New Year, New Plans

It’s already halfway through February, but I’ve been kicking the tires behind the scenes.

This is a big transition year for Daydalus Studio. I think it’s safe to say that I’m leaving Xbox Live Indie Games behind for good. XNA itself is officially dead, but I love the API enough to stick with it for a few more games (utilizing MonoGame). I’m also going to be putting out a few games on iOS. Here are some brief overviews of what I’m working and hope to release this year!

– 1 or 2 quick iOS action/puzzle games – I’m using Cocos2D, which is almost nicer than XNA in some regards (built in support for primitives, animation, basic collision). However, ObjectiveC and the iOS stack is a somewhat frustrating to work with, so I doubt my iOS games will be as complex as my XBox Live games. The goal is a quick little action / puzzle game that uses minimalist art (shapes, colors) and is released as free to play. I may sell bonus levels for a dollar.

–** “Open World” Ocean Game** – I’ve had a prototype running of this since I worked on flocking for NanoDoc. It’s a lot of fun to see colorful fish “flock” in schools. This game would be somewhat of a sandbox, where you could explore, fish and buy upgrades. It would be built in XNA / MonoGame and released on PC via Desura / Steam.

– Thief in the Night – This is the big idea I’ve been churning in my head for years now. Stealth mechanics are all the rage these days, and I’ve always loved stealth games. This game would have a top-down world, line-of-sight stealth, lockpicking and pickpocketing minigames. And on top of that would be a dynamic story with dialog trees and mini-quests. It wouldn’t be a full RPG with stats, but you’d be able to craft better gear. I have some promising tech demos for this now (2D shadows using Krypton, Pickpocketing with Farseer physics, etc) now to pull it all together into an alpha.

– Platform Hack 2 – I’d like to go back and do Platform Hack right, the way I originally intended. A full metroidvania world (connected levels where you backtrack), with procedurally generated stages. I’d probably use all the same assets. I’d give the player a bit more control (infinite wall jumps, etc) to prevent getting stuck. The frustration of super-high hitpoint enemies and the deadly grappling hook would be revised.

Stay tuned for more news on these projects!