Here is the new video demonstrating Gum Drop Neo Terra's tutorial, level select menus, and some gameplay. Enjoy!

Finally after a year of toiling long days and nights, I have submitted Gum Drop to the Xbox Game Communities review process. It's been a long and ardous task but it's well worth it! Hopefully I have squashed all the bugs that will make the game fail peer review.

Exciting days indeed, but it will defnitely be a long wait to get the game approved :(

 Here's the box art for the game. booyah!

Now that Gum Drop's features have stabilized, I am now working on doing level balancing and Release testing at the same time. The game has progressed so much since I started it 1 year ago, but I am really proud of what I have accomplished. All together now Gum Drop has 20 levels, over 20 different kinds of enemies, 11 different power ups, 10+ different projectiles. The game has also recieved alot of polish. What I am really proud of the game is that most if not all the work was done by me other than music. I had complete control on what the art direction and gameplay direction went. This is the type of game I wanted it to be, a really fun and unique shooter.

 But now things are starting to wind down to a close as I am wrapping up the project as it will be released sometime within the next 2 months  on Xbox Game Communities. Ahh.. Gum Drop!

Througout making Gum Drop, I've solicited tons upon tons of feedback from people from different groups,  male, female, hardcore gamer, casual gamer, non-gamer, etc ... They've all given me constructive feedback and insight into making the game easier to understand and fun to play. The female group in particular has always had a keen eye on making the game more approachable. My Girlfriend pointed out early that the colors I had in the game were unapproachable and hostile at times. Then a female friend of mine suggested that the shooting mechanic I had implemented in the game actually distracted the player from what was fun, which was the SMASH mechanic. Another female friend of mine pointed out I had too much text that nobody will ever read in the game. It's not saying that guys cannot notice these issues but it seems that females are more vocal about it. 

Well, other than that short blurb, progress on Gum Drop is moving along at a steady pace. I have now addded survival mode, which will pit the player against a endless swarm of enemies that the player will have to face. I've also locked down the number of levels to be 20 for the normal gameplay. There will be 20+ unique enemies that the player can fight. I've also decided to completely remove any sort of story in the text I have in the game. The game has been diluted along production but I will re-distill it to it's purest form which is "Fun" I've also decided to remove the Gum Drop collecting missions, as smashing stuff is the front and center of the game now. 

Hopefully the game will be out in Xbox Game Communities come Summer/Fall

Got a short but sweet review on http://playthisthing.com/gum-drop. I'm glad that reviewers were getting the concept of the game, but it does seem I need to expand the game beyond having a novel game mechanic to something more meaningful.

 Well anyways, more updates to the game, I am now up to 17 levels with around 19 different enemy types with their unique behaviour and abilities. I'm glad that the system I built is flexible enough that I can whip up a new level and enemy within 20 minutes. The biggest problem right now is getting ideas for new levels and enemies :) But I'd rather have that problem over performance or stability issues hehe :)

Having worked on the environmental hazards, I was inspired to add a level where there is this gigantic gravity well spinning in a counter clockwise direction that affects all objects in the level. This resulted in what I think is a pretty fun and dynamic level where survival is top priority as all the objects in the game are in constant motion because of the gravity well. It also maginfies the danger of enemy projectiles because they are harder to see and have increased velocity. I've also added rumble support for the gamepad, adding rumble to smashing and the player getting damaged. Work on the game continues at a steady yet relaxed pace. Thankfully I architectured the game so that adding these new concepts and features to the game is a trivial matter, leaving me more time to work on the design of the game rather than the technical implementation.

There is however a concern that has been in the back of my mind since I started deploying to the Xbox. It is the performance degredation in relation to the .net CLR on the Xbox being non-generational. Which greatly affects my game because of all the objects that tend to be garbage collected. I know that I should be mroe careful with it, and I read most of the optimizations needed to do it, but it just seems really a bad judgement in part of microsoft to add such a gimped version of the CLR to the 360, making cross platform development a more tedious task, especially for indie developers with limited time, skill and resources to optimize for the 360. Don't get me wrong, I am greatful for all the hardwork the XNA team has put into the SDK, but I just wish these were addressed more publicly rather than keeping developers silent on the issue.

Well enough with the rants, here's the video of the new level I am working on, Enjoy!

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for their support and encouragement throughout the development of Gum Drop. Without the feedback and honesty from everyone, I would have not been able to get the game in such a polished state. 

In other news, Gum Drop continues development for the next competitions, mainly Dream Build Play and the Independent Games Festival. I have already slated a bunch of new features that I would like to add to the game before I submit them. Currently one of those new features are environmental hazards. Currently I have two implemented in the game, storm and gravity. Storm is a pretty simple damage over time hazard where any game object within its area will take damage. Gravity is what you think it would be, is a area where there is a gravitational pull in the center. It is very similar to the gravity power up, but this one is on a permanent basis and does not move.

So here I present the near-final build for the IndieCade and PAX submissions. It's only a video right now but check back again on May 9th to try out the build I submitted to PAX and IndieCade. Until then enjoy this video of the latest gameplay!

I just saw the indiecade submission deadline was moved up to May 15 that gives me 2 extra weeks to add the polish the game deserves. It will also give me some breathing room to not burn myself out :) I kinda think this has something to do with the PAX10 deadline being the around the same date, but hey I'm not complaining.

No big updates to the game other than SMASH tweaks and High Score changes