“The Speccies” is finished. But when will it be released?

Time for an update, I think. So, my new ZX Spectrum game “The Speccies” has been finished for a couple of weeks now, but it’ll be a little while longer before it’s released into the wild, though.

The reason for the delay is that the artist and me wants to produce a small amount of physical cassettes, that’ll we’ll put up for sale, and it’ll be a while before we get this sorted out. Had it only been the standard-sized cassette boxes it wouldn’t have been much of a delay, but we want to produce a small amount of large Ultimate-style boxes too (similar to the ones in the background of the picture below), and they’ll be brand new boxes made specifically for this purposes (and in blue) which means that we’ll need to have new plastic inlays produced too…and that’s the primary thing holding it up at the moment. Hopefully we’ll get them produced sometime soon – within a couple of weeks.

There will only be a very limited amount of these available – less than half of what there were of Dingo, and they’ll include some sort of extras that we haven’t quite decided on yet, so if you want something really special then this will be the way to go. However, the game will also be available to download for free, so if you’re late to the party, or don’t want to spend any money, then that’s fine too. 🙂

I think the game has turned out very well – but don’t just take my word for it – here’s what the musician had to say about the almost finished version a month ago;

Heheh, what a great little game. Really plays well, doesn’t it!
Can’t really think of anything suggestion-wise — I think you’ve got it all very well covered to be honest. Graphics are awesome, gameplay is awesome, and it’s exactly the sort of game I enjoy playing too (on any platform) so I’m really proud to have my little version of the The Brainies tune in there.
Excellent work. I think it’ll go down very well indeed when it’s released!

Stay tuned for more updates about the release soon.

 

This is obviously from my previous Spectrum game, but it shows the three sizes the game will be available in – single, double & large custom-case versions.

 

New release: Buggerman – The Xmas Heist

Hohoho…

A new game – but sometimes things just take longer than expected. This game was supposed to be out a year ago – in December 2011, but I ran into trouble, got annoyed with it and didn’t spend as much time on it as I hoped I would have, and so I left it for a while and only just finished it off recently.

The game, Buggerman: The Xmas Heist is basically a remake of the old arcade classic, Bagman, only re-themed into a (sort of) Christmas game. My third. The game is as usual available for both Windows and Mac OSX.

So, here it is – my third Christmas game…only delayed by one year. I’ve done much worse. 😉

Enjoy. And please let me know in the connects or in a mail, if you like it. 🙂

New release: Arcadia remake

It’s only been a month since my last game (Black Widow), but already there’s a new one. 🙂

Since my games tend to grow bigger and more complicated with each game, I felt like making a small and quick remake. Something so simple I could never have time to get tired or bored with it. So I asked on Retro Remakes;

“Suggest me something I can remake? – something simple I can do in no more than two weeks, and it can’t be a vector game…but I’m going to make it into one”

A few suggestions were put forward and I chose to remake the ZX Spectrum game, Arcadia.

Two weeks later and it’s done. It’s small, it’s simple, and I had a blast making it. I actually poured more love into it than I expected to do, and while it’s nothing special I think it’s pretty good for the time I’ve spent on it.

I hope some of you out there will find it interresting enough for a couple of good shooting-sessions. 🙂

Read more about it and grab downloads for Windows and OSX here: Arcadia.

New release: Black Widow

Nice! I’ve finally managed to finish one of my projects that has – by now – been in development for quite a while…almost 2½ years in fact. However, due to a long stay on the WIP-pile the actual development time is “only” about 4 months.

So, without further ado: may I present to you – Black Widow.

It’s a vector arena-shooter that is heavily inspired by Robotron: 2084, but with insects instead of robots. Like Robotron, Black Widow also has lots of strategies for scoring and getting further into the game, but what those strategies are is something only plenty of play will reveal.

I’m very proud of this remake – it plays very well (if I may say so myself) and is absolutely ‘up there’ among the games I’ve done that are closest to the original game in playability and features. The main feature here (probably) being the updated glowing vectors, but also the usual stuff like an online highscore board and normal D-pad and twin-stick joypad control supported.

If you’re a vector-purist and don’t like my style of intense glowing vectors you can either disable the background picture which has been designed to maximise the effect of the glow, or disable the glow completely and use only colored non-glowy vectors.

I don’t normally let people test my games during development, but I did with this game and it turned up several bugs (haha) and improved the overall playability/difficulty of the game, so thanks to them …and of course to Bruce Merritt who is the designer/programmer of the original arcade game, and Atari who released it back in 1982.

…if you like it then please tell me in the commentbox below. 🙂