2025 Archives

Stuck Waiting… Well, work has been put to a dramatic halt lately. I actually have developed three more games that are ready for release, but the powers that be aren’t sure of them right now, and so they sit on hold. They may still see the light of day eventually, only time will tell I guess. It’s extraordinarily frustrating to put that much time (and not to mention COST) into developing something for it to end up sitting on a virtual shelf, especially when you have an audience that’s calling out for more games to be added and for some more variety.  I see both sides of the argument, certain groups want to curate to make sure a market doesn’t get saturated in crap, and at the same time, that causes market stagnation with nothing new coming out causing player/user attrition because of that curation. In my opinion it just harms the overall reputation / view of a market. As long as certain requirements are met (keeping the garbage where it belongs), it should be released. Let the players decide to hate it or love it. If you’re going to spend dollars on people overseeing testing and more, and have already spent that money, why not just let it go out and recoup even a tiny amount of the cost, even if sales aren’t the greatest. The downside to this, is several ideas I was going to work on have now been put on hold because I no longer have the confidence that they will be seen as unique titles and not compared to other things that look similar, and I can not sink the time and money into something that may just get rejected. It’s not worth it, especially for someone like me that does this in their spare time. Sure if I was a larger studio with money to spare, it wouldn’t be an issue. But when I sink even $500 into a project that gets rejected, I’m never going to see that money again. It may not seem like a lot of money to some people, but to me that’s a month and half of car payments, so it’s an eye opener and makes you think twice about doing anything else. But this is a rant I could go on for days about, so I’m just going to shut up now. In the meantime I have a ton of ideas but nothing to develop them on. My lovely little alienware laptop I spent a small fortune on is sitting in a dell repair center currently because of constant crashing, lockups and worse problems. I sunk about $600 into it myself trying to correct the issues, new SSD, new ram, nothing was working (but I got some nice upgrades! 8tb of disk space!!!).. When the cpu cores are reaching 212F while sitting at idle, you have issues.. Thankfully it was still fully under warranty. I know they’ve already replaced the motherboard, they won’t tell me yet what else they’ve done. My guess is the overheating caused damage to other components..  Supposedly they should be done with it by the 20th, then shipping time back to me. Hate the waiting game especially when you spend 3k on a device, you kind of expect it to work without issue.  In the meantime, have several new ideas that should be a lot of fun, just have to wait to start development. I did pick up a chromebook with an Intel I3 in it, and got Unity installed on it, but it’s slow and difficult to work with. Maybe if I get really bored in the next week or so I’ll try messing with it. Until then, new stuff is in the works.. Just have to wait…

With A Little Nagging, Phazed was born As the new year progresses, we have already transitioned from January into February. The pace has been rapid, and it shows no signs of slowing down. This momentum has brought forth numerous projects, some met with approval and others with resistance; nonetheless, work continues. Within the past month, I have completed and released two additional games to the beta team for evaluation. “Backlash” is currently in testing and has undergone several modifications to enhance its gameplay experience. Moreover, after much encouragement (nagging? =D) from my wife, I developed a game that had long been on the IGT Wishlist: a clone of Phase 10 for the game table. While not an exact replica, there have been notable changes throughout the development process, but it truly came out as a beautiful well-polished project. The only thing lacking is AI players to play against, but after beating my head against the wall a few too many times, I deemed it better to release now. I just have not been able to wrap my head around a good way to handle a game like this and making the computer choose what cards go where. I may come back and do an AI for this when it’s updated to add connected play, we’ll see. My skills are not the greatest and I learn every day and there is always something new to learn. For now, this AI is out of my realm of capability. For now… The beta testers have just started picking away at it, and I’ve already fixed most of the issues found, so now we let more people get their hands on it to see how much they can break, what can improve, and we move forward from there. Pharaohs Passage Work has already started on the next projects, yes plural. First up in development is Pharaohs Passage which is going to be a copy of the board game Quoridor, in an Egyptian setting. It’s a relatively simple but fun game for 2-4 players. Your goal is simple, get to the other side of the board. Sounds so easy, until you add other players who own walls, just like you do. And they can place those walls right in your path to block your way. Title screen is done, and most of the music for the game has already been chosen and purchased, and work has begun on the actualy gameplay. I know compared to most developers I sometimes do things a little bit backwards, but to me, the feel of the images and everything in the title tends to form a picture in my head of how I want a game to look. Sometimes I do start straight on gameplay, I did with Backlash and then built the title and chose the music around the game, in this case though, it was backwards. I guess sometimes seeing something helps bring it to life. The next board game concept I also have a new idea in my mind, a board game, a square shape with 5 rings. The center has a single space, the next ring out 4 spaces surrounding the center, and then the next ring expands out, etc. until you have all 5. Players start as peasants in the outermost ring on their journey to become a king. You must move completely around the board ( and gather the needed ? materials? steps? skills? reputation? I don’t know yet. ) before you are able to navigate to the next ring in as you build your skills from a peasant to a blacksmith, to squire and knight, and finally one to rule them all. There are a lot of things to work on out this game, but I love the idea and I’m probably going to start developing it shortly. I have no idea where it’s going or what it’s going to end up as, but it captured my curiosity and I’m eager to explore it!

First off… So first, the Dice Games Megapack was finished and released to QA right before new years eve, so that one is sitting with the QA team awaiting the beta testers. Included are seven different dice games for up to 6 players, with AI players for each one. Shortly thereafter, I saw another game on Amazon.com called Jinx. It involved rolling dice and placing pieces on a grid to line up matches. Cool concept, but it needed something a bit more so that turned into BackLash! I worked a few too many evenings and nights, but I started this one on New Year’s Day and just sent it to QA early this morning. For such a short development cycle, it’s a rich but simple game. The concept remained the same, placing pieces on a grid to make a match, but was amped up with different board spaces that provide boons and penalties. In this game, to further differentiate it, I even added an option to add a third die to the rolls, if you control one of the boards rune spaces. Just to add to the replayability we added a couple of game modes to allow for a shorter game instead of the standard multi-stage playstyle. This one was definitely the quickest work I have done but doesn’t lack in design. All the bells and whistles and polish are there, like I said, I just spent way too many evenings and late nights (a 4am stopping point rings a bell) away from the family to get this one done. It had me excited, it was fun and challenging, and I wanted to finish it so I can share it with the world! Next Up… Next up will be looking at a couple more games to clone, including an interesting strategy game called Quorridor and the ever-popular Phase 10. The table needs these, and I aim to provide!