It's been over two years since I've written an entry here, and that's entirely too long. That said, I've discovered an even scarier time period. It's been over seven years since I wrote a video game for fun that I shared with anyone. (Has it really been so long? I suddenly feel very old.)

According to this page I submitted a game called Bugz for the Spritelib contest. (GDNet's first contest.) It's a pretty gross ripoff of the dropped-block games that were already old news in those days. I didn't do very well, and I don't recommend you download it. (However, you should go grab Happyland Adventures from Free Lunch Design. It was great at the end of the contest as one of the winners, and Johan ended up adding quite a bit to it. There was even a pretty good sized mod group for it.)

A few years ago I designed a prototype Voltron Gameboy Advance game for the company I work for. (Yeah, I work for the company who created Voltron. There's a huge Voltron statue in the lobby.) Sadly it didn't end up going anywhere, but it gave me the chance to play around with GBA hardware and get paid for it.

Since then, I got swept up in the idea of turning my game development into a business, and started trying to develop some casual games that I could make a few bucks on. The problem is that I don't even like most casual games. What's the point of developing games I don't like? I could just write database applications for alot more money. The guys over at the indiegamer forums have spent so much time arguing over whether or not it's okay to clone Bejeweled and laugh their way to the bank. I find the idea kind of sick, actually. But who am I to judge? The people playing those games don't seem to mind.

In the end, I find I'm jealous of people like Stompy. His games are silly fun, people are playing them, and he's having a good time writing them. So I've made a decision. Game development is officially just a hobby for me again, and I'm going to enjoy it, dammit!

First game project is going to be a simple platformer in XNA. And I think it's only fitting that I'm using graphics from Spritelib. Here's a little screen of what I've got so far:



And here's one a little zoomed in, because it's hard to make out what's in there:



I'll post a demo of the first level when I get that far. But no promises on a timeline. This is just my hobby, after all. :)