I just handed in my final project for University! 1 week from now I will officially start freelancing as a Flash Game artist full time - I cant wait!

As some people might know Enola is a project I have been working on for almost 4 months solid now, and has turned into by far my most ambitious game to date. I always intended to develop a stripped down version of the game as my final project for Uni, and then continue development afterwards until it was ready for web release. This would allow me to put a great deal of time into the project, something that on finishing my degree I would not be able to afford.

As development has progressed, and our final year trickled away, we had to strip more and more features from the game. I was adamant on spending as long as I needed on every art asset, but the scale of what I had planned was far to ambitious for me to pull off. It also didnt help that my programmer decided to rebuild the game from scratch 2 weeks before hand in!

The result is a very rough build of a battle system, no adventure mode, only 4 enemies, and lots of bugs. This sounds pretty pathetic for a game with such a long production, especially since my workflow is usually relatively fast. But FUCK it looks good. So many features that had a lot of time put into them didnt make it into this version of the game, and seeing the battle system and animation actually running has given me great confidence in the project as a whole, even if it takes another 6 months to finish.

As part of my degree I am required to write a production analysis on the project, and get feedback from my target audience on the positive and negative aspects of the game.

I am looking for around 10 people to test Enola in its current state, and give any feedback that they think is relevant. I know most of the things that are wrong with the game, but critique is always good and I need to do this for part of the grade. Please be aware that this is in no way anywhere NEAR the final release version, we have a great deal more work to do to improving performance, adding new features and content. Calling it a Beta is lying, badly. Saying that, youre feedback will be greatly valuable and almost definitely impact the final game, which we want to make as perfect as possible.

Leave a comment if you wanna test the game, I will only share the link with people I deem trustworthy though!

In other news I just sorted my first piece of freelance work, prepare for kawaiiPhone :3

I'm back from Amsterdam - now officially my favorite city - after spending my 21st birthday there with a load of mates. Fucking love it, everywhere has an awesome vibe and its such a clean and beautiful city. Anyway I wont go into details, the coffee was great!

Posted some new art, only 1 more to go until I can be scouted :)

Thanks to everyone that voted for Sushi Cat in the monthly voting, it got me my very first monthly award! You guys fucking rule!

I have 31 days until the hand in date for my final Uni project, Enola. WAAAH I have a lot of work to do. Im gonna be busting 9 - 7 every day to get this bastard done, and the University version isnt going to be anywhere near as big as the version you guys will finally play, so yeah, lots of work. I knew I had made a big commitment with the animation - and its looking fucking amazing because of it - but it is just so painstakingly slow compared to what im used to. I think I might have to take a break after hand in and make Penguinz 2 with LongAnimals before finishing Enola for the web.

Here are some new characters from the game, the Chijin. Each Chijin can be equipped at any time and has a different effect on your party, reflecting your tactical stance. For example the rock Chijin will increase your parties defense by 20%, so should be equipped when you want to take a defensive stance. I got the idea from FF13's paradigm shift system and thought it would be a neat way of adding some more strategy (and kawaii!) to the game. They are also linked with the summons, but I dont wanna spoil that :3

Anyway, I have some work to do.

First of all thanks for all the great reviews and feedback everyone has given for Sushi Cat! The response has been fantastic, its my highest scoring and the first game I have managed to get in the top 50 list so I'm stoked!

I havent been working on any games lately, im currently slaving away at my 10,000 word dissertation. I seriously cant wait to get this finished, I hate writing theoretical shit so much, and its my 21st birthday 4 days after the hand in date! Im taking a trip to Amsterdam with my girlfriend and a bunch of mates to celebrate, I cannot wait to blow off some smoke, Ive been working for too long!

Anyway as I havent got any new games to show I thought I would share a present my mum made for me this christmas. She is a professional water colour artist, and took a few days out to try some new pastel techniques and replicate an album cover of one of my favourite bands, Killswitch Engage, for me. The results are fucking awesome, its such a great present and better than anything she could ever buy me! Heres another shot of it where it lives above my mantle piece, with some cool noferin + kidrobot stuff too :) I wish I had a better camera so I could actually do it justice!

stick 2 horns up for my mum!

Sushi Cat is now up on Newgrounds! Eat up lots of sushi with a squidgy kawaii cat, its lots of fun, trust me!

Im happy with how this one turned out. The game had a restricted production time (I did the art in 7 days), so I had to use a really simple visual style, but it actually turned out to look pretty great. I just wish I had more time to spend on it! Squeakel maybe?

Anyone else looking forward to Duchednier's Exile 4? I was lucky to be shown a nearly finished version without sound by Jordan. Its going to be fucking sick, trust me! Keep an eye out for that...

We got some new guinea pigs! They are still babies now and ever so small. Pepe is the smallest and my favorite :) He cant squeak properly yet and likes to suck your finger.

Wowww I havent been this busy for a long time... Heres a run down of what ive been up to!

SushiCats
Dan from ArmorGames approached me last week about doing some art for a game with JoeyBetz, a great opportunity for me to work with another fantastic programmer! Joey and I share a love for Japanese art and culture so we decided to go for a clean pop japanese style, with a fat soft bodied cat as the main character :)

Its been a really refreshing break from my RPG which is so heavy, doing cutscenes with such a cute and simple character is so much fun!

Im not going to share any more about the game, but expect to see it about fairly soon!

Project Raiders
Another project Ive been doing on and off is a multiplayer top down vehicle shooter currently called Raiders. This is the final Uni project of Craig , the guy who is coding my own final project (see bottom).

The game is set in the distant future, and endless supplies of Oil have been discovered on the lawless planet of Mars. Privatized Oil companies battle endlessly for its control. The vehicles will be customizable with various bodies and weapons available to choose from, each provoking different styles of gameplay. Players must work in teams of 4 to gain control of oil deposits, kind of similar to team based combat seen in games like Battlefield.

If he can pull it off it should be sweet, fingers crossed!

Finally,

Enola
The game I am still focusing on right now is Enola, my killer RPG. The character animations are taking a stupid amount of time. Ive just about got the basics (idle,run,hurt,dead,revive,etc...) for both the main characters done, aswell as some of the early attacks. I really dont think I can finish this with the planned 16 enemies and 4 bosses in time for my University deadline, but fuck those guys. I am determined to finish the game as I envisioned it, no matter how much of this year it eats up.

I really want to share with you how the game looks running but I cant post a demo... Needless to say check out this concept swf which should give you idea of how the game is gonna look. Its totally unoptimized, so sorry about any lag and the 600kb of shapes...

Let me know what you think!

zOMGies has finally been released on Newgrounds! Its taken us a while to sort out but im proud to say its the first non exclusive license Newgrounds has done.

Go and unlock all of the medals now! (except BOOM!, i think that might be impossible, ill try and get it fixed!)

Found a pretty good walkthrough if anyone is finding it too hard, it gets a lot more fun in the later levels!

RobotJam just released Gone to The Dogs! I gave him a hand with the dog animations, go and check it out if you like laid back sim games, its great fun. Fantastic music too!

Ive taken about a month off making games now and im fucking chomping to sit back down and get some work done. I have my final university project to finish before may ( a massive turn based RPG, read about it here) and then I'm officially going freelance and making games full time. 2009 was a great year for me, Ive learnt a shitload from working with LongAnimals and released some great games, but this year I want to blow everything ive done before away.

My next project with LA will be Penguinz 2, ive been talking about and planning it for nearly a year now, but as soon as Uni is finished im gonna be 100% commited to getting it done. We havent chosen exactly what we are going to do with it yet, personally I want to go down the Micro Transactions route and make it like nothing else you can play online, but we'll see. Whatever happens you will be able to play the entire game for free, so dont worry about missing out if you dont wanna pay to play it :)

Its going to be similar to the first game but with metal slug style level progression, huge boss battles and a shit load of other features im not going to tell you about ;)

A zOMGies sequel is also likely, although ill want a break from shooters after P2. Got lots of ideas we could use, mainly lots of upgrades, vehicles, and 360 degree aiming. The great thing about doing a sequel is that we only spent 2 weeks on the original, so improving and surpassing it wont be hard. What would you guys like to see in a sequel?

Go check out Chaz's latest newspost to get your artwork in his upcoming Gun Game 2!

Go congratulate Glaiel for his three IGF nominations!

Ill leave you with some Penguinz 2 characters, check them out in action here!

I just bought 2 sets of 3 Newgrounds posters from the store! The first set is to decorate my office, and the others will be going to 3 lucky NG users!

To keep things short, as part of the submission for my final year project at Uni I have to do a bunch of research for the game I'm making. Its a Flash RPG like Final Fantasy, something I dont think has been done properly in Flash before. Pretty!

Newgrounds seems like the perfect place to research my audience and what better to use as an excuse as "research" than a questionnaire? ;)

All you need to do for a chance of winning is comment this post with your answers to the following 10 questions about your opinions on RPGs. I will semi-randomly select 3 users to win the posters, simple as that! Its semi random as the quality of your responses will probably influence how likely you are to win, and spam wont be considered!

Here are the questions:

1. What kind of styling do you like to see in an RPG game?
Classic middle earth
Steampunk
Sci-fi
Fantasy
Other (list?)

2. What kind of combat system do you like to use?
Turn based
Real Time

3. Is the story important to you when playing an RPG?
Yes
No
A bit.

4. Do well-presented Cutscenes improve the experience for you?
Yes
No
A bit.

5. Do you prefer a levelling system to be simple and easy to use or deep and complex?
Simple
Complex
A balance of both.

6. What's your favourite Flash RPG series? Choose from the list or add your own.
Sonny
Epic Battle Fantasy
Monsters Den
Another Small Favour

7. Are you more likely to play an RPG Flash game if it has good graphics?
Definitely, I love the pretty!
It adds to the experience but game play is what pulls me in.
Graphics aren't important to me.

8. Is there anything you dislike about RPG games in general? Please list.

9. What do you consider to be the most important aspect of an RPG game?

10. What's missing from Flash RPG's? Is there anything you really want in a free flash RPG that you've never seen before?

And thats it! Any further comments/ideas/thoughts are greatly appreciated! Once again you are more likely to win a poster if you put some thought into your answers!

I will choose and contact the winners on Friday and ill send the posters off as soon as I receive them. Ill try to give winners the poster they want but obviously thats impossible if everyone wants the same one...

zOMG!es as is it now called is finished and going through bidding on FGL right now, so expect to play that very soon! Its reminiscent of Penguinz but also has a lot of differences, the weapons are a lot more varied and the reload system adds a lot to the gameplay. Plus theres more blood. Yes! Heres an image.

Thanks, Im really grateful to anyone who fills out the questionnaire!

Heres a very very early screen!

Bubble Guinea Pop has FINALLY been released on Newgrounds after weeks of faffing and waiting. It didnt get quite the response I was hoping for (didnt even register on top 10 of the day), and we stupidly released it on halloween. I guess NG isnt really the audience we were aiming for for this game anyway, but its my home and it hurts when my games fail here! Still, I really enjoyed making it and I actually think its a great game, so please go and give it some love!

Zombie game is going great, still unnamed, ive just finished animating the ending cutscene (any good voiceactors fancy doing a line or 2, PM me!), and now its just a case of finishing touches and finding a sponsor. Tom said he liked the look of it, so fingers crossed :)

After thats finished im going head first into my Turn Based RPG game. I really hope I can pull this off, if I can it should be a really memorable game with shweet graphics and some great gameplay.

Here is the 2nd playable character in the game, shes pretty badass, also one of the first female characters ive ever done! I havent done any animation for this one yet, but it'll all be fully fbf like the zombie game and penguinz 2, im trying get get away from tweening as much as possible.

One last thing, im thinking about setting up a games arcade with a blog running along side it. Its not gonna be a carbon copy of all the 1000's of identical shitty looking arcades which run off the mochi feed. My aim is to add 1 game a day, which will likely be chosen from the best games posted on Newgrounds and kong among other sites. Hopefully coupled with a slick layout it'll prove a great alternative to easily find a load of great games. Any one got any ideas for names? I wanted to go with a good brand name rather than somethinggames.com, I think they stand out and are more memorable. Although I did like Freshlybakedgames.com, which is available ;)
: is super-craze.com shit?

Ill leave you with some more art, go play and vote Guinea pop!

Hey, been a while since Ive made a post!

Guinea Pop should be released very soon, just been sorting out the final sponsorship with Bored.com, check out my previous post for more info about that.

So ive started another quick game with LongAnimals. Its been a while since Ive done a mindless violent shooting game, what better time to do my first zombie game? It should be a fresh new twist on the sidescrolling shooter and im pleased with how its turning out! Here are some dying zombies.

Another project Im just starting is my final major project for Uni. I can make pretty much anything I want, and Ive decided to do a Flash game, to improve my programming skills and personal enjoyment.

I basically want to make a really simple Flash version of Final Fantasy, similar to matt-likes-swords games but with sidescrolling sections, random battles and cutscenes. I have from now until March to work on this, so it can be a pretty big project. Its something that hasnt been done that often in Flash and I think there is a lot of room for the genre to expand on this platform. Hopefully I can pull it off, im still to release a final version of the first game I programmed! :)

Heres a mockup of one of the 2 main characters from the game.

In other news I made an entry for the 2010 Calender, it didnt make it into the final calender but I still think its pretty sweet, check it out!

Ive also started a new metal band recently, we are still looking for a bassist but ive been writing songs with my other guitarist(<3) and Ive started recording some of them, Here is the first recording, it still needs a lot of work but its getting there :) I have another way better song in the works at the moment, which ill post sooon.

Anyway, enjoy some zombies being blown up, the game should be finished soon. Keep an eye out for Guinea Pop!

Ive been working on this one for a few weeks with LongAnimals now, it was meant to be a quick one but it turned out pretty sweet and we decided to put a bit more time into it.

The game is up for bidding on FGL now, just needs some final tweaking and its done.

Check out the trailer:

.
/* */
Keep a look out for the game, should be released in a week or 2!

If you havent already you should play Heat Rush, a fantastic game by LongAnimals which didnt really register on the radar here. Its basically Outrun/Pole Position in Flash, check it out!

Ive also been doing some more work on Julius Mardroms Marvellous Mind, which ive had on my plate for a while now. Still not sure what im gonna do with this one but its looking better and better.

Back to Uni soon, I wanna make Penguinz 2 so bad :(

Oh yeah, if anyone wants to chat about anything hit me up on AIM, i only have like 4 contacts :)
aim: j1mpuk

Screenshot from the new intro movie: