When asking attendees at GDC 2010 what they thought about our unfinished Dominoze game for the PC, the feedback was practically unanimous: The concept is great, but it will not do well on the PC. The ideal platform for it is mobile or web-based. Combined with the explosion of online gaming that happened since Dominoze's inception, and the wealth of other platforms available to the casual gamer, I agree that Dominoze won't reach its full potential as a standalone PC game. I've since decided to clean it up just enough to be a basic beta, release it, and then tinker with Unity3D to see what it has to offer.
I'm pleased with the results, to say the least.
After watching YouTube videos by the TornadoTwins at Youtube.com to learn how to get started, I came up with the simplest game design I could fathom that would be playable on a website, PC and iPhone. That game became the now "released" (I'll explain the quotes in another blog) Tiltz. While I didn't count every hour, I estimate that it only took me about 12 hours to go from nothing to a playable demo with every level (this includes the learning curve of using Unity). After factoring in finalization, polish, testing, and learning how to develop an iPhone App...I would guess the total development time was at or under 50 hours.
While waiting for the App Store approval process to move forward, I started my next project: Trying to make an online "Dominoze Editor." I'm stunned at how much of the underlying work Unity handles. Every so often I made a design decision, and it seemed like Unity had already anticipated it and implemented it just for me. In probably less than 60 hours, I already have a functional "technology demo" at Gamieon.com where 30+ players can make persistent online creations, join and leave at will. You may think "This looks nothing like a Dominoze-specific" editor...and you're right. I think there's a huge amount of potential in this beyond being an editor for Dominoze...
...but that is for another blog.
