I’m happy to announce that “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth,” my hand-drawn 3D puzzle platformer, is just about complete.
And you didn’t think I could do it! Well… ok, I didn’t think I could do it. I said months ago that this would be finished in August 2014. I hoped to get it done a few weeks ago, but even now, it looks likely to get released just before September.
Quick update on “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth:” my hand-drawn 3D indie game is seeking voice actors and music, two things that I can’t do on my own (well, I could, but it would be embarrassingly bad, and having it at decent quality does wonders for the final game). I admit that I should have contacted people I have in mind sooner… now hoping to get these things finished in the next couple of weeks, I realize most of my contacts are either not available during the summer or busy with other things. If only I started contacting a few weeks ago… but I haven’t gone through all of my contacts yet. And surprisingly, a lot of existing sources for both of these things exist to hire people/content on short notice, and I did expect to pay something anyway…
Now, the point of this article. Some months ago, I volunteered to help a session of high school students experiment with “Kodu Game Lab” on the Xbox 360. I had a conversation with another student about the software: it was meant as a simplistic visual interface to make games, cute and colorful, sort of like “Little Big Planet” on PS3, but with a greater focus on the actual programming and design of games. My point of view was that Kodu wasn’t that easy to pick up. Well, perhaps for a newcomer it may have been more inviting, and certain concepts would have come through. But in my mind, having learned programming in another class years prior, I felt programming in general was really easy to pickup. And so, I felt that Kodu was redundant, since you couldn’t actually do much with it, and any time spent learning to use Kodu could probably have been spent on learning a real programming language, and in the same amount of time.
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I haven’t made a post in a long time. Don’t worry, I’m not dead. I’m just really focused on development for “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth,” my hand-drawn 3D puzzle platformer, the first true hand-drawn 3D game of its kind. So a lack of posts this month is a good thing.
I actually spent most of this month still working on “Drew” ‘s animation. I was hoping I was mostly done in May, but part of the game is that you slowly regain Drew’s color as you progress through the levels. I’m talking adding color to each PNG file one at a time, now giving me over 8,000 unique PNG textures (please stop laughing). It’s a shame it took so long, especially since I still haven’t animated a planned idle animation for her, and I still haven’t animated a second “guide” character planned. But I have done more than enough to at least focus on the levels, which I should really focus on this week, just to see if it’s still possible for me to finish this for an August release (I still think it’s possible, but I’m really cutting it close).
Drew at the beginning and end of “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth”
What is IndiE3?
Most people already know what E3 is: one of the largest video game advertising outlets in the world. They show a variety of AAA and indie games, most of which from the biggest companies and publishers in the world. But what about the rest of the indie community? There are thousands desperately trying to find their place to shine, most of which actually deserve it with great games worth playing. But as expensive and limited in time as E3 is, it feels exclusive against these people.
And so, IndiE3 was born in 2014, days before E3 began, through a couple comments on Twitter. It blew up into a (somewhat) huge event, with hundreds of indie games on show, dozens of panels by fans and professionals on a variety of topics, and over a thousand people tuning in to the live streams. It was a revolution, and one indie gamers and devs have been waiting for a long time.
(I’m not actually American, but the phrase sounds better with “American” than “Canadian”.)
I’ve talked to a few friends over the last few weeks. Graduating from university, what will become of them? Some have landed very impressive jobs at various companies (and are very deserving of them). I’ve also heard disappointment and boredom with their jobs. I’ve heard plans of (eventually) getting a Masters degree, maybe a Phd, and eventually starting their own company.
Starting your own company… going “indie”…
