A New Focus

I’ve never been one to really acknowledge the start of a new year.  It just so happens that this is occurring around that time of year.  Ludum Dare is behind me (still rating away though), and the Christmas holiday is over.   Things are slowly coming back to normal, and it’s time to take a look at where I’m at with this whole game development thing and see where I want to go.

It seems I have limitless amounts of game ideas.  That’s never been a problem.  Once I start filtering these out based on certain criteria…  my complete lack of resources and time, my skill level, my horrible art skills…  the list goes down to four.  Four projects I have been working on the last year that couldn’t be more different.  A person that works on four projects at the same time makes progress on none. 

To make things a little more complex, my Ludum Dare entry turned out a lot better than I expected.  Since I submitted it, I have been debating whether or not it is an idea that deserves some investment.   Sparing the unlikely reader the depths of my thought processes, in the end I decided to move Voxterium to the top of my list and see what comes of it.

I’ve spent the past few days back in the code, to clean it up.  It turns out if you do enough things completely wrong, in the end it turns out to be right.  After a lot of somewhat significant changes, I believe I am back to a spot where the game works the way I submitted it, except this time everything is working the “right” way. 

The todo list is significant.  But on the other side, I now have a single project that I can commit to.  I’m hoping that logging this here and via twitter, I can keep myself focused.  

LD22 Release – Voxterium

Well… Ludum Dare ended a few days ago, and I think I’ve finally recovered.  It really was a blast, and look forward to doing it again.  

My project was called Voxterium

It’s essentially a shooter where you’re trying to take down an enemy that just won’t stop growing.  

Reception to this point has been very positive.  Comments received thus far have been great.  A lot of the suggestions made are valid, and I can’t not like that.  I’ve saw my game on a couple review lists… and even caught a tweet or two about it.  

There is some negativity that has centered around the theme ‘ALONE’, and how my game applies to it.  I tried to incorporate the theme through the game’s story… which is essentially the story of someone charged to manage a hopeless situation by themselves, until help arrives, which doesn’t.  One of my failures is delivering that message clearer.  But in reality, if that’s the worst criticism I get, then I’m thrilled.  

Ludum Dare page for the game is here.

My devoplment Journal over those 48 hours is here.

A video of me playing the game can be found here.