Next Game: The Real Texas

Sam takes a holiday in England and falls into an alternate reality Texas. It's like knights of the round table but with guns and a poor sense of humor.

The Real Texas is an action-adventure game that plays like a mashup of Ultima VI and Zelda.

2 weeks 2 days ago

The Cutting Room Floor

Lately I have been advancing Texas by leaps and bounds. It's true that the game is still a fair ways off, but it's coming together wonderfully. Here's part of what has happened to the overworld in the past two weeks:

Before and after picture of The Real Texas map
Note: Left is before, right is after. As you can see, I also spent too much time refining the original map graphic.

3 weeks 3 days ago

RPGs and User Testing

There are excellent reasons for an indie game developer to steer clear of the RPG genre. RPGs are content-heavy, have complex gameplay, and can easily fall flat on their faces when it comes to story.

New game designers often hear this: make a small game. Excellent advice, but it's often not heeded. For many of us RPGs are the games that we feel most strongly about, and so what we naturally aspire to.

Confused RPG Man

Usability

4 weeks 6 days ago

Global Game Jam 2010: I am an Artist

This past weekend I participated in the Global Game Jam, hosted by Creative Calgary. The event was extremely well-run and an absolute blast.

Major kudos (whatever that is) to the event organizers, along with the judges from Bioware who I thought showed a lot of class and gave quality feedback and had an honest appreciation for all the games created.

Eaty Guys and the Operator Screenshot

6 weeks 3 days ago

Harmonization

I'm just about ready to launch another Alpha (read: at least a couple weeks solid of fixing, tidying up, etc.) I'm in the state of development where I'm just kind of walking around making notes about what's broken and what seems to be missing.

Problem: Trekking to the Cave is Boring

Early on you have to trek along a river bank to a cave; this is a nice enough trek but a bit empty-feeling. I really wanted to solve this, but somehow felt I should avoid the obvious thing of having enemies along the path.

7 weeks 8 hours ago

The Floating Eye

Picture of a Floating Eye from The Real Texas

This is the Floating Eye, an enemy that wanders the Farmer's fields near Happy Town.

Where'dja Come From, Floating Eyed Joe?