Fun Infused Friday - The Coming Fall
On August 24th, 2009, I released my first game for Xbox Live Indie Games. To date, I have now six released titles on three different platforms (XBLIG, WP7, and iOS). It's cool looking at my FunInfused.com and seeing all the stuff I've worked on and released and all the stuff I have coming down the pipe. Kinda makes me feel like a real game developer. And now here's a picture that is completely unrelated to anything else I talk about today (but it is related to today's weather at least)...
Hypership Out of Control
Hypership iOS sales are still clipping along and good reviews are still coming in. At this time I'm still not sure what daily sales will level off at, but that will determine the overall success of the project (in terms of sales at least, in terms of creating a great game, we already succeeded).
If you haven't seen it already (shame on you), you should check out the Hypership iOS Postmortem.
"We’ve gotten great reviews on a ton of sites. 148apps (4.5/5) said “Hypership Out of Control is a gem of an iOS game.” PocketGamer (9/10 gold award) wrote “there are myriad little touches that make Hypership so compelling.” TouchArcade said “It’s crazy fun.” We’ve heard that it’s likely that we’ll see reviews from some of the mainstream games press in the next week."
Volchaos
This week saw a lot of progress and some changes in store for Volchaos. The first big change is that I'm adding in some different level themes / color schemes (the first of which being gray). This will break up the "sameness" you currently see in all the screen shots and videos. I've now setup the game to allow for you to easily specify the theme a specific level uses and swap in the appropriate blocks for that theme. While this doesn't change how the game plays, it does make the levels feel even more different than they did before.
Since adding in gems to the early builds, playtesters have asked me "why should I collect them?". Now I've got a new, good reason, to unlock the expert version of the level! Much as how Super Meat Boy has the dark levels, Volchaos will have expert version of all levels that are unlocked after you collect all the gems in that level. These levels will be themed differently, will be void of gems, and will have the lava rising speed cranked up to 11. Will you be hardcore enough to finish these levels?
I'm still looking into adding some unlockable characters and adding alternate endings based on gems collected and expert levels finished. I'm trying not to go too crazy and I feel like I could easily get sucked into a feature-creep black hole and delay the release of Volchaos even further. I'm anxious to get this out on XBLIG and start on the PC port (which is gonna get leaderboards for tracking who's the fastest at completing each of the game's levels).
Other Stuffs
I've started getting back into learning Unity3D. I really love the portability Unity offers... develop once, release (with minimal rework) on PC, iOS, and Android. I even purchased the SpriteManager2 library to aid my 2D endeavors. I've started on my first Unity release already though this game will probably take a while to finish as it isn't going to get all my attention yet and I'm still learning a whole new environment and style of game development. It's exciting though to start getting into Unity again as it very possibly could be the tool I use for most of my future games. Can't wait to find out!
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