Grief.

So, a few updates.

First off, I don’t know whether or not the text game will get finished–I’ve got more important things to work on, since that was just a “for fun” sort of project.  I still have no intention of actually competing in JayIsGames’ casual game design competition, because as I said before, if I submitted my game, it’d get disqualified.  We’ll see what kind of time I have to work on it.  It’s still a possibility.

Second, and more importantly, I finally started writing code for the next “big” project, which is a semi-sequel to Company.  The theme of the game is grief, but I don’t want to give too much info on how it factors in quite yet.  I can handle talking about more vague stuff, though, so here’s a few quickies:

It’s a story based platformer that is heavy on exploration and discovery.  You play as a character from Company, but not Jack, the original protagonist.  That only leaves two other options, since Company doesn’t have a whole of characters.  The game is set in the same universe, but it stands alone, so you wouldn’t need to have played the original to understand what’s going on.  I’m using Box2D to give the game some physics, but I don’t really want to call it a “physics based platformer,” since the focus isn’t on the physics.  There’s a strong trend right now, especially in Flash games, to base an entire game on physics (usually with Box2D because it’s so damn fast).  It works, and these games can definitely be fun, but I’m starting to get a little sick of it.  Maybe that’s just me.

I’ve got pretty big plans for it, so I’m gonna have to be getting help from more people than I’ve ever had before–The game needs lots of music, at least three voice actors, and probably two artists (one for static things like the level art, and one for characters and animations).  I’m pretty set on music and one of the artists, but the rest is up in the air for now.

This game is going to require an absurdly powerful level editor, and like Company, I probably won’t be able to release it with the game.  It’d just be too hard to make it userfriendly.  I might put it up on my site though, once it matures a bit, just so you guys can check it out and fiddle with it.