It’s a rhythm action platformer, featuring music by Demoscene Time Machine, who is the chap that provided the excellent soundtrack to Jed, and is incidentally my brother.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy with how this one came out, and I really hope like it too.

[play online]

I was made redundant along with many of my colleagues from my mainstream games industry job in mid December. In a way that kind of sucked, that sort of thing is always going to hurt a bit, no matter the situation. The positive spin on it though is that it’s a hefty prod towards doing something a little different with my time, which is no bad thing. Change is good, even if it can be hard.

I’ve still yet to decide exactly what “doing something a little different” should mean exactly. I’ve spent the three or so weeks since I got the news splitting my time between updating my CV and applying for jobs and working on a rhythm action/platformer crossover thing.

The game, Stalwart is based on a track by Demo Scene Time Machine, who previously provided the music for Jed and is also my brother. I finally finished the game off on new years day, and I’m now trying to find someone to sponsor the thing. I’m really quite excited about the game, but I’m finding even just a couple of days in that the waiting involved is very hard to bear. I’m used to having a bit of a slump after I’ve finished a game, but that is usually tempered by having lovely people playing it, leaving feedback etc. With the game sitting there finished but unreleased it’s far worse.

I suspect I just need to hunker down and start working on something new, this can be an exciting creative time as long as I let it be. I’m entering 2011 with an entirely blank slate and a whole lot of chalk, and this is something I need to face with optimism, so, hmm.. what should I write?

[play online]

I didn’t make Face Time, not one bit of it. It was entirely the work of Noyb, all the credit belongs to him. I’ll explain..

It was created, and was published here as part of a Masquerade themed experimental game creation/publishing arrangement. I published Noyb’s game, my game Ascension was released by agj, his game Doppelganger was released by Michael Brough and his game The Sense of Connectedness was published by Noyb, completing the circle.

It was a very interesting experiement to be a part of, even if the result couldn’t exactly been considered a resounding success. For me, a large part of what appealed about taking part was the creation of a bit of a meta-game. The hope was that people might notice that something felt a little bit off with the feel of one of the games, and would be able to chase the chain round, unravelling the mystery. It seems we seriously underestimated the difficulty and obscurity of the challenge we created, because all four games were taken exactly as they appeared.

It’s been a weird couple of weeks since the games have been released, I’ve lived vicariously on the fortunes of Face Time, and have felt almost completely detached from the game that I put my time into making. If anything I’ve come away with the feeling that the only people we’ve really confused are ourselves, but that’s okay.

For better or worse, we made (and finished) some games that otherwise wouldn’t have been made, and I for one, despite, or even because of the weirdness rather enjoyed the experience. A success? Not really, but not exactly a faliure either. Live and learn..

The others have written up their thoughts on the experiment too: [agj] [Michael] [Noyb]

[Windows] [Linux] [Mac]

I saw:

… and almost immediately a design for a minimalist game that requires it’s players to be devoted popped into my head. Love letter is that game.

[play online]
[my thread on tigsource]

A ambitiously scaled minimalist puzzle game.

It placed 4th overall, pretty happy with that

[play online]

I spent far too long working on a clever replay playback feature that I’m not convinced was actually worth it. Ah well.

[Play Online]

[Play Online]

Lazyness and real life meant it took forever, but it’s the first ‘proper’ game I’ve completed in a long long time, so I’m pretty proud of this one.

For Windows + Linux.

[Download]