So, I’ve been plugging away at Slay the Beast and posting builds on IndieDB. It’s… pretty cool actually. I admit that I was a bit cautious going into the whole “open development” thing, but posting regular builds to IndieDB has been really enlightening and encouraged me to ferret out many bugs that I might otherwise have let fester. So, yay that!

In other, highly-related, news, I’ve release version 0.0.9 of Slay the Beast for your consumption.
Since the last build I have:

• Fixed characters not flashing red on fatal blow
• Knight will now fall in different directions depending on direction of fatal blow
• Added blue glow at base of flame attacks
• Added particle effects to fireball and slash impacts
• Fixed race-condition crash going from menu to in-game
• Archdemon can now turn-around by pressing RB (Right Bumper) / P on Keyboard
• Fixed some garbage collection issues
• Added particle effects on Knight and Archdemon death
• Fixed Knight knockback logic to be framerate independent
• Fireballs that land outside arena no longer spawn flames inside the arena
• Added shadow under fireballs
• Added breakable candles that release power-ups that can be used by heroes

Hit the link to enjoy the chaos:

Anyway, YouTuber and Twitterer (Tweeter?) @xtomass recently uploaded a video of his play-through of version 0.0.6 of Slay the Beast and I would be remiss not to share it.

So, enjoy!

A new version of my latest indie game, Slay the Beast, is now available on IndieDB. This build fixes several bugs and adds new Knight abilities.

New features / fixes in this build:

• Made Demon spit attack slightly faster
• Added Dash / Air-Dash ability to Knight
• Fixed bug where demon could get stuck in a waiting-to-respawn state
• Fixed animations and particles persisting between rounds
• Added Slash Projectile when Knight attacks with full HP
• Made life bars dual-layered so it’s easier to see recent damage inflicted
• Fixed intermittent boot crash

Just hit the button below to download version 0.0.3:

Click this banner to visit Slay the Beast on IndieDB:

This is an early PRE-ALPHA version of the game. This means that it is very far from feature complete. It is not representative of the final product. As development continues, this game will continue to be updated and have new features added regularly.

This version of Slay the Beast is for 2 players to compete in a 2-round match between a heroic Knight and a powerful Archdemon.

Just hit the button below to download the build (Version 0.0.1):

UPDATE:
Version 0.0.2 now available:

Or click below to visit Slay the Beast on IndieDB:

As proof, here’s a (very) early work-in-progress screenshot of my current indie game project, Slay the Beast:

Slay the Beast is a versus fighting game where one player controls a huge boss-level monster. While the other player controls a puny (but respawning) hero. The sprites are from Oryx Design Lab‘s Hifi Gothic Set and animation is done with Spine, from Esoteric Software.

The game is still at an early stage of development. Heck, I just started this project a few weeks ago! However, I plan on making WIP builds available soon. Stay tuned for more news.

EDIT:
Here are some more screenshots for your viewing pleasure:

And one more for people who’d like to see how characters look in-editor:

That is a whole lot of missiles!

I can’t think of any more appropriate back-of-the-box quote than that for Itano Alpha Flight, my latest game on Xbox Live Indie Games. This game is all about missiles, yours and your enemies. It’s a little bit of Afterburner, a little bit of Macross, and a whole lot of action.

You can see screenshots of the game below:

Grab the game here or on your Xbox 360 for 80 Microsoft Points ($1 US).

Lately, my plate (from both a professional and a personal perspective) has been particularly full and I’ve been finding it hard to muster the energy necessary to research and write my weekly post. While time is a factor, I think this is more about having sufficient emotional energy left over after everything else going on in my life. Therefore, I’ve decided to take a break from my regularly scheduled blog posts while I sort things out.

I don’t think I’ll stop posting on Game Dev Without a Cause entirely. I will probably still post occasionally just not at the original once-a-week schedule. I hope I’ll get back to regularly writing blog posts soon. And I hope you’ll be here to read what I have to say. Most of all, I hope that you’ll forgive the cliche of using a hammock in the sunset as the cover picture for this post.

See you soon,
Rob

So, yeah.
The last few months have been pretty darn busy. Hobby-life, work-life, personal-life, everything seemed to peak right about the end of February. I’ll be honest. I’m feeling pretty tired. I may even be feeling, dare I say it: burned-out.

Well, not full-on “burned-out” I don’t think. That’s actually a pretty major state of affairs. Still, I’m starting to notice some warning signs and I’ve had trouble bringing 100% of my power to bear on any task lately, be it was work or at home.

Now, the advice I’m about to give is not based on any particular professional expertise. Indeed, I’m about as layman as they come. But, I am someone who has worked himself to the point where I had to take a stress-induced leave from work so I thought I’d share some of the signs I watch for with regards to my emotional health.

Know Your Symptoms, Know Yourself
While there are commonly accepted symptoms of burnout, I find it important to be aware of my personal quirks and behaviors and to specifically recognize certain behaviors as warning signs.

Since a lot of my job is about problem-solving (both after-the-fact and preemptively), I’m used to having lots of ideas for how I can solve a problem. When I’m at my best, I can usually come up with several potential solutions to problems at work after brief reflection. When I’m starting to burnout, that flow of ideas slows to a trickle, if not stopping all together. I don’t seem to have trouble identifying problems at that stage however. So, if I find myself identifying lots of problems without being able to provide potential solutions along with them, I have a strong sign that I’m beginning to fray.

Usually, I really like working on games. I find it energizing. Sure, there are times when the work is just tiring, but that’s the exception, not the rule. And it never happens for extended periods of time. Unless I’m starting to burn-out. If I look back over the last week of game dev and can’t think of a single instance in which I had fun while working, then I know it’s time to give myself some extra care.

One corollary to the above is that, even when I’m overall exhausted with work, crises are still “fun”, or at least temporarily energizing. Even if work is a slog and I’m running on emotional fumes, I still find it easy to gear up to deal with a sudden crisis (ex. The publisher’s build is broken! We need a bugfix quick!) But, that crisis-time energy boost is quick to dissipate and can leave me feeling just as empty, if not more so, afterwards. I generally don’t count these crisis moments as being satisfied with work since they are effectively emotional junk-food for me.

On a more physical level, I try to stay aware of signs that my body is reacting to emotional exhaustion. If I start putting on weight and developing acne, chances are I’m starting to react negatively to the current stress levels in my life. Like many, I find that my sleeping habits tend to change once I become overwhelmed. For me, my warning sign isn’t sleeplessness. I tend to sleep MORE as I become stressed but I find myself feeling LESS rested in the morning despite the extra time spent in bed.

While all of this may not pertain directly to game development per se, I think it is worthwhile to keep one’s own emotional and physical well-being in mind while engaging in an activity as engrossing as game development. People who tend towards game dev are a peculiar breed, we are truly passionate about what we do and we are prone to overdoing it if left unchecked. Being aware of how you personally react to stress and knowing when you’re getting overwhelmed are your first line of defense against burning out.

Okay, okay. I’m about two weeks late but I finally finished up my February #OneGameAMonth entry. In my defense, I did have a confluence of life and work events knock into my schedule. But, that’s neither here nor there. I said One Game a Month.

As I mentioned previously, my goal for February’s game was to capture some of that Itano Circus feel. With that in mind, I even went so far as to name the game “Itano Alpha Flight”. And now the game is available for you to play.

Itano Alpha Flight is an action game written in XNA and running on Windows. The goal of the game is to destroy enemies in rapid succession with your lock-on missiles while avoiding their projectiles. You can control the game with either the keyboard or with an Xbox Controller.

To play, you just need to download this file, unzip it, and run Itano.exe.
I’m just one guy, so I can’t really make an guarantees about the suitability of this game for any purpose but I expect it should run reasonably well on most Windows machines.

You can also see how the game turned out in these screenshots:

So, if you have a chance, give Itano Alpha Flight a try and let me know what you think. In the meantime, I’ll be plugging away on my next project.

While this sort of escalation is the kind of situation you want to avoid in real life, it is a powerful tool in game design. As a matter of fact, you can find some element of escalation in almost any game worth playing.

At its most basic level, escalation in games is about raising stakes. This is distinct from a game’s difficulty rising simply from, say increasing numbers of stronger and stronger enemies though that is a part of a game’s escalation. It’s usually as it progresses that a game gives the player the opportunity to use the biggest, most gratifying tools it has to offer while presenting the player with the largest, most impressive challenges it can muster. Thus, the game escalates as everything gets bigger and louder. Similarly, while a player’s ability to avoid damage may improve as they become more skilled, enemy attacks may become more instantly lethal as a game progresses thus rendering each dodge the player executes more significant, escalating the stakes of the game’s risk-reward equation.

Escalation can also work wonders in player versus player scenarios. One of my favorite examples of a clear escalation mechanic is the mana system from Magic: The Gathering. In Magic, each player can lay one Land card per turn. These lands can then be used (called being “tapped”) once a turn to produce a point of mana needed for casting spells. At the beginning of each turn, the player can refresh their previously tapped lands as well as lay another land card. In this way, each players’ available bank of mana increases by a point every turn with every point of mana widening the range of spell combinations the player can execute.

This slow build-up of power is key to how Magic is able to function so well as a game. By starting the power scale low and then slowly building it up, the game creates an ecosystem where low-cost cards are more valuable than higher-cost cards at the beginning of a match but where the relative value of low-cost versus high-cost cards reverses as the match progresses. This ensures that a wider range of cards are relevant to the game than would have been the case if players started each match with a full store of mana.

Mana escalation in Magic is also useful in keeping matches exciting. Higher mana pools allow players to play high-cost combinations of cards that are more likely to be game changers allowing a losing player to turn-the-tables of a match. This makes it less likely for one player to dominate a match from beginning to end, allowing both players to be fully engaged in the game. In essence, moves made at the end of a match matter more than the moves made earlier in a match by the nature of the sheer power level of the abilities available towards the end of a match.

For more escalation in practice, you can read this article on the design of the Penny Arcade collectible ping-pong card game Paint the Line. This game actually has a literal Escalation Deck that the designers used to provide their game with forward momentum.

So, that’s escalation in a nutshell. As a game progresses, player stakes go up, lending greater importance to their actions. This can help players stay engaged with a game by allowing for comebacks at later stages of play. It can also serve as a throttle to allow for a wider range of abilities to be relevant to the way the game as played.