image by Justus Thane

Yes it’s a bold goal I know, but first let me clarify: by “game” I really mean SKU – so every time I ship a game on a different platform or localize it, that’s a different SKU.

Previous Years

Here’s how many SKUs I’ve made in previous years since I went indie in 2005:

2005: 4 mini-games and Xmas Bonus (PC) = 5
2006: Easter Bonus, Oz, Oz retail, Holiday Bonus, 3 framework minigames (all PC) = 7
2007: Fairway Solitaire (PC) = 1
2008: Fairway Solitaire (Mac + localized versions x 3), Oz (Mac), Holiday Bonus (Mac) = 6
2009: Unwell Mel (PC/Mac + localized versions x 4) = 6
2010: My Tribe (Facebook game – I was part of a team at BFG), Fairway/Mel retail, 3x mini games (PC/Mac) = 9

That’s a total of 34 over 6 years.

2011 So Far

So how can I hope to ship more games this year than in the last 6 years combined? Well, these days it’s a lot easier to ship games on different platforms, and I’ve teamed up with other people who are porting my IP to some other platforms for me. Plus I’m used to localizing games now, so that’s no longer a big challenge. So far this year I’ve already shipped 17 SKUs as follows:

- Holiday Bonus on XBLIG
- Attack of the Giant Planet Eating Bacteria From Outer Space (Flash game made with a team at the GGJ 2010)
- Holiday Bonus (Mac App Store buld)
- Oz (Mac App Store build)
- Berry Blast (Facebook minigame in My Tribe, made whilst still at BFG)
- Fruitola (My original match-3 prototype for PC)
- Spring Bonus (PC/Mac + Mac App Store build + 8 localized versions)

And there’s more…

When I was at GDC I bumped into Arthur Humphrey (Last Day of Work) who said that he believed a good business strategy for indies was to ship many SKUs on different platforms and see which were most profitable. This gave me more confidence in what I was planning to do.

So here’s how I plan to ship 50+ this year:

- Very soon Spring Bonus will be out on Windows Phone 7 and iPad and soon after hopefully on iPhone and XBLIG = 4 SKUs
- Also I’m getting Spring Bonus translated to Japanese = 1 SKU
- If Spring Bonus does well on those platforms, the engine will be reused to ship Oz on all iPad/iPhone/WP7/XBLIG, plus I’m planning to localize it to 8 or 9 languages = 12 SKUs
- Then at the end of the year Holiday Bonus will ship on iPad/iPhone/WP7, and will also be localized to 8+ languages = 11 SKUs
- I’m planning on converting my framework to Linux so that I can ship Oz, Holiday bonus and Spring Bonus on Linux = 3 SKUs
- I started a mini-game for the recent Ludum Dare, but failed to finish it due to nice weather So I’ll ship that soon on PC/Mac = 2 SKUs
- I’m planning a Vancouver game jam in the summer, so that’ll be another mini-game on PC/Mac = 2 SKUs
- I’m working with a number of people as a design consultant/producer that will result in a bunch of shipped games on multiple platforms.
- I’d like to get some of my games ported to Flash, but that might not happen, we’ll see.
- I’ll definitely be making some brand new games and shipping on multiple platforms as well as localizing them.
- I’ll probably make some more mini-games

And that, my friends, is how I’ll do it! That’s another 35 planned SKUs plus some more in the pipeline.

I’ll keep reporting on my progress and will do a post-mortem at the end of the year, so stay tuned folks. Wish me luck!

Hi all, my latest BlitzMax game, Spring Bonus, is now available for PC and Mac! Please try out the demo and tell your mums/moms, partners and friends

Click here to get the demo. (This game is DRM free!)

After leaving Big Fish Games in January I had an idea to convert my old Easter Bonus game to Mac so I could get it on the Mac App Store. But as I thought about it more, I realised that the game needed a complete overhaul in order to sell well in the modern casual market. So I embarked on a crazy mission to make Spring Bonus before Easter Sunday (April 24th). I hired an artist in Mexico, an art team in the Ukraine and a musician in Holland. Then I got my old Holiday Bonus code and completely upgraded it, made new Grey Alien Framework additions, and then crunched like crazy over the last month to get it made (last week I worked 85 hours, 70 the week before and so on).

Anyway, it actually got done on time (and has been localized into 8 non-English languages) and has been sent off to all the big portals, plus it will soon be coming out on iPad and Windows Phone 7 with the help of some people who are porting it for me.

I’m very proud of this game because it took such a mighty effort to get it done and I think it turned out well. The beta testers liked it a lot and I hope you do too. I also hope it sells well because it’s very important to my family.

Let me know what you think!

I’m proud to announce my next game – Spring Bonus! I’m already working on it and it will launch on 15 April 2011 on several different platforms including PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, XBox Live Indie Games and Windows Phone 7 (and maybe even Linux).

It’s a match-3 game with a Spring/Easter theme. I’m reusing my Holiday Bonus match-3 code and updating it with some new features and changing all the graphics and music, plus there will be 100 levels.

The idea

It’s funny how this game came about because I wasn’t planning to make it when I went Indie again in January. However, when I was uploading two of my games to the new Mac App Store, I thought it was a shame that I couldn’t upload my old Easter Bonus game because it is PC only. Then I thought that maybe I could do a quick conversion of it from BlitzPlus into BlitzMax so that I could make a Mac version. But after some consideration I realised that I needed a whole bunch of new UI graphics and in fact I should probably update the game graphics too in order for it to stand a better chance in the modern casual marketplace.

I even had some cool ideas about adding a neat meta-game but since then I’ve de-scoped back to a simpler idea because there’s a ton of work to do in just updating the code, working with the artists to reskin the whole thing, contacting all the portals, and working with the teams that are porting it to other platforms. I made a spreadsheet of the tasks to complete with time estimates and the numbers were a bit scary, but I know I can do it because I’ve done it before!

Artists

I knew I needed great art for the backgrounds and also quality game pieces and UI etc. So I put the word out on some forums and Twitter/Facebook that I was looking and I got over 20 different candidates. Some weren’t suitable at all and others were excellent. I reduced the list down to the best candidates and asked them to do some art tests of a Spring scene. Eventually I made a tough choice between the two most suitable background artists and I also contacted RetroStyle Games, an experienced casual game art company, to do the game pieces and UI art.

My background artist is Claudia Patron Perez and she is doing a great job as you can see by this example art. You can check out her stuff on DeviantArt and her twitter is @madmoiselleclau.

Anyway I’ll try to post about progress as I go along, but really I should be focusing all my effort on finishing the game and getting it published on the portals and other platforms. Wish me luck!