In It To Win It

Just a quick update to say that Opac's Journey is now successfully in playtesting with testers reporting a clean bill of health. We're getting some helpful feedback - nothing that should delay a release so far but some good ideas for tweakage. Thanks to the testers and see you on the other side.

In other news, Bryan and I flipped right back into the follow up game, Ophidian Wars: Legend of Kilflame (we were itching). So for those of you who remember Maya and her adventures, we're diving right back in to the thick of it. Bryan has created the backbone of the combat system, we've retooled the stat system to make it cleaner, and we're creating full 3D test environments that work with our custom level editor (as opposed to the flat terrain/textures of the original gameplay teasers).

Lots more to come soon on both games.

So it Goes

Our first experience with playtesting was very fast! Too fast! We had some nice people ready to take a look, but we hit a mysterious "Code 4" bug right on the title screen. We can't replicate it but we're working on fixing it. (if you're a developer who wants to help and can deploy a ccgame file, please let us know)

In the meantime, the official gameplay video is completed and released here. It's a whole mashup of raw gameplay.

So we'll be back in playtest in 6 days. Tickety Tockity.

Check one, Check two.

Just a status update here for those interested.

Official trailer is on YouTube here and you might find it around the web now too thanks to some helpful journalists and contacts. (thank you)

We're done with "internal playtesting" and will officially submit for peer review this weekend. (EDIT: It has been submitted)

Stay tuned for an official gameplay video early next week.

And soon after that I'll be outlining the rules for our Ophidian Wars: Opac's Journey contest that will give away 2000 Microsoft Points. So if you think you have some skillz and a competitive streak, you'll probably want to get in on that.

Wow - that was fun!

Having now written the software for a game start-to-finish I can say with some certainty that I plan on doing this for the rest of my life. I thoroughly enjoyed that experience, and I have every intention of continuing. I've been writing software since I was a young'un, and I've always had a passion for it. This passion has been rekindled having done a project as fun and as challenging as this one.

I don't really have a whole lot to add to Carl's input here, except to say that I really hope that the game is enjoyable for you to play as it was for me to write. We tried to add as much polish as we could to make sure that the experience is as smooth and pleasant as possible. We also tried to make the game itself not only fun, but containing enough of a plot to keep you interested in the character's story throughout Opac's Journey and beyond.

Some of you may have been here long enough to remember that this blog was dedicated to the development of a game called Ophidian Wars: The Legend of Kilflame - and then around the end of last year/beginning of this year, we kind of shifted focus.

Well, I'm happy to say that we're going to be shifting focus back to LoK. Even though we haven't been discussing it online a whole lot, LoK has not been forgotten, and it hasn't been inert these last several months.

Carl has designed a very robust combat system that is based on RPG elements, and we've had several discussions during this OJ dev-time which have refined and clarified my perception of what needed to be done. And the combat/RPG system for LoK has been written, although I haven't yet integrated it into our game's engine just yet.

I'm sure that Carl will be adding some blog entries as we progress with this system, and I hope that I can put in my technical $0.02 as well, if anyone is interested in the Behind-The-Scenes or Under-The-Hood type stuff.

Anyway, the next several weeks should be very exciting for us in the Small Cave. We get to see some reaction to our first published game, and hopefully we'll get lots of feedback from you (I'm especially interested in hearing everyone's take on the character of Opac Sentir; he's one of my favorite Ophidian Wars characters) on all aspects of the game, and maybe I can improve on some things during our next endeavor.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Official Screenshots: Opac's Journey

Here are the official screenshots for Ophidian Wars: Opac's Journey.

These are intended for circulation:

Holy Sh!t We're Done

It's official - the final screws are in place and have been tightened. Opac's Journey will most like be out by the end of the month assuming we pass peer reviews and testing without too much trouble.

Right now, we're doing some "in-house" playtesting and getting our PR materials straight.

Bryan and I are excited, and believe our first project will deliver a good dose of fun to the XBLIG platform. Stay tuned this week for the official trailer, official gameplay video, and official screenshots. (it's so very official!!)