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MrPineapple and I have selected 19 tracks from the Tormishire soundtrack for a little sampler.

My mega shelf of stuff is pretty much full now. Looking through it I’ve found a few DS games that I’ve bought over the past year or so that I haven’t even played yet!

Why so buyius? £6 and I love the series. Plus I was in an SRPG binge.

Why so buyius? £9 and again, I love the series. Played for an hour and never went back. It’s good too, just hasn’t pulled me in yet.

Why so buyius? Wasn’t cheap but the price was only going up. Played a bit at launch and thought it was a good mix of retro and moderness. Didn’t want to fork over rare DS game prices for it in the future!

Why so buyius? Same as the above! Except I put about 9 hours into this and gave up fighting one of the bosses.

Why so buyius? Bought in the SRPG binge, was only £9 and there’s probably years worth of entertainment in there. Got the PSP one too but again… not played it yet! I’m not good at this whole playing games malarkey.

I’ll play all these games eventually but for now they’re just sat gathering dust. What is in my DS at the moment? Pokemon bloody Platinum, which will probably be glued in there till Gold next month. I really don’t like how easy it is to sink days into these games and not realise it, it’s quite daunting really. 26 hours into Platinum and I only have 3 badges and 3 Pokemon who are any good at fighting (one is a dragon though so it’s understandable). Thus ends my 3am blog post, zzzzzzz

Oh and Wake is coming! Just been experimenting with relaxing. Does wonders for the skin.

Wake is a game I’ve been working on now for 6 months. Over the summer I caught the remake of the Poseidon Adventure, as poor as that film was compared to the original it brought back memories of some classic Amiga games involving a steadily increasing water level. Thunderbirds had such a level, set in an underwater base if I recall, but this was at an age where I had no clue about missions in games. Sink or Swim was similar but took on a Lemmings style of gameplay, where the player had to rescue scientists.

The rising water mechanic always interested me. It’s similar to a zombie style of game where something bad is slowly approaching the player. It’s up to them to provide their own path to safety, and the same is true here.

In Wake the water level is constantly rising at different speeds depending on difficulty. Various events will raise the players score such as collecting things, escaping the ship quickly, not fainting etc. This score can then be uploaded to the big super global highscore table. There are achievements and all that modern stuff too. Visually I threw everything I could at it and tried to create an evolving atmosphere.

The player is up against obstacles but they wont kill the player, they just knock the little engineer out until the icy waters wake him up again. The only way the player can die is by drowning. Death isn’t the point in this game.

Wake will be out in the coming weeks after more testing, optimising and additional artwork.

A rolling demo can be downloaded now, which also contains some promotional art material and desktop images. Bear in mind that this is the full game, but as a rolling demo it just picks random rooms and the camera pans through them… another throw back to the Amiga days. Be sure to check the real site too!

On the 8th I hit 24! Which means I’m halfway to my target age of 48. I got a few things (as well as a back massaging chair thingy, chocolates and an Atari tshirt);

It was first aired in 1999 and the film wasn’t great. But sweet bejesus if anyone out there hasn’t watched this show yet – do! It’s wonderful. A hark back to Shakespearian days of yore where men took the roles of women. It’s a sort of organised sketch show about a village (they filmed it literally just over the hill from me) with a range of arcing storylines. The longest running of such is about a “new road” that will connect the village to the rest of the world. The irony is most of the village would like this but 2 siblings who run a shop atop a hill overlooking the village try to stop this happening and to protect the village from outsiders. Later the story gets a bit more complex and intertwine-y but it never stops being a brilliant and classic comedy with some amazing characters. In a nutshell it’s a charming, dark, horror comedy.

It’s good! In whatever way you can get hold of it.

And a Sam keyring!

Wake was sent out for testing the other night and I’ve already got a list of bugs to work through. I was hoping to get this out for my birthday but it looks like it’s gonna be a little bit longer. Thankfully the core game works perfectly as does the online highscore system!

Also got around to playing Fuel, a game I bought on Steam in the big sale. For a £2.99 its pretty ace. I’m not doing much beyond driving around the vast world map yet. The other night I decided to head up a giant mountain marked on the map. Took me near on an hour to get there but it felt pretty worth it!

I was hoping to have Wake released by now. Developments coming to an end now, it’s mostly just balancing, bug fixing and testing. It’ll be out this month without any doubt but I’ve realised there are pretty much no details about it!

So what to do you need to know about it?

It’s a distilled Metroidvania type game. The premise is explained on the title screen and there’s no real story after that. It’s a fight for survival, a race against time (or rather, water) to get to the exit. There are 3 difficulty modes that alter the initial items and other things… but most importantly it alters the final score. And that’s what this is all about! A juicy score! It’s the first game I’ve made with an online highscore and I’ve integrated it right into the game, so you can check the Top 100 or the 10 latest scores. It’s grown from a tiny minigame project into a fully fleshed out game hence the longer development time.

The very first screenshot I took back in August, still using the Tormi sprite too.

…and the latest.

And the Christmas Steam sale! I’ve had to buy (or been gifted by the most wonderful girlfriend)…

FUEL
Oblivion Game of the Year Deluxe
Beyond Good and Evil
Morrowind Game of the Year
Trine
Torchlight
Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast
Multiwinia
Darwinia
Max Payne 1
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Loom
The Dig
Prey
Zombie Driver
Braid
Defense Grid: The Awakening
Alpha Prime
Geometry Wars
FarCry
Grand Theft Auto IV