The fact is I’m very happy with the results so far! I’m thinking about writing a GDD and detailing a game progression. All my previous games were based on the “One level, beat your highscore” type of gameplay, but I had lots of negative feedback from this, so I must reach another level of complexity in my games, and design a meaningful game progression, with levels, unlockables and upgrades.

Therefore, I’m gonna ask a little more patience from you – I’ll begin working on the art as soon as this GDD is ready. If you really need to see some image from the game, here’s the nasty-looking version of the game:

Anyway, I decided to make another Delicious account, and I’m migrating the links that are worthy to it. Here’s the address:

http://delicious.com/gammabeam/

Add me to your network if you have a delicious account, and don’t hesitate to send me some links!

My Wacom tablet arrived (SO excited!) and I decided to finally do some sketches on the art. I managed to capture the screens while I was doing, and I made a video from it. I’m thinking I’ll do this everytime from now on – it’s so nice to see your work taking shape after it’s done!

Anyway, here’s the video, and the link for the final image. It was a rough sketch, I did the whole thing in 45 minutes, but I liked the results – it’s a start!

“Go! My rocket!” Art sketch timelapse.

The new game is called Village Looter, and it was made in a rush, 3 days before my wedding. It’s not that great right now but it has a lot of potential, and it is a project I’ll still put my hands on in the near future. You can play Village Looter as it is on Gamejolt, just click the image below to go there!

Also, I’m halting the creation of Crypts and Caves for a while: Some new twists in my life (not related to the marriage, can you believe it?) are making me work on something else. I may need to make a game for this too – which is always nice! – but for now C&C will be on hold. Being a huge fan of roguelikes, I’m sure I’ll get back to it as soon as I can.

Oh, and my portfolio is online you can check it out HERE!

Anyway… I just wanted to post something this important on my blog.

I have a new game that’s already published, but I’ll tell more about it on the next post. Meanwhile, Crypts & Caves is on halt because I must prepare my portfolio.

Oh, and: ZP8WGQW5MJHY (technorati’s code).

This time I’m uploading the colored sprites I already worked on. I’m not showing lots of other tiles that were made to fit the corners of the maps, and there are other items already colored, but I’m not pleased with the result.

I’m very excited with this, this is one my first works with pixel-art, and I’m happy they are colorful and with a good contrast!

Right now I stopped working with the art, and I’m designing the level editor and the way the game will read the tile list to create them.

Also, I think I gotta come up with a new name: Crypts & Caves isn’t the best of names now that there are no caverns in the game!

You can see the walls, the hero, some chests (which award you surprise items or traps), foods (a canned good and apple), a dead adventurer, which award you one of those items next to it (flares, lanterns, ropes and so on). The footprints are helpers, they appear near some items (guiding the players toward it).

I still must create the traps (darts, spikes, and pits), their helpers, and the Exit tile! The hero movement is also missing – but I’ll do it once I get the colors done!

I got the game design ready for this, and so I thought I should post my progress around this one:

Crypts and Caves is an exploration game, where you travel a badly-lit dungeon searching for loot  while avoiding creatures and gathering equipments from the previous – now deceased – adventurers that help your quest.

I’ll be posting more about the game as it is being made. I already designed a simple “tile set editor” to avoid some common randomization problems, and the art is already under way. I intend to post all of this progressions on the next posts. I’m using the awesome Construct to put the game together, altought I think using Flash or Unity would be cooler for browser gaming! Let’s see how this one turns out!

Nonsense story to support the gameplay:
The Orbs… The precious orbs! In this game, you are The Orb Carrier, sent to the uncharted parts of your world, trying to locate this valuable.

The game begins when you grab the orbs and must return to your base. Use the beacons that point the way back and ride your Graviship!
But you must be careful: some obstacles may damage your orbs, and they must be taken to your lab very quickly, or their energy will vanish!

Design notes:
Created for the Minimal Competition, the whole idea began when I decided I should make a one-button game. I remembered the slot car toys, where you just have the pedal, so I figured I should do something like that.

Then, I decided to use gravitation, as it would change the whole gameplay, but would keep the same mechanics of a slot car intact – if you go to fast, you may go out of track.

The orbs were added later to make sure the player had an extra care when maneuvering the ship!

More features?
Right now we have a very competitive game that’s easy to learn! I plan on adding lots of other features, including:

• Sound – I’m having a hard time trying to make the music work… But hey, I got minimal sound for the competition… get it? ;-)
• Online highscores – definetly a must!.
• More obstacles.
• Pickable orbs along the way (a nice way to improve your score).
• More levels.
• Tweaking of the physics.

How do you play it?
Really, it’s a one-button game! You hold the left mouse button to accelerate your ship, and it will follow the next beacon on the track. Once you ran into every beacon, the level is complete! Don’t miss your orbs – you lose points if you do it!

Click the image and head over to Gamejolt to download the game (7 mb) – then tell me what think!

It’s the Gigga Paletti, a funkier version of the Villa Paletti, an award winning stacking game that won the Spiel de Jahres in 2002! For those who haven’t seen it before, here’s the BoardGameGeek Link. However, to fully understand it you must play it: the pieces are too colorful and at first glance the game looks like one of those childish wooden toys.

Anyway, I brought the game to work one day and, after some hesitancy, everyone played it and they were thrilled! We started to think of ways to improve the game: It shouldn’t be that tiny! To fully comprehend the greatness of designing a Paletti tower, we should make it huge!

Some sketches were made to provide a good height for the endgame: since the tower grows taller as the game progresses, we couldn’t let it become so tall we’d need stairs to finish the bulding…

So it turned into this:

More images and a quick description of the project after the break!

We left work at our lunch-break and bought the wood for the columns at a not-so-near lumber store, then carried it all the way back. The store already cut them in the correct dimensions, so the columns had little work to be done. The platforms were made with MDF (medium-density fiberboard), that Marquetto bought and took it to his grandfather’s house.

We used a scroll saw to recreate the curved platforms from the game, and after some smoothing with sandpapers, the Gigga Paletti was ready for its first playtest! We labeled the pieces with numbers so we didn’t lose track of them. The game was perfect! Everyone was very excited – and a bit scared too, because the pieces were heavy enough to hurt someone if the building collapsed! We had to stop the game without a true winner because the tower hit the ceiling and we could move on!

After the playtest, the process of painting began. I missed this day, so I can only tell that the painting was great. Each color was faithfully reproduced, and since our 2 and 3 point bricks were the same shape, the most valuable received two white stripes.

Because of scheduling conflicts, we were never able to play the finished game. It took us a month to find a weekend that everyone could be present – Filipe even staged a fake play so that photographs could be taken, but this wasn’t right! Finally, a day was set and everyone (but Renzo :-() went to a park and played our wonderful game. When the night fell, Marquetto used the platforms and columns and quickly designed a table so that everyone could eat, drink, and talk about our great achievement! Now the next step is to play this on a crowded public park! I’ll post more photos here when we do it!

Here’s a quick making of:

I’d like to thank and congratulate everyone involved in the process of making this beautiful child:

Gurbs (me), Filipe and Marcelo Marcati, Ju, Ana, Cris, Marquetto, Renzo and Marquetto’s Grandpa and Grandma!