DesignBig news this month, not least of which is that Project Aftermath was selected as one of the PAX-10 - ten independent games that will be shown at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle at the end of August.
http://www.pennyarcadeexpo.com/pax10.php (If I'd realised they were going to list the games in alphabetical order, I'd definitely have suggested we changed the main character to an Aardvark).
There are some very good games on that list, so we're extremely proud to have been selected.
As part of the selection announcement, we've been sorting out all our press material, redesigning the website and cutting a trailer for the front of the site. But if you're here, you've probably seen it already and marvelled at the exciting, retro-future goodness it contains. Lee and Mal also did some interviews for radio and TV, which came out very well. The TV one is here:
http://tinyurl.com/69ujyp (I'm not allowed to be on TV, in case people confuse it with a remake of The Elephant Man).
We've had some lovely feedback since this round of publicity - one guy wrote to us to say that he was planning on buying Starcraft but was now going to leave that and get Aftermath instead. I suggested that we could now put "more anticipated than Starcraft!!" on all our publicity material, but Lee and Mal weren't sure.
It was way back in May that we submitted a demo for the PAX selection committee to have a look at, and we've improved the game enormously since then. In fact, it's changed enormously since the last round of testing; we've done a lot of controls streamlining, most of the levels have been built and all the placeholder front end has been replaced with sparkly new menus. In the last few days, Lee has implemented a new online leaderboard system, so we'll be lucky to finish the game at all, amidst the battles to be number one. No, I jest; I'm always number one, there's no competition. Oh dear, my modesty chip appears to have failed, better get that replaced.
I completed the rest of the 30 backstory items that I spoke about last month. As with most writing, some of them came very easily and some were like pulling teeth. I'm pleased with the way they've turned out though, hopefully they'll be fun to read as they're discovered by the player.
I also spent a lot of time working on assembling the comic sections that pop up periodically during the game, to give you more of the main plot. We were fortunate to get a really talented comic artist to work on those, Dan McDaid (
http://danmcdaid.com/), and he's done a cracking good job. Lee wrote a system that let me add speech bubbles to the comics and have them all fading in and out at set points. It took a while to go through and put every bubble in the correct place and get the timings right but the results are definitely worth it - with music playing over the top of them, they're very atmospheric. Here's an example - you'll have to imagine the music.
Other than that, my month's been mostly about writing the briefings and in-game text for during the missions, and I must get on with that now. See you next month!
