Over Cloud 9 website is still running and will continue to run and I am very happy that players are stilling visiting my website. It’s been 2-3 weeks that I am working at my new company and for the first time designing games for iOS. We are basically developing 2D iPhone/iPad/iPod games on Coco (X-Code). And while this is happening, I was wondering about learning either one of the other 2D game engines like Moai SDK, Sparrow Framework, iSGL 3D, GameMaker and even Unity. I need to do some research before I pick any of them.

I had done some basic scripting and coding before, so exercising my programming habits might be of some help if I consider growth in the gaming industry. Now when I summarize my experience as an indie, I realize how much I have learnt in the past 2.5 years and how much I am yet to learn. I did game designing, development, marketing, sound and video editing and sometimes even art while making a game. Honestly speaking, all students who are thinking of taking up a career in gaming should develop and commercially market their own game during their final year as a internship project (obviously after seeking permission of their principal). This is because the exposure and the experience one gains by actually being on the market with other competitors is priceless!

Even though I am not making any games now, I still continue to grow and learn. I wanted to learn the scope of the iOS market and a general idea of development in it.  I think there is a lot that I can do if I can pick up a bit of programming. It is been long that I actually flex my engineering skills. Anyway, I shall post links of the game I had designed for my new company once they go up on the Apple app store.

I joined a job last week as a Senior Game designer at Pune (India). I know this has disappointed some fellow developers, but I seriously needed a change. Financially my business was doing fair enough (33% increase in revenue every year) , but I did not want to work alone any more. I cannot make bigger and complicated games by myself, but I can do that with a team of professionals at a work place. I want to go out of my comfort zone and challenge myself to try something I haven’t done before.

Joining a job means I will not be able to make commercial games unless I leave it, but I can still make free games and put up games from other developers. The website will be still there, with newer games and walkthroughs from other developers being updated frequently like before.

So stay by my side friends. I am on a new path and I want to see where it leads me to.

Just before I start my monologue, I would like to thank Charlotte from Gamercast for publishing my interview on their website. It’s been long that I updated my blog. After “A Sirius Game’, my temptation to go back to 2D game development has been back. Now when I compare the time, cost and energy spent making 2D game to a 3D game, the former is much better from an indie’s perspective. And with the release of RPGMaker Vx Ace, there is some hope of reviving a bit of freshness in the old school RPG world.

This time I thought of dabbling a bit in Photoshop by myself so that I can cut the cost of art in development. More than cost, I would say time and quality. When all of your artwork is outsourced, it is difficult to keep track of submission deadlines by artists and the quality suffers a lot. Since I am not a pro artist or anything, I chose simple anime style art which is easy to create and cute to look at. So far, here is an example sprite I made two weeks back-

Compared to last year, this year I am more at peace of mind and in keeping with my objectives. But in spite of everything, I am introspecting a lot for the last 2-3 months. So far I have developed both 2D and 3D games for PC only, not for any other platform. My knowledge has become stagnant, a by-product of working alone most of the time. I want to learn development on newer platforms and newer engines, get newer challenges. My niche genre of old school rpgs are a safe bet for business purpose, but I want to grow out of my comfort zone. Honestly, I am bored.

My social life has become nil and self-teaching ever evolving new technologies in gaming seems tiring and boring. The problem with learning  a new game engine is during that time I cannot make newer games, which means business is slow. For a self sustaining indie, this is not a feasible option. I can still keep making RPGmaker games as I already have a website dedicated for it, but it is not satisfying me intellectually anymore. It is been long that I stood up to a challenge or pushed my creativity to an extreme. I need a change desperately. I had been playing around with Game Maker and Unity 3D for sometime now and GameMaker seems to be a good alternative for simple 2D games. I don’t know what I should be doing now. Should I carry on making RPG maker game and it will sustain my business easily? Or should I leave my safe zone of RPGmaker games and do a different genre of 2D game this time? Or should I focus more on learning Unity 3D so that I can explore android and iOS market? Or should I take up a day job so that I can learn and earn at the same time? I am procrastinating, unable to make up my mind…

A Sirius Game has been released on 18th of January. I was busy doing marketing stuff, so could not update my blog. My testers had done a great job and I would thank all of them again

The sad thing is, I didn’t know that 18th was a blackout day of the internet due to SOPA and PIPA protests. The press releases didn’t see the light of the day in most websites.

So I will be sending out the promotional stuff again this week. Let’s see how it works out.

Aaaaaaaaand we are almost there! No siriusly! We thought that our game will be complete by November end, but the smaller tweaks and fixing is eating up a lot of time. I have been so busy that I could not even send newsletters this month. Hopefully by this week we shall be able to complete it and then start the beta testing. Beta testers who are interested can keep checking the newsletter, twitter or facebook where I will announce when the testing starts.

I am apprehending a small delay in between because I will be going home for a few days as my mom is not well. Overall, by December I am hoping to release my first 3D game- A Sirius Game. Here are a few in-game screenshots I thought of sharing. I would be happy to hear your feedback!

Click to enlarge-

I would also like to thank the artists who have let me use their beautiful artwork for the character backgrounds- thd777, Gurgur and pk87.

I have been thinking of releasing this game on Steam, though it is a difficult feat to accomplish. And I have a strategy for that- As per Steam’s FAQ, there are two ways to get accepted by Steam. And I am opting for the second one which is much safer and probable. Though I am not that big on game reviews, I need to get some really good reviews for my game from players and other eminent game websites and some decent sales to make them even consider my game. For that, it will take us a wait period of 3-6 months depending on how fast we get reviews. So lets see how things go, I shall keep my fingers crossed.

Seriously…we found a name for our game. Ship adventures game is now A Sirius Game, where Sirius is the name of the protagonist. And no, it has nothing to do with Sirius Black.

By middle of November we plan to start the beta testing, which we shall mail to our newsletter subscriber and announce in our forums for tester sign up. Here’s a peek at the title image of the game -

And the loading screen of the game turned out really nice. The models, land, trees, etc in the image below are from the game. So I thought of putting it up too!

That’s it for now. Once we have completed the game, we shall be putting up the screenshots of it when we launch testing. Feel free to leave your feedback, we would be happy to hear from you.

Sitting in one place working whole day and no exercise has only made me fatter. Just thought of sharing the pictures of our current team members (includes Phantasm Games studios’s developer just beside me and his two awesome interns one on each side )-

Nothing much to share this month except that our game development is going on in the background and that newer obstacles are popping their heads out to delay our project. I am too tired of ranting *sigh*

Just to share some smiles-

We got some character art done for the ship game-

Read the rest of this entry »

Now that I am back to Bangalore to complete the ship game, here are some updates of our progress (click to see full image)-

The Trophy screen (when all trophies are obtained).

The Weapon screen (not all the prices are given) Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been long that I blogged about anything. Shifting to a new place has done one bad thing- high cost of living. Self funding in business and living on your own without any external source of income other than games is taking its toll on game development and my general sustenance. For the past two months, I have been struggling to make payments to artists due to the restrictions raised by Reserve Bank of India on international payments. The progress has slowed down because of that and forced me to come back to my home and work from here for sometime. I am hoping to complete the ship game in two months if things go as planned.

In the mean time, I thought of making a comic series based on ‘Pascal’ from my game and sending them in newsletters. He was quite popular amongst players and it would nice if players can enjoy more of his outrageous jokes outside the game. Here’s the first one, the others will also be posted in my blog apart from the newsletters (Click on the image to enlarge).

The problem of being an indie is you get a lot of money once your game is out for a month or two. After that sales start decreasing, and unless you have a lot of your own game titles or affiliate sales, you will start to feel the pinch. Being an indie is not just making games, but making a living too! And to make money, it is important that you understand and take care of the business aspects of game making. In my earlier post of ‘Life of an Indie’ series, I had mentioned the problems one faces in this career. In this post I will be discussing how I have solved some of those problems and plan to solve for those who are facing this. So let’s take the issue one by one-

1) Sustenance- This is a major issue for indies. From what I have heard or seen other indies doing and also what I have done, here are some ways to manage a sufficient income to sustain yourself (can’t say if you have a family).

a) Get a job which is less time consuming and if  this is your first game in development. Teaching is a good option as it is not as exacting in terms of time and energy like other jobs. You will have a fair pay and sufficient time to do a game in your spare time. I am sure there are plenty of other online freelancing or contract based work that you can do depending on your skills. Read the rest of this entry »