Archive for Solve It

Summer break

31 July, 2011 Marklund Games, Solve It, Spartans in Candyland, That Game Studio, Twang! No comments

I’ve had kind of a summer break these past couple of months, trying to figure out what to do with the game development and all. In general, the game production time will slow down, due to my new job as a game programming teacher on a secondary upper school. Job will begin shortly and I still have to move. I’ve also left Gothia Science Park, my business incubator. From now on Marklund Games will be more of a hobby rather than a way to earn the gold.

An update on Solve It
I’ve made a level editor, currently only available to selected few. The plan is to make the second pack of Solve It to XBLIG, and with the SunBurn engine implemented, the game will hopefully run smoother and will be using some of the neat features that SunBurn offers, such as shadows and other fancy stuff. New cubes will be implemented shortly.

An update on Spartans in Candyland
The game, developed during 10 weeks together with talented students has come to an end, but the game is still not released. This due to some trouble with our development pipeline (mostly because of their summer break, but also half of our programmers going AWOL =P). We are currently close to release, and since the 10 weeks we’ve only made minor adjustments and bug fixing. Game will hopefully be in AppHub for review shortly.

I also added the rest of the weekly videos we made on the Spartans in Candyland-page.

An update on Twang!
We (the That Game Studio team) are finally owners of the IP (after almost one year of waiting). The Twang!-page is also updated with a download link for anyone interested in trying our prototype.

NGC and sales

2 May, 2011 Solve It No comments

Nordic Game Conference 2011

I’ll be there.

Together with some really talented people from Gothia Science Park, I’ll showcase Solve It (and probably some Twang! as well). If you’re there, come visit =)

Looks like I’m going down there on Monday already, so there’s not much time to prepare (and do the laundry). Just ordered a new set of business cards, and hopefully they’ll get here in time. Otherwise I’m pretty much screwed. Had a business card night with Joel from Ludosity Interactive, and this was the final result:

In other news, Solve It – Pack 1 recently dropped off the Newest list on XBLIG. Interesting to see the trials (and sales) drop to almost nothing. Not that they were that high from the beginning. The really interesting thing here is the sudden comeback a few days ago. I can’t pinpoint exactly what article that triggered this, but it has to be from either Penny Arcade or from Joystiq. I will definitely investigate further. In total, Solve It – Pack 1 has sold 400 units and with 3498 trials that gives a convertion rate of 11.4 %.

A great start

18 March, 2011 Solve It, That Game Studio, Twang! 2 comments

This Wednesday must have been the best day of my life.


Solve It – Pack 1 got released

When I woke up very early in the morning, the first thing I did was to check AppHub for the review status. A few seconds later I started the Xbox and bought a version of my first released game. What a feeling! The game is available on XBLIG and can be bought here. Next up is Solve It – Pack 2, with some new features and of course some new exciting cubes to experience. I will also look into Windows Phone 7, making a sweet port of Solve It. I think it would be a great game for the mobile phone as well.

Winning a BAFTA award

Getting to the award ceremony was the reason I got up early in the first place. We got to London and into the BAFTA award, dressed up and all fancy. Together with four of my friends, we formed That Game Studio (a team name chosen as a tribute to That Game Company), one of the winning teams of Dare to be Digital 2010. Together with the teams Angry Mango and Team Tickle we were nominated for the BAFTA Ones to watch 2011 award. Just getting there, and getting interviewed and photographed and being able to breath the same air as “real” game developers was amazing. Just amazing. Add some good food, free drinks and some lovely company at our table (Wacom, Blitz, Sony and Dare to be Digital).

Also add that we won the BAFTA Ones to watch 2011 award. The most awesome thing that has ever happened.

To me, personally, this is a great milestone. Just finishing my education in games design me and my team competed in Dare to be Digital and were one of the winning teams. Now I’ve won a BAFTA award. Amazing. As I see it, this proves that I (and the team) have what it takes to some day become one of those “real” game developers.

What happens now?

Right now we need to get Twang! out there (and celebrate). We will be looking for ways to publish the game, preferrably with the help of a publisher. After that – who knows?

0.9 units of XNA added

7 March, 2011 Solve It No comments

It took exactly one month to get the new version up and running. Upgrading the XNA from 3.1 to 4.0 was alot harder than I thought. All the libraries went crazy when they got updated, and as soon as two errors were fixed, three new appeared. Thats game development in a nutshell i guess. I didn’t really add anything new to the game, other than instancing of the cubes. Not really a feature, but pretty close. Oh, and I increased the fps on the last level with about x2. Thank you instancing <3

Wait, I added the auto-skip feature that “everyone” has been asking me to implement! Finally. It makes the cursor move to the next slot when the player puts an instruction in one of the lists.

The worst thing was probably the animations. Many of the animations went totally bananas once the XNA framework was updated. Some of them are still missing, ahem. I even had to implement a new rollband model (thank you Maria-Dolores for making it <3).

We’ve managed to Solve It

7 February, 2011 Solve It No comments

Solve It – Pack 1 is almost done. The game will probably be failed at the review since I forgot to fix a Guest account related bug. Game is to be upgraded to XNA 4.0 since Microsoft is now declining 3.1 games. If “wait one week” starts counting when you submit the game, the new version will be up for review this Sunday.