Pollushot Timelapse + New Crazy Over Goo Art

My iOS game now has a working title, Pollushot. Here's a video of me making a new enemy from scratch. No editing was involved, this is the speed at which I actually work. Stick around to the end to see some regular-speed gameplay footage.

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MEANWHILE, after a number of comments on Crazy Over Goo flash I underwent an epic adventure that involved redoing all of the graphics in the game in the span of a couple weekends. PHEW. The new art style takes after the one I implemented for Pollushot, and will hopefully turn our luck around with getting the kind of bids we're looking for. Here are some screens of the new style.





It took a lot of time and energy in a painfully short period of time, but I'm really happy with the results.

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Hey, you guys remember Prophecy? The dude who made the soundtracks to Escape from the Underworld, Assassin Blue, Dubloon, Crazy Over Goo, and Wolf? Well he's now AKA'd as Jason Covenant and he's launched a new site after being mostly inactive on the internet for several years.

I urge you to check it out.

Oh, and did I mention that he's got some bangin' new music with new track due weekly? Yeah.

New Year, New News

Happy new year, everybody! (20 days late).

I'm pretty bad with remembering to post on here, so I guess I apologize for that. So, here's the news:

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New Game
Remember that iDevice concept I mentioned last month? I made a prototype over the course of a few days before Christmas after posting, and then just tis last weekend came back to it to update graphics and polish. At this point I'm basically working on it full-time, and you can expect to see the game finished and playable sometime soonish. My self-imposed deadline is February 15.

Screenshots! (Click to enlarge)


What do you guys think?

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Crazy Over Goo Flash
Still on the search for bids and stuff! We've been fixing and changing minor things based on comments we've gotten from sponsors and players; so far it's been something of a learning experience in what's expected of flash games vs. freeware. Not sure how many details I can release at this point beyond that!

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EoYear Awards
Indie Games blog had a lot of Banov love this year! They named Dubloon #8 in their Top 10 Freeware RPGs of 2010 list, and they named Escape from the Underworld number ONE freeware platformer! Quite an honor, indeed.

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Escape from the Underworld... wiki?
I find this pretty funny. It's a wiki on Escape from the Underworld, with a humorous take on the game. Only 10 (brief) actual articles on there, all worth a read if you're into that sort of thing.

Branching Out

Hey dudes!

So while I wait around on Crazy Over Goo sponsorship offers, I want to share with you guys a newer game idea I've had. This would be a casual iDevice game, and I have a couple ideas for how I'd like to get this on there. This is all part of my "maybe earn some money for once" plans.

Here's the basic concept (click to enlarge):

More details:
There'll be about 10-15 different varieties of enemies, each with a unique attack/defense pattern. You'll fight them one by one in random order forever and when you die you'll get a high score. It'll be moving quickly like other good replayable arcade iPhone titles (Sollipskier, Doodle Jump, Canabalt, etc.) so it won't feel repetitive.

The best way to kill enemies and score points is to break apart their shields, catch the falling debris, and fire the pieces back at them. If there's no debris on the screen and you're unarmed, the game will drop occasional default meta-ammo shots from the top of the screen you can use, but it's worth less points to use. Enemy attacks will be energy-based and can't be caught; but anything solid can be caught and used as ammo.

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I'm looking for some initial reactions + ideas. You like this idea? Would you pay $0.99 to get this on your iDevice of choice? What additions do you think would improve the game? This is still in the conceptual phase so I'm open to all ideas.

Thanks! :)

Collab Revealed!

Since Andrew went ahead and spoiled the game we're working on, I feel the need to one-up him, especially since the lame screenshot he posted doesn't at all reflect how the game is actually going to look/play. So, here's some juicier info.



The game doesn't have an official title yet but we've been calling it "CowboyKilla." It's an awesome hardcore bloodbath where you're pitted against an unending army of enemies with a lot of sweet weapons at your disposal. It's ridiculously fun, and development is going at a very good pace.

If you were planning on entering the YYG Comp05, I'd just give up, because the winner has pretty much already been decided. Sorry.

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Also, I've made sweet progress on the iPhone side of things and I've got a working tap movement engine going. I'm going to drop my plans to recreate Crazy Over Goo, though-that's just too ambitious for my skill level. Instead I'll probably use the movement engine to make a simpler minigame. The real goal here is to get something playable on the App store.

The Games Just Keep Coming

Happy Two Thousand and Ten!

I'm pretty bad at posting here regularly, so I'm going to give you guys the down low on what I've been up to.

Dubloon

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Progress has been slow but steady. I have a lot of content planned for the next update, so it's still looking far off from now... sorry to those who are waiting on that. I don't want to talk too much in detail on what happens next in the game, but I will say that the end of the game isn't going to be too far off. After this next release, there will be maybe one or two more before the game's finished. In the meantime, I'll let screenshots speak for themselves.



iPhone

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I've spent a lot of the month of December trying to make serious progress on my iPhone work. I found a great game development/physics engine called Cocos 2D and I'm going to try and master that. I want to recreate Crazy Over Goo--or something like it--on the iPhone interface and sell it on the app store. Of course, for now, I'm still figuring out how to do simple things like launch objects on the screen. The iPhone is a bit harder to use than Game Maker, I'll say that much.

YoYoGames Comp 05

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For the first time in my game making career, I'm going to enter a serious competition. You can read the rules here, if you haven't seen them already. What is perhaps most exciting about this next game of mine is that it's going to be a collaboration between me and Andrew Brophy aka Overboy aka AndrewAP. No details yet, but the game we're planning is seriously awesome and will probably win, especially over anything that Brod makes.

Banov OUT.

And So It Goes

It's been a little while since I posted up an update! Not because I haven't done anything, but mostly because I'm not sure what qualifies as an update. I don't want people to think I'm dead, though, so I decided to share what I've been up to.

Dubloon: (Peppered with some miscellaneous new screenshots)
Dubloon's very much been a big piece of my work since the last blog post. I actually ran into and overcame some difficulties in working on it. After I put out the first level and boss, I began to feel a sense of misdirection with the game as I continued my work on it.


The new file select screen, allowing for multiple save files.

Ideas that seemed so good before suddenly didn't seem to work, my level designs felt uninspired, and I started to question if the game was really shaping up into anything. I think this kind of crisis can be common with any creative work, especially games, which involve so many different pieces to make a single cohesive work. I took some time off, forced myself back into it, and started redoing a lot of the new maps from the ground up--and I think it worked. As of now I'm back to working on it full-speed.


A town...

So, what's new in the next section? The game will start to open up more and feel a little less linear. You're presented with a clear objective, but I made sure to include some things to do outside that. Players who take a little more time will find some cool extra treasures and even fight a bonus boss battle. The characters still don't have a ship, though, so you're restricted to just one island.


The new map screen. Mouse over colored rooms to view a description.

iPhone:
I recently got my hands an a new MacBook and the iPhone SDK (Software Developer's Kit). This has been an interest for a while, but now I'm finally going to try and learn how to develop games on the iPhone. So far it's been admittedly tough, but I'm determined to make it work. Ideally, I can start making a little profit selling low-cost iPhone games once I have a handle on the development process. Any breakthroughs I have with this will definitely end up on my blog here, but for now I'm still trying to learn the most basic of basics.

Facebook!
Just one last thing! I decided to make a page for myself on facebook to see how many fans I could get. If you're a fan of my work, why not consider joining my page on facebook? The link's here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Banov/91620497321?ref=mf

Not sure how to end this post, so I'm going to just end very abruptly, sorry.