A year ago, I’d just quit a safe job as a games programmer to do my own thing for a bit. I had savings to cover a year’s living expenses, and no idea how easy making a living at this would be. Now feels like a good time to review how that year went!
Back when I quit Frontier, in November 2010… I’ll be honest, I was really scared about whether I’d make any money this year. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to make games people enjoyed. I honestly thought I’d be looking for a job around now.
Yup, Flash game sponsorship for CQ. That’s been my last two weeks. It’s messy work, but it needs to be done.
Here’s the first:
Yup – you can now play Cardinal Quest over on Armor Games if you want to. They gave us money for that, so that’s nice. 😀
That one wasn’t too bad, but the second sponsorship I’ve been working on this week has had me – surprise – mucking about in Sam HaXe again to get it working right. I’m pretty glad I know my way around that code now! Still, it’s nearly done and should be ready to go some time next week.
I’ve been winding down a bit for the Christmas weekend. Two things have kinda pushed me in that direction: firstly I’ve been picking up a few things in Steam sales, like Jamestown and The Binding of Isaac, and secondly I went to the dentist on Wednesday and got a jaw full of local anaesthetic. I ended up playing Dungeons of Dredmor for the rest of that day as a distraction, though I don’t think I can recommend Dredmor. It just feels empty, repetitive and grindy. The Binding of Isaac, on the other hand…
But more about that some other time. 🙂 I’ll do a year in review (my first year as an indie!) and some quick reviews for the stuff I’ve picked up lately over the next week or two. For now, whatever form your end-of-year holidays take, enjoy ’em.
I wrote a blog post for Ido’s site over at tametick.com! It’s about the NEWS.
Firstly: Cardinal Quest 1.2 is out. You can play it here, and if you’ve bought the game you’ll be getting an email about the update soon so you can download your standalone, full-screen, ad-free version.
Secondly: we’re working on Cardinal Quest II. It’s going to be about three times as big as Cardinal Quest and have a ton more content. We’ll be announcing pricing, taking pre-orders and so on shortly. EXCITING.
Go and check out the details 😀
Cardinal Quest has been in it for a little while, with us fixing up little bugs like “the monsters don’t do any damage”. But we’re almost set! The next release, 1.2, is shaping up to be much more stable and polished than the last. If nothing major comes up it should go out some time this weekend. o_o
And it’ll be totally free!
After that it’s full steam ahead on the Deluxe, paid-for version. Here’s to a bigger, better roguelike; we’ll be announcing the plans for that soon after 1.2 goes live.
I’ll try and round this site out over the next few weeks. I’ve got a few old projects and minor things that could use a space somewhere, and I’ll be putting up my patch to Sam HaXe seeing as it’s no longer actively maintained. Right now I’m going to fix up a few super-minor bugs in CQ and keep testing 🙂