Fun Infused Friday 11
Last week I didn't write a Fun Infused Friday on account of being out of town for the Memorial Day weekend. This week it dawned on me that the Dream Build Play submission deadline is coming up fast. I really could use another couple months to get things ready. Since that won't happen, I'll just have to be very busy the next few weeks and upload the best product I can.
Hypership WP7
Last week we released the paid version of Hypership Out of Control for WP7. I didn't expect many sales or downloads and it seems my low expectations were too high. The conversion rate is under 4% (conversely the conversion rate on the XBLIG version of Hypership is over 21%) and I've sold just 3 copies in the first three days (and I bought one of the copies myself!). The paid version is a ton easier to play and it wasn't a lot of work to make a version without ads, so I'm not too down on the release. I think some gamers will appreciate the lack of ads... it just seems overall gamers aren't downloading paid apps.
I've found a minor bug with the paid version that arises when you're playing without Internet access. I need to fix this but being so wrapped up with Dream Build Play for the next couple weeks, it will have to wait.
Volchaos
Added a new Thwomp-type enemy and then just worked on cranking out new and interesting levels. The total count is now up to 34 out of 40 levels completed. The final level will be a boss battle. I've requested the artwork for the boss and he should be pretty cool when complete (and given how many animations he has, I may add him as a hidden character too). It's almost a shame the boss is at the very end where not everyone will get to see how cool he will be. I think I may add him into some other levels too in unreachable areas where he can taunt you relentlessly.
An August release for Volchaos seems pretty likely though there are now rumblings about a Summer Uprising... if that comes to fruition, I may delay the release of Volchaos a little longer so that I can hopefully be included.
World of Chalk
The artist is working overtime on World of Chalk, cranking out new levels, items, and animations. I've been working on sorting out some collision issues. Unlike my other games that use bounding rectangles (Nasty, Volchaos), this game uses lines (with slopes) for the level paths. It's a bit new to me over what I've been used to and thus is taking me a bit longer to clean this up. I'm gonna get this more solid soon and then most likely polish up some player movement and enemy behavior and whatever else I can find time for. There is still so much to do and yet we've also come so far.
Abduction Action WP7
A port of my XBLIG Abduction Action will be my next WP7 project. I've done some very early work on this game (currently it runs on the phone and displays up to the title screen though there is no way to do input so that's as far as you can get). I don't anticipate doing much more on this game though until after Dream Build Play. I do think this will be a much faster port than Hypership was on account of having more phone experience and also not having to create new levels like I did for Hypership. I'm debating on how to do online high scores... I think gamers would like them but the scoring system for Abduction Action isn't as suited to arcade style leaderboards as my previous release was.
Other Stuffs
I mentioned the Summer Uprising earlier in this post... for those that don't know (shame on you), several of us XBLIG developers participated in a Winter Uprising promotion late last year. The promotion got a lot of good press and I feel did a lot to improve the public's perception of the XBLIG channel. It seems a Summer Uprising event a month or two or three from now could happen. Right now I've been compiling a list of all games that potentially could be involved (to see if we have enough good games and also to determine what games will be included)... if you've got a game you'll be releasing this summer for XBLIG and would like to be considered for the Summer Uprising, make sure to let me know either in the comments here, via Twitter, on the Summer Uprising AppHub thread, or even by smoke signal. And if you're a fan of XBLIG, then expect good things coming this summer!
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