These past couple of months have been turbulent on account of pushing Super Monkey Ball Bounce out the door at Three Rings/SEGA. Motivation and mental resources to work on my own projects have taken a hit, and as I’ve begun to regain momentum I’ve also put quite a bit of thought into shifting priorities:

Crossword Dungeon not coming to PC (yet)

This was a difficult decision to make, but I trust it was the right one. I put some work into Crossword Dungeon in order to get it in good shape for PC: a larger, resizable screen; wider UI with more readable minimap; and mouse hover support for skill and monster information. However, as I sat to determine next steps, I realized the list of enhancements necessary to make Crossword Dungeon fit for PC was nearly identical to the list of improvements I had envisioned for a possible sequel. The PC-ready list looked something like this:

1. New character class.
2. Skill tweaks.
3. More monsters.
4. Boss levels.
5. Item drops and inventory.
6. Persistent overworld for meta progression.
7. Smaller, completable dungeons with boss at the end.

While the Crossword Dungeon 2 list looked something like this:

1. New character class.
2. Skills revamp.
3. More monsters.
4. Boss levels.
5. Boss minigame.
6. Item drops and inventory.
7. Item shops.
8. Persistent overworld for meta progression.
9. Smaller, completable dungeons with boss at the end.

In short, the PC version of Crossword Dungeon involved nearly as much work as an entirely new game. I’ve therefore put it on ice while I consider my options.

Hymn development also paused

Hymn, the experimental event-based story game I’ve been working on with a friend saw some slow-yet-steady progress in the last few months. However, due to circumstances outside of my control such progress has slowed to a crawl. I’ve also made the call to pause development on this project so that I can focus on Adventurers.

Adventurers once again under development

Adventurers is a project I started over a year ago, originally intended for mobile and built with Objective-C and Cocos2d. I’ve since shifted priorities towards making game that I would enjoy with a language and framework that are pleasant to work with, as well as a platform whose users don’t habitually balk at having to pay pennies for something you’ve spent countless hours on.

The small screenshot at the top is an early look at a party of adventurers much as those you will control in the game. More info forthcoming as it develops.