09/6

New Tease ¶

I’ve been teasing a few things here and there over the past couple months and announced 2 of the 5 projects I’m currently working on: Ridiculous Fishing and Infested Planet. I leaked a tiny obfuscated bit about a new Mikengreg joint that we’re pretty excited about and now here’s another mysterious baby carrot to dangle in front of you.

I also added a little secret to the site a couple weeks ago, it’s not too hard to find but can you be the one to unravel its deep mystery? o_O

08/10

An Open Letter to Gamenauts ¶

Lately, things have been kinda tough professionally and emotionally. I wake up in the morning with a hole deep in my soul that won’t let me forget that there’s a blight on the piece of work I hold most dear. When I started work on Ridiculous Fishing I wasn’t sure I’d be able to come up with something that was special enough. I loved Radical Fishing and played the shit out of it, so I felt like it really deserved something wonderful. I procrastinated at first, for about a week, because I was afraid that I didn’t have it in me. There’s always a little anxiety for me when I start on something new. Maybe I won’t be able to pull it off this time. What if I can’t find “The Magic?”

After a week of thinking and plotting I finally sat down in front of a blank grid and started plugging away. It wasn’t an hour or two until I struck gold. It was a style that was so interesting and lively that I knew there was no way I couldn’t work on this game with Vlambeer. Usually getting over that initial hurdle takes days at least, if not weeks. I showed them the mockup I came up with and before they could even respond I kept going. The work flowed out of me with so much excitement and joy that I was once again reminded why I have to create things.

That excitement never left me. Sure there were weeks when I was working on other things but the pride and spirit of my work on Ridiculous Fishing never faded, each time I’d go back to it excited to tackle another visual obstacle with my Ridiculous Fishing art style. I would show friends and I couldn’t help but crack a poorly hidden smile. The Proud Father.

But now, I’ve lost that. I wake up and I can’t think of working on Ridiculous Fishing without being reminded of this ugliness. It confuses me and stops me in my tracks. There are chunks of time, maybe 20 minutes, where I can work away and try to forget about Gamenauts and Ninja Fishing. Those are nice but have been getting more infrequent.
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07/22

Announcing Ridiculous Fishing Prematurely ¶

Well it looks like I can finally announce that I’m working on a game called Ridiculous Fishing (Radical Fishing for iOS) with Zach Gage and Vlambeer. Working with Vlambeer and Zach has been awesome so far. They wanted me to do whatever I wanted with the art style and I had a ball with that kind of freedom. At first I wasn’t sure if I’d come up with something that was a good fit but after some toiling early on I struck on a cool 45degree/90degree pixel grid thingy in Illustrator and fell in love. The rest of the team dug it too and we were off!

As for the game, Ridiculous Fishing will feature a boatload [heyooo!] more achievements, areas and other cool stuff that we’ll keep under the hood until release. The core design will be the same as Radical Fishing but the controls and game will be a lot more immersive on iOS devices. We’re really pumped for the game and I can’t wait to show you more, so here:

So there you have it, stay posted for updates and so on but there’s a bit more to this post that I really want to get off my chest. Specifically the “prematurely” part of this announcement. Basically we’re announcing this news before we’re ready to because a quasi-clone of Radical Fishing has been announced for iOS. It’s called Ninja Fishing and it’s a game that appears to play exactly like Radical Fishing but includes a ninja with a sword instead of a fisherman with a gun. When we saw the footage, our hearts sank because we knew we wouldn’t get it done in time to be first-to-market. Now I don’t want to get into the larger debate of patents and all that nonsense. Game design is game design and should influence others and be built upon. I understand that everything is a remix of everything that has come before it and there is no such thing as a purely original idea if you examine it deeply enough.

But what I do want to talk about is money. This is about money, and making it as an indie shop in a huge ocean of competition. Vlambeer is a couple guys from the Netherlands, almost indentical to Mike and I, who are trying to scrape together a game development studio independently. It’s really fucking hard. It took Mikengreg about 3 years of incubation and living well below a burger flipper’s wage to come to a point where we didn’t have to work every waking hour of the day to pay rent.

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07/4

Infested Planet: Beta ¶

Infested Planet is out! It’s a strategy game that I worked on with Alex Vostrov that centers around random AI mutations and random maps. Fun can always be had, even as a veteran player since the game is always throwing you curveballs. You can pre-order the game right now and get a discount when the final version is released, including beta updates as they are released. Check out the trailer below or go right to the site and learn even more.

06/26

Collabaeiowu or An Enterprise Involving Other Workers, Unified ¶

Here’s a post, albeit obligatory, introducing this new website/aeiowu to the internet! The short story: I’m a game developer aspiring to be a chef. But here’s the long version answering a bit of the “why”?

I’ve always enjoyed working on multiple things at once. If one project has me pacing back and forth I can hop onto another one and procrasti-work until I feel like getting back to it. It’s not for everyone, but it’s definitely what keeps me sane a lot of the time. More recently I have been trying my hand at dual-classing as a programmer/artist and with the release of Hundreds last year I decided to pursue a bonafide business in “aeiowu”.

Because this is all about collaborating with whoever/whenever [all depends on the project!] expect a lot of variation from project to project. With Infested Planet, Alex Vostrov is the designer/coder and I just try my best to make it look pretty. That’s something I’m somewhat new to and I think you’ll probably see more of Alex in that game than you will see of me. Regardless, everything I work on I believe in 100% and am really pumped about.

For about four years now I’ve felt like a lot of my blogs and etc. were all very disjointed and confusing. While each on its own was decent, it still didn’t come together under one roof. I’m planning to centralize everything under aeiowu. Making process posts or any editorial things I’m thinking of related to games [or maybe cooking?], so please stay tuned I think the future here is really exciting and I’m looking forward to building it up over here in my corner.