Dungeon Romp 3D beta released.

Work on my Android game is going well so I am continuing my 3 week site updates until after the Google Android Contest deadline at which point I will go back to either a fortnight release schedule or a weekly schedule with open source releases and articles being releases on odd weeks. Still, today is the beta version of Dungeon Romp 3D, which is a 3D version of Ultimate Retro Project episode 60. There are a few additional features that I am thinking about adding so there will probably be another release of the game.

Word Slide Official

The Word Slide game has now officially been posted. Bigger news, at least for those of you who are interested in RPGs, is the next game that will be posted July 3rd. My Dungeon Romp game is going from 2D to 3D. Of course, it is just a beta but I think it is fairly stable. I am sure a lot of you noticed that again I am going 3 weeks between releases, but this time it is Google's fault :-). Their second android application contest is starting and I am considering entering something into the contest so want to actually have some time to properly develop my android game. Sadly, their rules forbid releasing the applications that are being entered into the contest until after the contest is over so my game will not be released until after the contest is over if I actually finish it and enter it into the contest. I know my chance of winning anything is very low, but I think it may still be worthwhile to enter.

The Final Fantasy IV after-effect

I probably should have posted the sneak preview to Dozen Days of Words episode 6 on Thursday, but I was busy playing Final Fantasy IV: The After Years on my Wii. While I would not call myself a big Final Fantasy fan, the game has been eating up my evenings. Now that I have finished the main quest and the first optional quest, I am finished until the next downloadable chapter is released. So I have gotten around to posting a sneak preview of Word Slide which is located at http://blazinggames.com/table/dozenDays/words/wordSlide.php . This game will not have an offical link to it until friday, but if you cut and paste the above URL into your browser address bar then you can play the game early.

Now, back to Final Fantasy and my thoughts. The biggest problem I have with console role-playing games is that there are way too many encounters. In fact, saying that there is way to many encounters is probably a gross understatement. The game is episodal which is kind of a neat idea as instead of paying for the whole game, you only pay for the episodes that you want to play through so if you can't stand a particular character then you can skip their story. Of course, each of the chapters is a separate purchase though 300 points is relatively cheap. Because the game is episodal, most of the chapters are not initially available though will be released over the summer. This is kind of annoying as I have to wait until more chapters are released before continuing the game but is also kind of good as I would still be playing the game if all the chapters were available right now. Spreading the game out over a few months will keep the gameplay more interesting as you probably won't get sick of the game before you finish a chapter or two but would if you played through 8 chapters at once.

Official Word Shift

The word shift game is now officially released on the Blazing Games site. As readers of this blog have had the link for a week this is not that big of news. The sixth episode of Dozen Days of Words has also been finished. I have set the official release date for June 12th so that I have a bit of time to get ahead of schedule again. That said, I will probably provide an early link to the game in a couple of weeks. The seventh episode has been started, but there are a couple of other games that I am also working on so those of you who are getting sick of word games may get a nice role-playing game shortly, though I am not putting an official release date on anything unless it is done (or at least close enough to done that it is releasable).

Sneak Preview of Word Shift

My Word Shift game was finished earlier this week, so I am posting a sneak preview of the game early. While the game is posted on the Blazing Games site, none of the Blazing Games links have been enabled so the only way to see the game until May 22nd is to go to http://blazinggames.com/table/dozenDays/words/wordShift.php by typing in the url (or using copy and paste if you are lazy).

Is Forever Delayed or Never?

Dozen Days of Words episode 5 is in a functional state though is not finished. I could probably finish the game for release next week if necessary but with my nephew in town I decided that an extra week before the official release date was a good idea. If I do finish it early I may post the game a week early and link to it from here so readers get a week of early access to the game. I'll let you know my decision next week.

The big news today (well, last night if you want to get technical about it) is the fact that 3D Realms is closing it's doors. They are the company that is developing Duke Nukem Forever, which will now probably never see the light of day. While Take 2 still holds the publishing rights, they are not funding the game. It is still possible that another company will purchase the rights to the game from 3D Realms but with existing distribution rights, this is less likely. Most likely the game is dead. When you think about it, the fact that the game was so long in development made it unlikely that it would live up to the hype. Even though a lot of the delay was probably caused by the game developers continually playing catch-up with the rest of the industry, too many people figure that such a long development time must mean that the game should be really good. These unrealistic expectations means that no matter how good the game was it would never be good enough.

I suppose it is also possible that the opposite would happen and that the majority of people expect the game to be bad. While the game being better than expected could be good, if nobody bothers to try the game because they expect it to be junk then you still end up losing. Either way, DNF was in a pretty bad spot.

Making Coffee chapters 4 and 5 released

The making of Coffee Quest eBook has finally been updated after a few years hiatus. I have added chapters 4 and 5 which finishes the creation of Coffee Quest 1 and the Coffee Quest GL experiment. I am deeply considering doing another 3D experiment using a new web technology that Google is testing. This would be done by porting Coffee Quest 2 to the javascript-based technology.

I was also hoping to have a pull down menu based poll for selecting which game my visitors most wanted to see enhanced. I never got around to writing the code earlier and as it is getting late I figured I would hold off on the official pull-down version of the poll (which I may make a permanent part of the home page) in the future. Still, email opinions are welcome.