Semester Siesta

Hey folks,

Sorry for the long delay between posts, but I’ve been in the final semester rush for the last couple weeks and now I’ve finally got a chance to take a moment and write!

After all this time, I know many of you would like a status update on the game we’ve been working on for the past year.  The last time I said anything about it was waaaaay back in January, and Giga Gravity Games has come a long way since then:

We’ve been super excited about how everything has turned out, and are hoping to take the game to competition at PAX later this year.  The incredible thing for the team is how fun the game has turned out to be.  Even as developers who see the game every day, spending hours upon hours repeatedly testing it, we still have a great time playing it.  And our playtesters have agreed, which has been incredibly gratifying.

The game has already won some awards at school too, placing in the top three in four categories at the annual DigiPen awards: Best Multiplayer, Most Addictive, Best Physics, and Sophomore Game of the Year.  We unfortunately placed second in Sophomore Game of the Year, behind a character driven single player experience (one I have heard is quite good, but have yet to play).  Don’t get me wrong though, we are still very happy with the results!  Besides those awards, we have lofty goals for the future: hoping that our couch-brawler will be able to collect some accolades in several other competitions multi-player categories.  We still need to put in some work over the summer to polish the experience up, and even still, we’ll be up against some very strong competitors.

Beyond that, now that the summer is here, I have a chance for a brief rest before jumping into the next project.  I spent this past weekend enjoying some relaxation time, although admittedly, it was difficult:  After spending the past 4 months working every weekend, I felt extremely odd not working on any projects and seriously wondered if I was forgetting something.  However, after this coming week, I’ll be starting to build a 3D physics engine, which is a notoriously difficult undertaking.  It will be fun, though, so I’m excited about working on it.  And I definitely won’t be putting in the same number of hours as was needed during the school year, so it should be a good chance to recharge my batteries, too.

Part of that recharge will be spending a few days every week working on writing projects, including my book.  And since our team for next year has already decided for a more narrative heavy game next year, I’ll be heading up efforts to ensure we have a great story to go with the game.  Epic character-driven experiences won’t beat us again!

For now, though, I’m going to get back to the hard task of relaxing.  Posts should be more regular over the summer months, and I plan to add some more content to my website, so you should start to see more updates after a few week lull.  See you next time!

Jon