Archive for the ‘My Interviews’ Category

Shadowhand Dev Diary #2: It’s showtime!

Monday, February 29th, 2016

We have been super busy at Grey Alien Games preparing for upcoming events, both in the UK and in the US. Our focus has been on packing as many fun features as possible into our unique card battling game, Shadowhand, so that game show visitors and press can check it out.

Streamers
We’ve had a couple of Twitch streamers check out the game for different reasons.

Earlier in February our good friend Ryan Clark played the Shadowhand demo, and used his wizarding skills of spreadsheet prediction to try to figure out how well it could do on release. This is probably one for the game dev community as it goes into quite a bit of technical and sales stuff. The upshot was that THIS GAME IS SO FAR OUT IT BROKE THE SPREADSHEET! Predictions of success aside, we got some great feedback from Ryan, which we have already begun to implement.

Yesterday we had streamers and game dev couple Robotloveskitty try out both Regency Solitaire and the Shadowhand demo. They packed a lot into half an hour of their Indie Dev Supershow and they immediately grasped the strategy possibilities we are working to build into the new game.

What’s new in the game?
Shadowhand’s gameplay is unique – as far as we know – in that it features turn-based duels between the player and an AI enemy…but rather than rolling a die or dice to determine the outcome of each move, you try to get a good run of cards instead. Each card you play increases the charge on your weapons (which you can only deploy when fully-charged), and a long run of cards increases your attack bonus resulting in a critical hit.

Shadowhand fires on highwayman, Rich Turnpike in a duel

– As you play, you collect or buy a large selection of weapons and clothing items, which you can choose to deploy strategically via the inventory system:

Shadowhand can throw projectiles

– Changes to her outfit offer defense against specific enemies/weapons:

– Our heroine also collects power up cards – active and passive abilities – throughout the game, which confer an advantage to the player via the cards. So this might mean more cards turned up at the start of a turn (passive ability) or blasting one playable card off the tableau (active ability), for example.

Come and see for yourself!
We will be demoing Shadowhand at PC Gamer Weekender this coming weekend (5-6th March) in London.

Jake will then be attending GDC from 14-18th March in San Francisco. He is giving a speech on sustainable game development there – don’t miss it!

We will both be once again donning our tricorns for Rezzed from 7-9th April, where you can play the game and also hear us speak about working together as a couple in the game industry.

Regency Solitaire on sale!
Finally – did you know that on February 29th, which comes around only once every four years, women were allowed to turn tradition on its head and offer a proposal of marriage to their beau? Times may have changed, but since we spend most of our time steeped in British history, we’re offering a romantic discount on Regency Solitaire for a this leap week on Steam starting today from 10AM PST/6PM GMT.

Interview by Indie Games News

Sunday, December 15th, 2013

I was recently interviewed by Indie Game News.

You can read the full interview here.

Dave asked me some good questions such as “What are your proudest achievements?”, “What developers have inspired you?”, and he also garnered my thoughts on the “Indie Bubble” thing that is being talked about a lot at the moment.

It was a fun interview. Enjoy!

Podcast Interview by @infinite_ammo

Monday, September 23rd, 2013

I just got back from a two week trip to Vancouver during which I did a game jam in Victoria (on Vancouver Island), had a few meetings with business contacts, and also hung out with lots of friends. I even went on a four day road trip to The Rockies and back, which was epic.

I also popped down to the Indie House Vancouver to hang out with Alec Holowka, Matt Thorson, Chevy Ray Johnston, Noel Berry and Hannah Boyd. They had a post-PAX jam thing the day after I arrived and then I went back again later on to just hang out and work on Island Burner (my Orca Jam game) some more.

I saw lots of Towerfall and got to play it a bit, but I’m a noob compared to everyone else there. Chevy also showed me his Ludum Dare 27 game called Antidote, which is really good, and we discussed his plans for how to expand it.

Alec is super-busy as usual with a bunch of really cool projects but he found time to do a quick podcast interview with me which you can listen to here. We talk about a bunch of things such as my feelings about Free 2 Play games, making casual games, being an indie dad, my early programming years and much more. Enjoy!