One Crazy Night

We did our first remote game jam last night since we were all too busy to make it over to one house. It actually worked really well. We made a lot of progress.

Brick Bout is a great idea at its core but we were missing that little extra edge that made you think "holy shit" as you start to uncover the core mechanic. So we took last night to analyze what we may be missing. If anyone has been following what Brick Bout is; you know the game play from our alpha video...

So the game play is pretty straight forward with a multi puck addition and being able to miss pucks to the other side for your opponent to take. The core was solid but we were missing the fun factor that made it different.

We started moving some ideas around and got to making pucks incrementally faster. But we also make it so the speed would be faster on individual pucks making you need to juggle faster and slower movement.

Then we wanted destruction. So we made the faster pucks do more damage. Not enough destruction. So we made even more bricks and smaller ones. With our main device being the iPad we adjusted game play to work for two people more comfortably on either side of the tablet instead of next to each other. Now we have something like this...

Your score is part of the playing field now with how far behind or in front of your opponent you are. It's actually gotten amazingly addictive to play and the new mechanics make a good chance at a comeback if you're behind. We'll have a new video up soon once the final VFX get in for things to be super sexy.

Alpha Footage! Dude Man and Brick Bout

I wanted to take a moment to share the alpha footage of our soon to be released title Brick Bout as well as our other game Dude Man (set to release in a few months)

Brick Bout is a multi-player brick buster game where players try to destroy as many bricks as they can before their opponent on the same playing field. Each player controls two paddles; one on their own side and an additional small paddle in their opponents play space.

Visit the Brick Bout page HERE and learn more!
Releasing on ios | web | ouya

Dude man is an infinite runner smashing its way onto your mobile device. Fly over the crumbling cities now exploited by evil. Punch, kick, and mosh your way through demons and upgrade your gear to unleash the amazing powers of metal with special attacks and super moves.
Visit the Dude Man page HERE and behold its awesome powers of rock! Releasing on ios

Whew!

Fueled by Red Bull, Coffee, and Craig's list. We managed to find a new apartment this morning! We basically spent all last night making a list of places and then this morning touring them all.

I managed to build a press kit and some extra art for Brick Bout last night so it was nice to be able to cram in some real work after dealing with living issues. Still going off of about 7 hours of sleep in the last two days but things are getting back on track. The three of us are adjusting to issues and cranking out game changes and polish way faster than I thought. I think we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and that is really pushing us.

Events

It's been a tough week. Brick Bout is set to launch in the next... week or two? It's all based on final polish and getting mechanics we want in game. We want to be happy with it. Another huge factor is waiting for Apple to fix their hack issues. The developer center is still not up so I can't transfer ownership of the developer ID to myself yet.

My fiance and I are moving out of the house were renting this coming Friday into a smaller apartment to save money and we had a place lined up. But, just earlier today, we were told that the people currently living in the apartment are refusing to move and they need to take them to court which could be a month long process. So we have one week to find a new place to live.

Basically the major struggles is that this is all within the week we plan to launch. Also our engineer just sold his car, so instead of having the guys over to my place to finish out Brick Bout, we need to change over to doing a google hang out probably tomorrow while our property owners show the house to potential renters.

This coming week is trying to launch Brick Bout, packing and moving, finding a new place to live, and making the house into something our property managers can show potential new renters.  This will be an interesting week.

Starting the blog back up and mentioning two new games!

Well, awesome! We're back after a long set of issues with red tape at our full time jobs, losing our engineer and switching engines for our game Dude Man (check that mo fo out) and starting up another title that we're going to be releasing first Brick Bout I figured it was time to dust off the old blog and update.

I am removing all the old content as it doesn't make any sense any more so I'm sorry if this feels like you're jumping into the middle of a movie. Here's the short short version...

Big Bad short story (curl up with some Earl Grey foo)

3 friends made a simple game at a weekend game jam, they were all like "let's finish this thing!" and they totally started working on it. It started to form in to a little baby Dude Man and they looked at it and thought "I love doing this stuff! We should try and make an LLC and make this a real thing" and they did!

But then they hit a wall of red tape with their jobs and they were all "Bro you can't be doing that" so they were frozen. Then their engineer went to a shiny new job and he had to leave the company. (you will be missed)

Months went by and the small social following died. But then the winds of change began to blow and they were allowed to make games again! An awesome new programmer entered the fray with great ideas bringing a new game idea that could be made in a short amount of time (Brick Bout) along with converting Dude Man to a new engine!

Work is now pushing along as we burn the candle at both ends in our free time.