It’s certainly been a while since I last updated my blog, but I have some exciting news!

I participated in Ludum Dare 17 last weekend and had a blast making a game based around the theme “islands”. The result? “Island Rescue”, a fun twist on the good ol’ falling blocks game where players must balance the clearing of lines with the survival of a friendly villager who faces grave danger at the hands of the ever-rising tide. Whew, that’s a mouthful.

What’s especially exciting is that the good folks over at Bytejacker have given me a pretty awesome review on the game. What a pleasant surprise!

I’ve set up a permanent project page right here, so go and check it out.

It has recently come to my attention that the theme I was previously using is now the most popular custom WordPress theme. It was somewhat obscure when I started using it. Hmph!

Anyways, I decided to make my own little theme with a bit of a minimalistic feel to it. Of course, there are some other little bits of the theme that need to be worked on, too.

Yesterday was 9/9/9, so that’s the last of the era of single digits for a while.

The September 2009 Ludum Dare results are coming up soon, so I’ll be posting my results (as well as my game) on here too. Yippee!

Also, I’m totally leaving tomorrow to go to Orlando, Florida! I’m so excited!
I’ll be gone for two weeks, but I’ve set my blog to auto-post with new content every weekday. Enjoy!

I’ve joined a small daily sketching group that consists of my online friends. You’ll be able to follow the group’s progress on the right sidebar under “Latest Sketches by Friends”.

Also, my lovely wife recently gave me the gift of a camera (Nikon D90! Woo!). So I’ll be posting a bunch of photos on here too!

So between the sketches and photography, I’m hoping to really increase the amount of content I’m posting on here, hopefully to the point that I’ll be able to post something new every weekday. Wow!

Here’s the review:

This game is great!! It’s racing mixed with weapons, and the ability to upgrade both your car and your weapons makes this game one of the best ones I’ve played so far. The control takes some getting used to, and the system that it uses for upgrading is a little hard to understand, but those are minor problems compared to the fun you can have with this one! If you only get one C64 game, make it this one.

If you’re curious, the review can still be found at the Area64 website (look for Badlands in the Games section)

I’ve already jumped in head-first, porting two popular Ludum Dare games to Flash, Towlr and Babby of Towlr. On a related note, it would appear that the Towlr craze is growing! Check out the Official Towlr Website for more information and games!

You might have noticed that I changed and customized my WordPress theme to something a little less dark. I think it’s pretty nice, and I might do some more customizations later. Woo!

Oh, almost forgot. About a month ago I updated my merge.py script so it actually works now (a new release of pygame broke the previous version of the script) and supports vertically merging images. A handy tool, indeed!

Wow! Big news!
According to a friend of mine in the UK, the open-source game I created, Pillows, has a short write-up in Linux Format Magazine! It’s in the latest issue, #108!
If I can get ahold of a scan of it, I’ll post it, but here is a excerpt of it:

Finally we have Pillows, a deceptively simple yet hugely addictive game which doesn’t really fit into any regular genre. Here’s the plot; an unknown aggressor is firing huge missiles at the Earth. Using a giant catapult and “ridiculously overstuffed” pillows, your job is to cushion the blow of those missiles protecting the world from impending doom. All you need is the space bar: watch the indicator in the top left, hit space when you’ve chosen the right angle, and hold down space until the correct power is set. You’ll fire a pillow into the air, and if it lands in the path of the missile the world is saved (and you go onto the next level!).

Very awesome! Thanks a bunch, Linux Format Magazine! Apparently a copy of the game is included on the DVD that comes with the magazine, too!
Also, if you haven’t already, you can check out the game right here.

(Click on the image for a closer look)