Moving on. As you probably know the purpose of these here ‘Jam’ thingies is to create something new, awesome and fun. There were lots of incredible entries and I encourage you to find them … somehow. I’m not exactly sure how, there’s no central PEGJam game listing.  Alas.

Super Busker

SUPER BUSKER is my contribution to the madness. It puts you in the shoes of a panhandler trying to earn his way to the very top of the busker income ranks. Look for this to show up on a portal of some kind soon.

Dr. Precarious: Case of the Deadly Party

Wander about the room and accuse various party guests of being the murderer you seek! Every incorrect guess results in the untimely death of another innocent guest, but each time the murderer strikes they will leave another clue which will help you narrow your suspects down. Enjoy and please leave feedback on Kongregate or here if you like.

We Get Signal Redesign Preview

Well, it took quite some time but I finally saw the light. The old site was awful and relied on a twitchy Flash carousel that gave some people motion sickness. I figure that since I’ve designed more than a few sites over the past year I should spend some time on my own and make it pure CSS/JavaScript like the real companies do these days.

On a related note I’m also redesigning the About and Portfolio pages in a similar fashion, but I think the blog will stay the way it is.. for now.

Hopefully you all find this version a little more usable and attractive!

Game Jam in Edmonton, Alberta

For the rest of us, it’s an excellent opportunity to network, socialize and of course improve game development skills. I don’t know if I can make this particular one, but there is another coming up soon in Winnipeg (sometime in May.) Whether you’re an accomplished programmer or a total neophyte designer, it’s a good experience.

GiraffeRPG in Development

Right now GiraffeRPG has a working Tile Map Editor written for Adobe AIR. It’s also built on Flex 4, so I’ve been fiddling around with the new Spark components. Flex to me is far too cumbersome in most cases and I’m not even sure I really like it here. On the other hand, it did make rapid development of a functional editor quite easy and the ability (thanks to AIR) to access local files is really, really handy.

Next phase of the game is to start working on building out some areas for Giraffey to walk around and some collision code to accommodate the various edge types. After that we will move onto ‘entities’, which include the characters and enemies of the game.

If you’re interested in some of J.R. Hill’s artwork, check out his site Time For Cute.

Now of course there’s more to it than that!

Sadly, for the moment I’ll have to leave you with just a tiny hint of what’s to come. Enjoy.

Rock Paper Zombie Logo

Mushroomer Gameplay Screenshot

As you may already be aware, Mushroomer was my (somewhat sad) entry into the TIGSource Assemblee Contest. Part one of the contest involved all sorts of great artists and musicians creating assets. Part two was for developers and designers to put together a game.

Having never designed a game before.. it was a challenge, to be sure. After three grueling weeks of cramming all my spare hours into a new game engine, Mushroomer was born.

Unfortunately a lot of stuff got left undone mostly due to my inexperience and time constraints. If you have a minute, try out the contest entry version of Mushrooomer. If you’re feeling particularly verbose, you can leave some comments in the Assemblee Mushroomer Forum Thread.

I’m looking forward to doing more of this in the near future.