The Realm of Blog

Typical Warning:***possible QuestLord 1 Spoilers, enjoy them! *** So back when the game came out, I think on a TouchArcade forum I was going on about the secret of the Rabbit. What happened to that?! I don't talk much about the rabbit.  Well basically I put it in and then had another update to do. When that update was done, I realized that I had left out the rabbit and had worked on an early pre-rabbit-developed code base. :( It was really broken secret code, so i did have versions planned for that one.  After you get the carrot from the Palace (a place that sadly no longer exists) you do like in most QuestLord secrets and you drop the item someplace in Kyre in front of trees and the trees in front of you animate so a bunny comes out.  :D  If you have the amulet of Tanjee you can talk to the animal and get healed. I hope I didn't make anyone feel baited, my reaction would be "pfft...gufaw... not at all!" In fact in the tileset on everyone's game t...

That wonderfully hard to navigate wiki! So during QuestLord, I never found the time to make a proper walk through or Wiki page.  In fact, most of the fun of creating QuestLord was interacting with people that had 'discovered' or 'figured out my puzzles' on their own.  However the desire to share this knowledge was taken on by my fans who created a Wiki for QuestLord! Now I will be the first to admit that it is harder to navigate this wiki page to find out the information you are looking for than it is to just play QuestLord. But more than fan art was created from this site, including maps, progress and how to continue. Again, I am super busy right now with code/art/sound/testing/feeding the cats/ making my wife lunches.... not much time to spend on this, but I will come back and revive this post. QuestLord 2 promises to have a newer Wiki up much sooner after launch. Did I just mention QuestLord 2? Well, I should save that for another post. There will be a lot more...

I got a lot of fan art from QuestLord. But I think the one person that really nailed it and was so fun to interact with was Minawa.  A Ratkin Wizard by minawa: A Yeti in a Dungeon: Amateria, Seller of Exalted Apples: Bar Maiden Amy: (They started to improve on a massive scale) Feneri the Enlightened: (The delight in seeing these come to life was immense!) Needless to say I connected with Minawa to give thanks for such inspirational pieces. I enjoyed the art so much that we even worked on a compilation. I drew a picture of woods, then I handed it off to him. Then he drew in 2 characters in those woods! Then I drew a dwarf witnessing the entire thing! (note:currently busy,  When time permits I will ad the compilation ) For more on Minawa's art

Earlier this month QuestLord was released to the Android Market on the 3rd, the Kindle Fire Market on the 6th and the iOS market on the 8th. Today the most important ratings, the customer ratings, stand as follows: iStore GooglePlay Market The Reviews Droid Life  - " fantastic example of how mobile games don’t need to be all about high frames per second and amazing graphics.  " Jay is Games  - " QuestLord is great. " Indie Retro News  - " What makes this game even more unique, is that the replay-ability is higher than what we usually expect with some Dungeon Crawlers " Gaming Trend  - " QuestLord – it’s charming, it was made with a certain presentation and gameplay style in mind, and it delivers. " Phandroid  - " QuestLord manages to provide players with enough depth to keep ‘em hooked, while simultaneously keeping it casual enough for newcomers of the genre " Pocket Gamer  - " For the aski...

First let me start by wishing all of you the best holiday with your friends, family or by yourself. QuestLord news: I missed Christmas release, and therefore I missed 2012 release. Too bad. But I don't care about the Christmas sales. If I cared anything about money I would be working in some studio making average run of the mil apps... Or any other game industry job where I would be making 50,000x the money and doing 1/10th the amount of work! (which on many late night weekends, believe me sounds really nice) And I definitely don't care about complaints that I am taking too long. Holy hangrenades, It's only been 5 months since I announced the game... Since when did the game industry turn into popcorn turn-around. Especially since it's going to be cheaper than a cup of coffee. Relax. Wait. For all the game reviewers out there who might be disapointed that they ran with a story for a game that missed the date a few times... uh.. don't know what to say abou...

Once again I am addressing my blog with an apology for not blogging. :| I have a good excuse though, I have been working furiously to get QuestLord out the door. And things are looking very good, the game is right on the horizon. The light at the end of the tunnel has become so bright I have to wear sunglasses and I can now see the train station! Until then... Have you heard about this game called QuestLord? You might if you are in the Houston area... I was interviewed by My Fox Houston here in my headquarters!! Front Page! "Yay" Also note, when I say "we" as in "Right now we have about 120 maps" I am speaking of course of the entire QuestLord team. Amy, my lovely fiance who has put up with this entire ordeal of me making this game.(I couldn't have done it without her) And of course my cat of 16 years, Tiny Toons. Seeing yourself in an interview is so much different than doing a self made video. If I sound unenthusiastic I have to cha...

It has come to my attention that most of the viewers of my game are male.  I completely expected this.  From looking at the YouTube video it breaks down as such... Top demographics Male, 35-44 years Male, 25-34 years Male, 45-54 years Now unlike many of my other games I created for the Nintendo market, QuestLord doesn't really allow the player to specify if they want to be male or female.  In fact it completely skips that.  However there is nothing to say that your character you create IS female or male.  That is completely up to the player.    The only thing you see of your player are your arms, and unless you expect a female character to have pink painted finger nails, it is purely up to the player's imagination.  I rather like this idea as it allows for more of the blanks to be filled in by the player for what they want out of my fantasy game.   As for the story, I have always admired fantasy genres that have strong female characters ...

So.  Where were we?  Oh of course!    QUESTLORD! Progress has been coming along at a nice steady clip!  And here is one new way I show that progress.  There is this thing called Screenshot Saturdays, not sure who runs it but, whomever does is doing the indie community a HUGE favor. I made it in time last week.  This week however it appears that I might have missed the deadline, I think the actual day for the Saturday might be on the Tower of London timetable.  So here is the shot that was uploaded at 10:30 Central time and I guess missed the deadline. Here we see the player swinging his/her sword at the Gates of HammerStone.  Testing out the Japanese translation of 'You Missed!'  (iPhone) This screenshot actually made it in the previous weekend of  #screenshotsaturday, And you can see that Lady Telefin tells you something encouraging yet wise in French. (iPad) So the game is progressing right along and I hope to do ...

This weekend, with heavy heart, we bid farewell to ASS SLAYER THE SPINE DESTROYER .  He has served me well with his own unique style.  Although he was relentless and brutal and did things in his own way, he propped me up with an unforgiving amount of courage and economy. I welcome with open arms and depleting bank accounts,  FEATHER THRONE SOFT SEAT!   Hailing from the kingdom of Staples, this level 10 'Spellcaster of Sitting' is bringing her own show-floor-model brand of economy (somewhat) and experience (definitely, thank you Staples beta sit testers). In other news of the Realm, Last week was a Major Rager as far as success for the announcement of QuestLord.  I never expected to strike such a nerve with major App sites such as: TOUCH ARCADE:  (they open with IT LOOKS COOL!) http://toucharcade.com/2012/07/09/old-school-inspired-dungeon-crawler-questlord-looks-cool/ and POCKET GAMER:  (they open with my NAME!) http://www.p...

And so it begins.  My game is now in a state where I feel comfortable sharing it finally.  It's been a long ride, and there is a lot more to travel.  But I am more than pleased to announce the website, the screenshots, the video, the whole deal. I recommend full screen and or viewing this on my games main page.  But for the sake of just getting to it finally... Here is my game... I actually tested the waters with this video this weekend... It might be a little redundant, because if you are at this website then you know who I am. :)  But still you can see that my game does actually run on a device and all of this craziness is coming to a conclusion. please support, link, share and re-tweet.  Thanks. www.questlord.com

At Inversion Coffee today, one of the Baristas (who's band I have adoringly seen a few times) made a remark to me about programming... and then said, "That's what you do right?" "Well yea, I do.", I replied. "Yea, you make Apps right?" :) Apparently my facebooking/tweeting/blogging or other social media addictions have earned me .00001% of quasi-fame status here in Houston!    Hey!  I will take it!  Of course I was talking to a guy whose band has been featured in Pitchfork.com, NPR and has recently done tours all over the United States!  So it felt more like a scenario of a much more quasi-famous guy re-inducting what used to be a quasi-famous guy back into the fold. Something Fierce Play this while you read!  Get pumped! Luckily it has been a very rainy morning so their power had been out.  It was quite slow, I realized what is usually a very busy coffee shop became a good opportunity to show a quick demo of my game. So ...

Take forever over here... I guess if I miss a month or two it's ok.  I want to post some substance rather than act like some genius game designer who feels the need to give a self validating blah-blah all the time.  But I am long over due for a check in so lets do this. Ok... As far as developing a mobile/iOS game by myself,  I knew it would not be easy...  I am not talking about developing some arcade clone 'me too', 'lets try to get in on some App money', hackity hack ...  I am talking about developing a game that ' I would want to play '.   Let's be honest.  Most people do not get to do that, especially people in the game business on a corporate level.  I have seen a lot of people I know all the sudden become enthusiast of some kind of sport, or subject matter that, well... was of no interest to them before they got that 'licensed game' to work on or before they had to get stuck on sequel number 7.  And I am guilty of that mys...