Here are links to a couple of games I never finished…

Trip:One

Trip One, version 0.41

Controls:

L/R: Turn
U/D: Thrust / Reverse

X: Ok / Primary Item
C: Cancel / Back / Secondary Item

ENTER: Bring up upgrade screen (can only upgrade when parked on top of the dropship).

HP is your ship’s shield. You can get it back by sliding on striped surfaces.
SP is your ship’s energy, and you won’t be able to use items (such as guns / shield) unless you have some. It replenishes over time.

Notes:

You can hold the X button to get rid of all the text. I’d recommend doing it first. I meant to improve the textbox system so they were more like auto-popups as in Starfox.

I had planned to make the inventory screen so you could actually swap between items when away from the dropship. Won’t probably get round to it now.

There’s quite a few items to be found. You can upgrade them or your ship by collecting starmen, which are used as currency.

If you die, you drop your starmen, and if you don’t then make it back to where you snuffed it, you’ll lose them forever. In general it’s best to upgrade as soon as you can (such as at the start, because you begin with 200 or so starmen).

* * *

Soul Brother

Soul Brother, version 0.5

There is actually a version 0.6 around which has quite a lot more in it as well as bugfixes. I will definitely post this at some stage soon. Just needs packaging up!

Controls:

L/R: Move

X: Ok / Use / Unique Move (such as Fly / Jump etc)
C: Cancel / Back

In other news, I can finally announce the game I’ve been designing in my day-job:

As it’s finally been announced at E3, I guess it’s ok for me to say.  It doesn’t get much more mainstream than this, folks!

I go through this a lot, losing faith with projects, getting it back, losing it again…  Sometimes it results in finished work, the rest of the time it results in stress only.  I feel that way about Amnesia often.  I don’t want to make it unless I can make it a well as I imagine it - on the other hand I don’t think I can make it as well as I imagine it.

Soul Brother’s one of those projects that’s just outside of my ‘comfortably achievable’ zone.  I’m still not sure if I can finish it, but that being said I’ve done a little more work on it.  It’s slow and laborious though, partly because of the unfamiliar level design ideas I have to deal with as a result of the mechanics.  It took more than a day to make the room below this post, believe it or not (ok I was tired, the week after my wedding to the lovely Kanako Byrne, neé Koseki…  We had a lovely little do last week, ending up punting down the Cambridge rivers with almost all my favourite people in the world, and plenty of champagne.)

Anyway, I’ve almost finished level 2/5 (there will be around 20 screens in each, as well as three new creatures, except the last level - which I won’t reveal yet as it could be considered a spoiler.)  Here’re the money shots: