And so begins my ranting...

In hindsight, my irregular posting looks like I've given up on this thread. =P

Anywho, howdy ya'll! I'm back with some news about what's been going on lately. I've been away, studying everyday, researching every which way, hoping that I won't suddenly pass away in my mission to give people stuff to play. However, I'm honestly surprised by the most recent events that have taken place, specifically with Adria -- we're getting our shit together FINALLY. Before I get into all that and some fairly interesting stuff related to it, I'd like to start off with some VHEL/Killjoy news. :D

Joy indeed

Currently, Killjoy is in pre-production. The script is about 20% done, and you can read through the beginning of it to about where the first major conflict comes into play, uninterrupted (that's 50+ pages we're talking about, with 100+ more on the side that needs to be fixed and edited). Next to this, I've had time to really dig my heels into the gameplay. I won't lie: bigger games like this tend to easily sway back and forth between multiple ideas (genres even) until one "feels" or "looks" the most appealing. Iteration is king, but comes with a lot of grief. Lately, I've had to iron out better ways to create compelling gameplay without creating a bigger to do list in the process. If you're curious as to where I'm going with Killjoy now as far as gameplay (despite what I mentioned several months ago), consider it an action/puzzle game using modular arithmetic, with an atypical cooperation focus (think ICO, Majora's Mask, and your typical Japanese dating sim, all slapped together).

I'm not going to make any promises as to when the actual game development process will begin with it because of recent developments with Adria. The "ideal" goal is to make the game episodic, and pump out each part of the game every month. Like I said in the previous update, this game will, in fact, be a Flash game....albeit an unusual one for what it's doing.

VHEL doing VHEL's thing
Don't ask me where my faith in this game lies. I don't fully know. It's probably some deep, twisted, emotional attachment.

Anyhow, like I said whenever, VHEL is on hold...for now. Yes, I have looked at it recently to see where I can go with it, and I was somewhat surprised by what things I could remove if I unclenched my asshole a bit. I've taken a few cues from Killjoy's storytelling approach and gameplay direction to refine abit of VHEL, but frankly, I only touched the tip of the iceberg, which was a bit discouraging (I made this game too big -- simply put). Still, I'm slooooooooooowly chipping away at it until the time is right to commit to it again.

Soul reaping
Adria will be out mid-Janurary. 'Nough said.

My team has shifted focus from trying to do big things to an entirely different plan. Call it "month-to-month game development" if you want. Basically, we sort through a few ideas, pick which one that makes the most sense on paper to create, then make it in a month. Simple. What's wonderful about this setup is that it forces us to weed out all the ideas that DON'T take a single month to create, or longer. With a small team, it's usually hard to predict the outcome to projects with a long term focus. You never know what'll happen (I've learned that the hard way, and far too often). What I'll be interested to see is how bigger games like VHEL and Killjoy will transition into this kind of development since they realistically need to be downsized in such a manner where we can do what we're currently doing with Adria.

And we're done! :D
I'll post back here again once Adria is done so all can play. Hopefully, it'll please most of you guys!

Merry Christmas, you guys!

Side note: thanks for the games, muff. I haven't played them yet, but I do plan on doing so during the holidays. :D

Thanks! :D

I haven't really been on the forums lately, but I'm going to try my best to keep up with these small promises, and deliver. I really want to get this stuff out ASAP!