Gameaweek #2: LubDub

Following on from my first failed entry I have managed to finish the game this week based on the recently popular Lub v Dub and Jump Chump!.

The principal of the game is to make the coloured blocks jump the green and brown obstacles.  Press "A" key to make the top block jump and the "Z" key to make the bottom one. The principal is to last as long as possible.

Please have a play at http://www.parachutingfrog.com/gaw/lubdub/lubdub.html and feel free to leave comments below as to ways to improve and things you like and dont like about it.  After all the purpose is to learn as much as possible from GAW.

Gameaweek #1: Unblock Me

I read a fantastic article a few weeks a go by the ever influential Rami Ismail who wrote about the importance of failure and how getting this experience is an important learning for any game developer.

For those who have followed me over the years I have certainly struggled with an idea that grabbed me.  I dabbled last year with a game a month and got lucky with 1800 but at times I felt almost like that time was too long to be working on something that didn't interest me or too short to have something polished and marketable.

As such I started this week off by following Rami's article to fail fast.  Focus on something that I hadn't done before, cobble together something that just about worked and then from there see if I enjoyed working on it enough to pursue at a later date and build it into something bigger.

To start off with I thought I would tackle an "Unlock Me" type game.  You have probably played this sort of game where you slide blocks around in order to get a designated block to escape the gaming arena.

As always the game is written in Unity, Futile and C# and represents about 5 days of work.  However for me 5 days is only about 12 hours.

What interested me over this time is that I quickly become bored with working on it and the buzz of this concept disappeared just as soon as it had arrived. This for me was a lesson to not push through with something that I couldn't get passionate about because if I couldn't then how could I expect anyone else to.

It is a workable grid where all the blocks can be moved around but after this short period I have decided to abandon the project a couple of days ahead of time and to move on to something a little more fulfilling.

On to week 2 :)