History
Year: 2010
I started 2010 with pretty high expectations but unfortunately they fell short, at least in terms of finished products. After all, I had school and my move to Philly out of the way and behind me, so there was really nothing stopping me from being prolific. Easier said than done of course.
The first main project of the year was a game called Miss Osma's Puzzmosis. During 2009 I entered into the Newgrounds "Power of Three" collaboration. The idea was that contributors would come together in groups of three to produce games loosely revolving around the number or idea of three. I joined with Egoraptor and Kelwynshade and we started work on platforming game with a Castlevania theme. We were happy with the initial build but we could see that the scope of the project was already growing beyond what we wanted. Rather than deal with another time-sink we decided to shelf it for a little while and work on a smaller project instead. That project ended up being Puzzmosis. I spent the first few months of the year working on it, and we produced the game to a mostly-finished state. We ended up running into various delays in the audio department and the project slowly shifted to the backburner as the months dragged on. We never did complete it but do intend to revisit it in 2011 for a wrap-up. You can check the preview page for screenshots and additional info.
I had decided previously that it was my goal to release at least one escape game per year. When Spring came around I started work on a new one. During my stay at the Newgrounds office in late 2009 I actually took the original Escape Series engine and converted it to AS3 so it would be easier to work with. After roughly a month of work I released Escape #5: The Freezer. It was received positively but unfortunately it ended up being my only major release for the year.
During the summer it felt like Puzzmosis was slipping further and further away so I started working on a project that was more of a personal aspiration than anything. Back in 2006 I cobbled together a very loose top-down shooter engine. The genre is generally referred to as "shmup" these days, and I decided I wanted to revisit my 2006 attempt. I was also inspired by Swain, who was starting his own "shmup" at the time (although of a much different variety). I just called my project "shmup" for the time being and worked on it in my spare time to see how far I could get with it. As Summer turned to Fall I ended up working on it more and more and it eventually shaped into an actual game. I didn't see any reason to change the title so I just dubbed it "SHMUP" for good measure and started looking for people to help with it. I checked out a few artists and ended up approaching Hyptosis after seeing his art on Newgrounds. He was interested in the project and started on the artwork near the end of Fall. He ended up being a fantastic partner to work with, producing high quality assets very quickly. As of this writing SHMUP is roughly 95% done and is awaiting a few small tweaks and a special release occasion. Once again, all I have to offer for now is the preview page.
I did release one other project during 2010 titled Make My Next Game. It was a text-based "adventure game" inspired by a recently released game on Newgrounds called Don't Shit Your Pants. The actual plot of my game was inspired by the fact that I wasn't releasing as much content as I wanted, so the game revolved around inputting text commands to make a virtual me actually produce a game.... in the game. So meta. The whole project took about three days and it was a fun challenge, but overall it wasn't all that notable. I was just happy to have something to put out.
The last notable part of 2010 was the psuedo-announcement that I was starting work on Territory War 3. Territory War Online was fast approaching its third year running, so talk of a sequel was expected. I've tried to stay rather tight-lipped though because I know this project will be a huge undertaking (just as the last one) and I don't want anyone getting their hopes up just yet.
All that aside, I really do intend for 2011 to be a much more impressive year than 2010 was. But I suppose less talk and more work is the only thing that will facilitate that.