Indie game developement is exhausting. Especially if you're a standalone indie with a non-game-related part-time job to pay the bills. Hey, I belong to this category: working half day as a researcher (they actually pay me to write papers!) and half day as an inde. That's what I call...
Being Indier than Indy
Oh, crap. I just came at home after work and there's a ton of work to do for the game: programming that last feature I left half-working yesterday, pixelart some more backgrounds and enemies, and playtesting gameplay to see if combat is right... am I forgetting about something? I've read some articles these last days about promoting your XBOX indie game. Seems like everyone says you have to promote your game at least a month before launch. And I don't even have a development diary to stay my audience tuned (ha! I don't have a real audience anyways)... so let's start kickstarting that development diary.
DungeonQuest development diary officially started!
But is it really possible to keep a development diary while being a standalone indie? Well, that certainly means adding a new item to my indie to do list: take some time off the game, and write about your progress. Seems fair to me. Just two more constraints: I'll try to make it weekly to be reallistic with my development schedule, and I'll try to make it as fun and visual as I can (I know we all prefer to see a screenshot or an in-game video instead of these lenghty blog entries...sorry about that).
Here's a bit of development history:
Last year I started a project for Dream-Build-Play contest (you know, that Microsoft contest for XNA games). The game (Pixel Dungeon) couldn't make it to the contest (you can read a full post-mortem in my Gamasutra blog). However, that gave me the opportunity to try the core gameplay of the game, which showed me the game has some potential (despite the infinte list of bugs, unwanted features, and the overall lack of polish).
About a year after that failure (and after some other indie projects), I gathered energies and spent about the entire christmas holidays working in a second version of the game. Here's where the game was born with a new name: DungeonQuest.
HeroQuest + Super Mario Bros = DungeonQuest
Remember that old board game called HeroQuest? If you can't remember I'm sure you haven't played it. Here's the english TV trailer for those who missed that instant classic:
In case the video didn't make it clear enough, we can say that HeroQuest is 4-player board game about medieval fantasy. Each player controls a hero (a Conan-like barbarian, a wizard, a dwarf and an elf) that team up to adventure into a dangerous dungeon to defeat an evil mage. Wouldn't it just be great to play HeroQuest in your XBOX 360? But wait, there's more to come...
What if the game can be as simple and catchy as the first Super Mario Bros? Wow, that's a lot to ask. And here's how DungeonQuest came to life.
After 2 months of part-time development I have a full spec of the game in a cool game design document, a working and playable prototype with an embedded level editor, and a ton of work to do. Want to see more? Please, post a comment (I'll post it anyways, you know. But you can make an indie feel good with a simple comment. Isn't that great?)
Next time I'll show you the development roadmap and how's the game so far.
Cheers,
Emanuel
Haha, being indie in 2 ways more than 1, you could always make some references or vague references to "Indie"ana Jones in this game.
Or just some other cool little tidbits like Interplay did with the Fallout games. Since graphics really don't matter even vague references would probably be really cool or funny. Who knows, the possibilities are endless.
And btw, I remember playing board games like Hero Quest back in the good old days. Of course, 2nd Edition D&D was still my favorite.
lol you're right! I love these little jokes. I should come up with something :)
I'm glad to hear about the good ol' days: HeroQuest, D&D, Call of Cthulhu... they are mandatory in any proper RPG education.
Thanks for the comment!
I was a huge fan of HeroQuest many years back. I saw your game project on 8bit funding and decided to look into it. Pretty cool man. What sort of art direction are you eventually planning on going towards? - Mario