Hellooo there internet me old chum!
Want to know what we’ve been up to? Well here are the deets!
Well we’ve been working hard in three areas…
1. Bedlam!
Mungy’s been hard at work in the art cave. He’s created a bunch of assets for the intro sequence and the other cut scenes as well tarting up the game in general. He’s come on a lot during the development of this game and so I guess it was inevitable that his earlier work wouldn’t match up to the par he’s working to now. He’s pretty much finished this now and the end result should be a more coherent look to the game.
Here are some screens of his recent work:
Adam’s also been getting stuck in to the sound. We've worked up a brief and an asset list that’ll meet the requirements and feel of the game so he’s working through that to pull it all together. I have to say, I have no idea what music should go with a game set in a Victorian mental institution, so good luck there Ad! – It’ll be fascinating to see what he comes up with.
I expect both will have completed their bits & bobs in the next week or so. Then it’s just a simple case of putting all their good work in to the game and we should be ready to rock!
2. Website!
As I’m waiting on the others to get their stuff done for bedlam I've been using the free time to crack on with the website. We really want to be more than just a portal for the games – instead we’re shooting for a nice friendly community portal. Somewhere where you guys can hang out, interact with us and talk gaming as well as play our games. So far I’ve implemented the following:• A forum
• Facebook integration
• Twitter feeds
• Blogs – so you’ll be able to read this whilst playing!
• User system
• News feed
• Stat tracking / leaderboards – so you’ll be able to brag to your mates!
That’ll probably be about it for version 1. We’ll get it out there and then use it as a foundation to build more features on going forward.
As a side note: Web development is what I do in my day job – Therefore I’m finding it really boring! Don’t get me wrong: I’m chuffed with the way it’s taking shape and I think it’ll be awesome when it’s done… but it’s just not the same as making stuff that blows other stuff up!
3. Polishing up the back catalogue:
No, this isn’t a euphemism… go wash your mouth out.
I need to go through all the old games to get tem working with the website, so while I’m at it I’m also enhancing them a bit as I go. I’ve just finished CardBastard (still the best game name ever!) and it’s been a fun exercise to do.
• I’ve added in a bunch of new art assets for the tiles. So now they’re all made out of characters / art from our games rather than being 30% sketches and 30% dodgy facebook images.
• I’ve changed the music and sound effects. It’s now using some tracks that Adam wrote a while back – good to get some of his stuff in to one of our games!
• Some tweaks to how it plays and fixed a few bugs – mostly boring stuff though so I won’t bang on about it here.
Next I’m going to focus on D-Day Minesweeper (add sounds & music / then do some tidying up) – and then on through the rest of the games til I’ve done the lot.
Getting ready for launch!
So that’s what we’re up to, so what’s next? Well if we time it right then we should get all the above done at roughly the same time… this is not a coincidence!So far we haven’t publicised anything we’ve made, apart from a select group of friends who’ve been helping us with our testing we’ve mostly been keeping it under our hats.
So we wanted to do a big launch to kickstart this project in to life. With the new website and a couple of extra games we feel that we’ll finally have enough content to make it worthy of your time.
Therefore in the near future our baby will finally be born! There will be fanfares! Parties! Celebrity guest endorsements! – well actually none of that… but we will be plastering ourselves all over the internet like shameless whores to try to get some traffic to the site.
To be honest its kinda scary! I’ve got no idea how people will react, or if anyone will even bother showing up… fingers crossed!
