It's been a while since my last post but I've been busy making lots of changes to Gateways. I had to get the XBLIG version into peer review to be sure I made the release deadline of the 13th of September. Gateways is part of this year's Indie Games Uprising which should be pretty cool, there's already been a fair bit of coverage about the event. A big thanks to Michael Arts, Dave Voyles and Ryan Donelly for their great work on it. I decided to coincide the XBLIG, Steam and Desura releases so it'll be appearing everywhere on the 13th of September. Of course, it's still available from the Smudged Cat website which now includes the recent updates.
Quite a few things got changed round based on some of the feedback I had about the previous version. There are now shortcuts around the map that get unlocked as you progress. They all lead back to the central area of the map which means it now acts as a kind of hub for the game. It cuts down a lot on backtracking which has made it easier to playtest through the whole game which I end up having to do rather a lot! It only costs 5 orbs to find out if a puzzle is solvable or not at a help point now. A few graphical additions have appeared like a gradient in the background and black borders round the views through the gateways. There have been several changes to the map as well to try and help make the game flow a bit better. Players now get trapped whenever they collect a power up and have to use that power up in order to escape. Hopefully it helps teach the player how each new power up functions and what it can be used for.
Shuggy on XBLA is now half price at 400 points! No-one thought to tell me this was going to happen but hey, I'm only slightly bitter. It still represents a great bargain and I think most people would be surprised to find how great the game is if they'd give it a try. The Windows version is being distributed even further with it recently being launched on Desura and at the end of the month it should be available on OnLive as well. It's great to see it available in a variety of different places.
