A Startling Lack of Banjos

Happy 2011! Hooray!

I suppose I should give some game development updates… Well…

	Two Not much progress here, to be honest. I’m waiting to finish Sentinel before jumping back properly into Two. The time spent away from it has given me the chance to really think about how it’s going to work though, so I’m pretty psyched about getting back to it.
	Sentinel Man, this one seems to expand to fill all available time. I keep thinking I’m nearly done, then a hundred new things pop up that I hadn’t considered before. It’s by far the biggest game I’ve ever made, but it’s getting there slowly.
	Secret Project 3 Haha, this one’s a little surprise, something I started working on just before Christmas for fun on a weekend. It’s a fun little game, and I reckon there’s only a couple of days worth of development left on it. Here’s a teeny sneak peek:

Oh, also, I’ve been credited recently with writing a game called Darkfate, about a scientist exploring a post-apocalyptic landscape. It’s a neat game, especially considering the constraints it was written under (it was for a competition that imposed a strict limit on the length of code,) but I have to admit that I didn’t write it – it was made by a chap called Kevin Soulas.

That’s it for now! Happy 6th of January!

Hello! My blog stats tell me there are literally some people waiting eagerly for news of the next game I manage to finish, so by “popular” demand, here’s an update!

The-Game-Formerly-Known-As-Entanglement has an official new name! From now on it shall be known simply as ‘Two’ – a name which I think neatly sums up the central mechanic and which, as an added bonus, sounds slightly self-important and pretentious. Hooray for it! I hope to end it with a single word written against a black screen. “Darkness,” or “Death” or something. Haha, no, I jest – for everyone that though Small Worlds’ ending was a little pat, I promise I will do better next time.

That said, I haven’t actually been working on Two very much recently – it’s still fully in development, but in the last few weeks I’ve been working on something new and very different. After spending a while engrossed in the indie/art-game scene, I suddenly remembered that while art-games are exciting and wonderful and fantastic, I also love game-games, and some of the most exciting things in the medium happen at the point where the two approaches meet. So, I’m making an unashamed game-game involving robots, and lasers, and robots who fire lasers. I’m trying to make it as pretty as I can too, so hopefully I won’t completely alienate anyone who’s waiting for another minimalist pixel-art game.

(click image for full-size)

Anyway, It doesn’t really have a name yet. Turns out I’m really bad at names. I’d like to call it ‘Sentinel,’ only that’s already the name of a very good game from the 80s that I played to death on my ZX Spectrum twenty years ago, so I should probably think of something more unique. On a related note, unless you know what a ZX Spectrum was, the following names are probably meaningless, but the new game is inspired by old Spectrum games like Terminus, Equinox, and Cybernoid – There’s something about those old flip-screen robot-y explorer/shooters that I’ve always liked, so I’m hoping to capture something of the quiet, implacable alien threat those games suggested to me 20 years ago. With a little bit of modern twin-stick arena-shooter thrown in for good measure.

The main game engine is just about written now, so most of the really hard bits are done. All I have left to do before it’s finished is a bunch of level design and a whole load of drawing.

This is a work-in-progress; the background is rather plain at the moment, and there’re a bunch of effects missing, but you can see the direction I’ve taken for the look of the thing:

(Click image to embiggenate)

Anyway, I’ll probably finish The-Game-That’s-Not-Called-Sentinel before getting back into Two. I’m absolutely woeful at giving timescales for this sort of thing, but Not-Sentinel is an exercise in making a decent game as quickly as I can, so hopefully it shouldn’t be too much longer.

In other, other news, I noticed I’m still getting hits via google searches for things like ‘How to win at Chasm Spasm’ and ‘How to play Mind Control’ – the answer to both questions is the same: Keep trying, you just have to believe.