Coming Soon(ish. I think): Featherweight

Some time ago I did a background for a competition on the AGS forums and decided that I really liked the style and would like to do a game in that style.

Not one to waste resources, I took the background and started writing a short story around it.

This story is called Featherweight.



With all the stuff I've had going on this month I'm amazed that I can even post this before the month is out, but I'm pleased to say that real world distractions aside, I've just zipped up the beta and sent it off to some testers.

Sebastian gave me some ideas that helped me push this game into some new territory - while there are the usual "use junk on other junk" puzzles and some Shifter's Box style puzzle game puzzles, there's also some new gameplay stuff in there when compared to my previous work, so it will be interesting to see the reaction it gets. I've also tried some small but interesting new things in the graphics and writing departments (whether anybody else notices this is yet to be seen), so it's been an interesting process.

There's still a lot of work to do on the game - mostly polishing graphics, but also editing some writing and adjusting some of the puzzles - but here's me saying that if all goes well (which it sometimes does), you can expect to see Featherweight in a couple of weeks.

See you then!

EDIT: After some feedback I have decided to go through and make some of the puzzles more elaborate, so it might take a little longer to get out than previously anticipated (depending on how hard my ideas are going to be to create). Hopefully this will mean a more enjoyable game in the end :)

I'm a Convert!

Lots of interesting news to talk about lately - and this might possibly be one of the most interesting pieces of news:

I've been interested in Dan Alexander's XAGE engine as soon as it was clear that it was going to mean that we had the possibility for developing for other platforms than the PC - most notably being the Xbox 360 (although browser based games would certainly be something many will be interested in).

I'd been in contact with Dan a couple of months back when he asked to use a background of mine in his game The Fourth Wall. We'd since discussed various things about developing for XAGE, and it was something definitely lurking in my mind.

Thus, when going in to build Awakener, one of my main goals was to keep it suitable as a conversion test subject from the AGS to XAGE engine. This meant keeping scripts clean and easy to read, gameplay nice and simple (no crazy Shifter's Box puzzles) and making a game worth spending the effort to convert on. Apparently I succeeded on at least one of these points, and I am pretty darn excited to see that Dan has posted a video of Awakener running on his Xbox360 on his blog.

There's still work to be done on the conversion process (see here), but these are certainly most interesting times indeed.

Nice work, Dan!

An Interview!? ME!?

They've obviously run out of interesting people to interview over on the AGS blog, so they've decided to interview me instead.

Hopefully it raises more questions than it answers ;)

Captain Hat!

I swear, nothing pushes one's abilities like creating an hourgame. I haven't done one since Jelly, and all the cool AGS kids were having a competition today. Sadly, their normal 7:oopm time is the awful time of 3:00am for me, so I decided to do a little hourgame all by myself.

The end result is this: slightly chaotic, barely coherent and hopefully comedic. Done in exactly one hour (I used every single minute of it, too!) and with a massive 3 colour palette, Captain Hat is a romantic point and click adventure that you'll surely remember for years to come.



DOWNLOAD HERE!!

(left click uses + talks, right click looks, and the inventory is invisible due to time restrictions - so Captain Hat automatically uses new items when you left click objects)

One year on...

Well, it has been a year since I started blogging. I would do the usual thing and complain about not having enough time and real life taking over and the like, but to be honest, I've had a pretty good twelve months.

In the time since I've started The Number of the Ben, I've released 4 short AGS games - weird graphical experiments (Annie Android: Automated Affection), weird science fiction theories (Shifter's Box - Outside In), weird story/design/gameplay experiments (Heed) and a little world full of weird little characters (Awakener).

Despite all of this weirdness, these four games have been incredibly well received; I've been extremely honored to find them mentioned on sites such as the Indie Games weblog, Tigsource, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, JayIsGames and Gamasutra (among others), and even more honored and surprised to find one of my games mentioned in the PC games magazine I've been reading since about the age 9. Interesting times, indeed.

I've managed to learn a very satisfying amount of things about graphics, animation, design, scripting and writing. The amount I've evolved as an indie game developer has been very pleasing, on almost all fronts. And all this has only shown me how many new things I can aim at learning.

What the next 12 months will bring is hard to predict. I have my hopes for what I can achieve, but setting out a list of goals and saying "This is what I will do with the next year" has never been my thing. If I can release another four short games and improve to the same extent I've improved this year... let's just say I'll be very pleased.

Here's to The Future! :D

Awakener Released

I remember Dave Gilbert talking about how he feels every time he releases a game, and thinking to myself "If Dave still gets the feeling, I guess it never goes away".

In other words, Awakener has been released here and I am nervous about it, as always.

I'm gonna go have a shower and pretend I can ignore the fact that I really, really hope people like it.

Coming Soon: Awakener

I've wanted to make a short, one room game similar in play style to Shoot, I Got Abducted! all year, and have started a couple but have always gotten distracted.

However, I've finally had a bit of time to sit down and put something together - in the form of a colourful little one roomer called Awakener - and it is getting close to the stage where I'm ready to release. I still have a few interactions, an ending, a couple of little features and animations to add, but I've been scripting and animating a whole bunch of things, and Sebastian has been making sounds and music from his new secret base in Spain, and it is starting to actually look like a game.

The game should be ready... soonish - basically as soon as I can get around to finalizing all the little details. Until this time, however, feel free to have an Awakener screenshot:



I look forward to seeing what you guys think of it! :D