in pursuing as although GameMaker is awesome I can't help but want to make things more advanced than what I'm working on ATM. Reading through it has been very interesting, and as I love to learn I wager I'll be doing a fair bit of experimenting with it over the coming months and perhaps even releasing something.

My aim over the next year is to recover through game development and creation of other materials all the money I have invested into my pursuits so far. Fortunately, as I'm not one for spending a lot of money, this only amounts to around £70, however this is a big goal for somebody who has never sold something of his own in his whole life. How I'm going to do this is rather vague at the moment, but I have a few ideas swimming around on how to do it.

I've also returned to one of my old projects recently and have to say I'd forgotten how enjoyable it was and how much work I'd put into it. Thus I am reviving it and intend to have it released by the end of the month. It's called Dread, and after many abortive attempts at creating a metroidvania I scaled it down just about as far as I could, resulting in the concept for Dread. Everything else about it I shall keep a surprise.

Expect more updates related to game design and development soon friends!