If you've been following my blogs, you're probably sick and tired of hearing about that "secret project" and essentially learning nothing about it. Well, too bad, because I'm going to talk more about it while still revealing nothing... almost. Okay, I'll be nice and give it a codename: "MBF". :P

It's been a week since we've released "MBF" exclusively to Eo members, and the response is generally good. Srehpog was very harsh in regards to polish and certain gameplay elements, but even he likes this baby, overall. The style and concept definitely sell, while the execution needs a fair amount of polish. As you might've guessed, the Eo beta release was rushed, and it shows. Regardless, the amount of feedback we've gotten from Eo members is at least 5 times more than anything members from Game Maker Games and 64Digits can give, combined. It's definitely a pleasure to be a part of Eo. :D

We'll probably going to spend an additional week or two putting the final touches on this game.

And unbelievably, I'm going to release yet another game before the end of the month. No secrets on this one though. "Immunocide" is a solo project I worked on by myself. It is a real-time strategy game that takes place inside the human body, but that is not all. The game also offers a reasonably deep sci-fi storyline through which I've explored a different approach in storytelling. 64Digits members may remember me posting several blogs on this game. Originally, it started off as a small project that I planned to finish in 2 weeks, but it turned out to be cool enough to make a full-blown game out of it. I was just working on it today, adding some new visual effects (after learning that my computer is amongst the slowest in Eo), polishing some rough edges and wrapping up the last couple of levels. With 30 levels, the whole game should last around 4 hours long. And... err, I'll leave it at that for now. ;)

Yesterday evening, my team and I held a meeting. We've made some important decisions. For a long time, in light of seeing so many people abandon their games halfway through and finishing nothing in the end, I've held a philosophy of never throwing anything away. However, I have had to reluctantly change my perspective and finally scrap "The Chained Sky" and the considerable amount of work (entire tileset, full story background, complete battle engine, etc.) done on it. The game simply lacks the amount of "oomph" that will make it truly successful. The purpose of this project was to salvage old works leftover from my previous team and reuse them. Unfortunately, as the sound guy pointed out, it just doesn't work that way. Doing so places too many restrictions in all aspects of design and development. Furthermore, the story itself was too contrived, as I came up with it before taking a course in creative writing, which was absurdly insightful and extremely inspirational. A story that is bound to a theme is doomed to failure (as it places restrictions on the creative process), and "The Chained Sky" is a testament to that. A theme is something that naturally emerges out of a story, given that you are a good writer. Unfortunately, I discovered that too late. We have a collection of old game concepts that we can build upon, but now, we may go as far as ditching "VouSei Tactics", which is a mammoth of a game. Though, considering how far we've come with that monster, it'll be one of the toughest decisions that I'll ever have to make.

However, we can't always be chained down by incomplete projects of the former team.

Anyway, after spending some time discussing about that issue, we went onto the next hot topic: "Well, what next?" Yup, you guessed it, we're already planning out our next game project. Last night, we broke into fits of laughter while we juggled ideas for the next hotness. Like "MBF" we're again going to spend roughly 2 and a half months on the game. Somehow, our creative juices flowed like waterfalls, and we've already constructed a rough plan of this new game and how it will play out. I'll introduce it in following blogs, as this is getting way too lengthy.

Oh yeah, note-to-self: remember to talk about "Thai entertainment approach identity".

Response to the feedback thing:

Well, that would depend on whether or not you mean *insightful* feedback, or just feedback period. We can give you loads of useless feedback. D=

Anyway, I do remember reading you Immunocide blogs over at 64digits, but I never did remember who wrote them. Until now. Small world, isn't it?