Marklund Games

Game Jam: Jan 2012

Joccish — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:38:26 +0000

Site is moved, and looks ok.

This weekend, my friend Markus Rännare was here. We decided to make a game, and created Repair Mother Russia. We jammed this weekend since we both are busy during Global Game Jam 2012. The game is filled with bugs, unbalanced stuff and evil spawn positions due to the time constraint. If you have ever jammed, you know what I’m talking about. Our biggest struggle was to decide whether to code feature X “good” or do it spaghetti style. Final results were mostly a mix of the two.

Check out the game for yourselves here – Repair Mother Russia.

Just moved the site

Joccish — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:56:58 +0000

This results in me not getting access to my images at the moment. Thats why the site looks all fancy..

Until I get access, it will look like this. So no images, sorry.

While my site lacks all the images I want, go ahead and play my latest game jam, Repair Mother Russia.

Spartans in Candyland Soundtrack

Joccish — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:27:20 +0000

Our musician, Bad Dumplin, decided to upload the soundtrack for download. You can buy the whole soundtrack for the price of your choice – indie style. If you liked the game and want to support the artist that made the music, please buy it =) 100% of the revenue goes to him and him only (plus the host of his music site of course). Help us support his awesome music skills! =)

Link to the site

Spartans released for XBLIG!

Joccish — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:18:24 +0000

This is just a short post about Spartans in Candyland finally being released on XBLIG. It’s a big relief, since it’s been hanging over my head the past few months. It’s finally over =)

If you want to download the demo for the game, or buy it straight away, visit this link.

Now, I’m chasing XBLIG reviewers along with making a shop menu system for my next game. Also, I have a lot of assignments from my students to grade. They are getting better and better with the programming. In a near future, my army will be complete! An army of young programmers of Doom. Then, there’s only world domination.

Madness!

Summer break

Joccish — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 18:58:10 +0000

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.

End of week 8

Joccish — Sat, 21 May 2011 14:18:36 +0000

The week is over, and this was a fast one – just like the others. We did get a lot of new stuff into Spartans in Candyland, most importantly, we got rid of the majority of the debug lines. We have a few left though, spell related mostly. Micke is gone from the project, and that leaves us a big hole in terms of animation programming and the like. Next up, we’ll polish and complete everything (get rid of all of the place holders) and make the game ready for our presentation. Check out the progress:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8VFC7aPesw

End of week 7

Joccish — Sun, 15 May 2011 18:43:19 +0000

We’ve just ended week 7 (of 10) for our project Spartans in Candyland, or actually – my team mates have. I’ve been busy attenting Nordic Game Conference 2011, which was awesome sauce. New for this week is our checkpoint system, which is our main game mode in SiC (classic survival might be included as well). Next week I will set up the remaining tasks to be done during the last weeks. With one programmer short (who left for a job in UK that bastard =P ) combined with me missing for a whole week, has made us slow down and blowing our tight schedule to bits. We also need to do something about the debuglines when firing most of the weapons.

Shortly we’ll start deploying the game on AppHub for game testing, so if you’re interested in testing, please let us know =)

Check out the progress so far:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8VFC7aPesw

Spartans in Candyland

Joccish — Fri, 06 May 2011 07:11:08 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozVfxuiOWH8

Take a look at this. Spartans, guns, suburbs and cute teddybear creatures. What else could you possibly need for a twin stick shooter for XBLIG? We’re making this as a 10 week project, and we’re currently just ending week 6.

Check out the information, images and videos here: Link to the page for Spartans in Candyland, with some cool videos. Oh yeah.

NGC and sales

Joccish — Mon, 02 May 2011 21:12:03 +0000

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

Joccish — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:27:46 +0000

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?