As of next month, I will be offshoring part of my game development process to Indiana. There are a few challenges that I will have to overcome in order to cross the Chasm, though, so it's not all money in the pocket. Obviously, I will have to deal with the time zone difference and the language barrier, but I think it will pay off in the long term.

I will be giving them responsibility for high-level creative direction and game design so I can focus on writing really clean code.

I got my California tax thing in the mail the other day, and check this out:



I know you can see it, because it's the very first thing I noticed: a huge frickin' salad right on the cover.

I've been reading a lot of books on marketing lately, and believe me, the placement of that salad was no accident. I'll admit that some people eat salads while using their laptops, but notice the positioning: if she moves her hand three inches to the right, there's going to be a mess.

And that bowl isn't just going to slide over... that tabletop is composed of a steel lattice, which means the bowl is going to get caught in a groove and flip like an SUV.

No, that salad was strategically placed. Their marketing team said to each other (I'm paraphrasing), "Hey, there are a lot of vegetarians and health-conscious people in California, we need to put something on the cover to build up a rapport with them."

I guess we won't know until April 15th whether their ploy worked or not, but I'll be watching.

(click to enlarge)

This is one you can play at home and is lots of fun. I'm not sure what to call it yet, but here are the rules:

1) Right now, look at the clock on your computer.
2) Add the Hours to the Minutes. (e.g. 3:55 = 3 + 55 = 58)
    a) If the total is Odd, you WIN! (you rock!)
    b) If the total is Even, you LOSE. :(
    c) If it's exactly midnight, dude, that's freaky!!!



It's easy to learn, but difficult to master. Enjoy!

Joe

Lemon64.com recently published a review I wrote for Terramex, an arcade adventure on the Commodore 64. There are a few typos that have been left in, since there's no real way for me to edit it, but I'd like to think they give it more personality.

Terramex Review

Terramex is an odd little arcade adventure where the goal is to locate Professor Eyestrain in his secret laboratory and help him deflect a meteor that is on a collision course with planet Earth.

...

Overall, Terramex, while occasionally frustrating, is a unique adventure with pleasant graphics and brilliant music. The gameplay is nothing new, but the imaginative puzzles and atmosphere make it worth checking out, especially if you want to experience one of the more off-beat C-64 titles.

Tunnel of Flames is a game written in BlitzBasic by Joe Williamson, and is one of the more entertaining freeware games I've played in a while. It's short, filled with personality, and the ending just makes you feel good inside. Kind of like a... grilled cheese sandwich for the soul.



The description, according to the author:

This game requires skill, good timing, and intelligence to work out how and when to get past the flames. There are 10 stages in total. Each flame goes up in a certain pattern, which is continually repeated. When playing this game, it is best to wait and see the full pattern of the flames before attempting to pass them. At the end there is a very short, not very well draw, movie thing, which you can watch whenever you want once you have completed the game. =)

Since his website is down indefinitely, Joe has given me permission to host the file on my webserver. Totally check it out!

Download Tunnel of Flames (1.2MB)

E-mail the author

Games released: 8 (one in Beta)
Links from external game sites: 37 (links forthcoming) in 4 languages (English, Korean, Spanish, Czech)

My games have been downloaded by players from all over the world. The following graph shows the amount of data sent to the top countries. (Each game download is about 2 MB.)




The following graph shows how my status in the search engines has risen considerably in the past 3 months.




My goal for 2005 was to get good at completing and distributing games, which I feel was a success. This year I plan to finish up some of the more interesting games I have been working on and probably tackle a multi-player game of some kind.

Happy New Year!

Joe