Jumping for Joy

I've just spent a whole day happily doing what I love.

Don't get me wrong, since setting up Escapist Games I've had many days like this. In fact most days for me are, at the moment, one way or another, pretty damn cool. Yes, I'm very lucky.

The thing is, the reason I set up this company in the first place was to create a little game idea I had quite a while ago called Jumpfight. I'd spent rather a long time tinkering with it in prototype-form in Blitz Basic 3D (a great beginners language by the way - it makes everything so easy!) but in order to do it justice I knew it needed to be on a console, utilising the full power of the latest graphics cards. Basically I wanted to make a game that will blow you away, and I knew to do that I needed a viable business to support the development. Remember, 2009 was not a good year to go into the bank and ask for a loan!

Anyway, the business is finally starting to bear fruit. We've spent a year creating the technology and learning the ropes. Also, I'm very happy to say that Star Chart, for the iPhone is doing modestly well. So it should, it's a great little app and with constant updates its only going to get better!

And so I've had a great day, finally working on something that's very close to my heart. Work on Jumpfight has started in earnest. It's going to be awesome. Watch this space!

Onwards and upwards

Yep, I know it's been a while. And I'm going to keep this short because I've got a heap of stuff to do today. But I just wanted to let you know that there's a ton of stuff happening at the moment and the future of Escapist Games is looking bright indeed.

Very soon, Platypus will be out on Xbox Live Indie Games. I think there's a bit of a backlog of games trying to get through the submission process at the moment so it's taking a bit longer than usual. Finger's crossed it should be out in the next week or so.

Also, while I think of it, you should check out a recent interview I did for a website: http://www.aahgames.com/main.php?page=interview_chriswalley

I've been told by a reliable source that it's quite a good read and it might give you a bit more insight into what's been going on around here and why.

Avatar Fishing Party has been put on hold for now. We are going to see how well Platypus does before we release another Xbox Live Indie product.

So the big news is, (and it was probably almost inevitable that I'd say this at some point wasn't it) we are now developing for iPhone! Yep, that's right our next project is an iPhone app and it's going to be massive! I'm not going to tell you what it is yet but expect to see more about this shortly.

OK break over, back to your cubicle number 27!

Chris

Platypus on Xbox Indie Games

Time to show off some more cool stuff we've been working on the past few weeks...

It's Platypus! And it's almost done. Honestly, it's so close to finished I can taste it. And it tastes, well.. like plasticine actually. But never mind the taste, look at how beautiful it is!

I thought I'd include this screenshot because it shows two quite important things. Firstly, the more observant and multilingual among you will notice that it's in Italian. Yep, we're translating Platypus into 7 languages! Quite a feat and it's still not quite finished.

Secondly, as you should be able to tell I'm about to seriously buy the farm in this picture, but that demonstrates the cool pixel-perfect collision, now fully working.

Anyway, to backtrack a little, Platypus is a side-scrolling shoot-em-up, made by a very talented guy called Anthony Flack. He made it using Blitz Basic and a whole lot of plasticine, a few years ago now and the story of how he did it is really quite interesting. Escapist Games is bringing this little bundle of fun to Xbox Live Indie Games, converted directly from the original PC version. In the process we've upgraded it to HD widescreen, improved the audio and added various extra's, and it's going to be available very soon. We just need to finish these translations...

Anyone know what the German is for "Seriously cool multi-player fun"?

Avatar Fishing Party

Ok just a quick update this time, but with pictures! Yay!

Here's our next game: Avatar Fishing Party

This will be our first original game. It's 4-player simultaneous party fishing. Fun for all the family. At the moment I'm working on the party mode, as you can see in this little screenshot.

It's still early days. We hope to have it finished within a month or so but it really depends on how many features we want to have. If we go with the 'lite' version of the game then a month is very do-able. But if we decide to add 2 more levels and a career mode, which I really want to do, then I'm not sure when it will be out. Probably more like 2 months.

I'm really looking forward to showing you more of this. It's already really addictive, and definitely has that just-one-more-go factor.

I'll update this blog with the games progress. So you can see it all come together.

E-commercifully finished

Its been about a week since we released World Clock 360 on the PC

Since then I've trawled the internet for every software download site I could possibly find so I could upload our app. Over forty sites later and my fingers are numb, my eyes are bleeding and I have an uncontrollable urge to "just find one more".

But I'm not going to. I'm stopping now. Its been a week of learning and of trying new things. Setting up our e-commerce site with Plimus. Making a PAD file (don't ask). Not to mention trying to reacquaint myself with html, so I can add all the tacky little banners and buttons that most of these websites insist I display on our site, in stilted, russian-accented english. Otherwise they won't accept our software. Its a bit odd how it all works.

During this time Alexa has been my one and only true friend. Its a great tool that lets me establish how popular each of these download sites actually is. That way I know how much effort (see ass-kissing) I need to put into getting our software uploaded. For example:

http://www.download.com is rated the 147th most popular website in the whole of the internet. = lots of effort for those guys.

Contrast that with http://www.safefreedownloads.com at 1,620,049. So, not so much.

Anyway, World Clock 360 is in the hands of the gods now. It was a fun 2 month project but now we have to abandon it and hope people find it amidst the vast hordes of mediocrity that make up the majority of the PC downloadable software market.

Now its time to move onto bigger and better things. Time to make some games.

Strictly business

Its a very nice feeling knowing that hundreds of people, most of whom I've never met (and probably never will meet) took a look at World Clock on the Xbox 360 and decided to to lay down their $2.50 for the privilege of owning it.

A very nice feeling indeed.

Is it going to make me rich? Has it sold as much as I was hoping for (although lets face it, its only been available for a week)? Is Xbox Community Games the gateway to a treasure house of riches in a similar way to the much hyped iPhone app store? No, no and no. But am I bitter? No, not at all. Because the kick I'm getting out of knowing that those people 'got' World Clock is more meaningful to me than any of the millions (literally) of customers who have played any of the various games I've worked on in the past.

Understanding why isn't difficult. The World Clock is the only product I've been involved with that I can safely claim is 90% mine. Rather than being one of many little worker ants in a huge company, now its personal. And I absolutely love it.

World Clock took 6 weeks from idea to release. In a large company it might take 6 weeks to organise a meeting! :) Our products are only going to get bigger and better, but never unwieldy and always personal.

This is the future of development. This is my future.

A triple news sandwich

Yep, I know its been ages. But boy have we been busy!

Lets see, Atomhex isn't released yet. We've had a few big publishers interested in signing it up and releasing it properly on Xbox Live Arcade so we are holding it back from the Xbox Indie Games channel for now to see what happens on that front.

Our Xbox360 port of Platypus, a fantastic game, all the graphics made exclusively in clay, is our next announced project. Again, we are in talks with publishers to get it onto XBLA so I'll let you know how that goes. Either way, expect to be playing it with a friend (and stealing all their powerups) later this year on your Xbox360.

And finally, we've just released The World Clock for the Xbox360, a little app that shows you what the time is all over the world in a very pleasing graphical way. Its a very polished little piece of software and well worth a look. You can find it in the Indie Games category.

See I told you we've been busy! :)

Chris