Finally I got around to release iteration 14 of Hero.
Hero is a complex project and during this iteration I have made a few hard cuts in order to make it manageable again. I have removed the map game altogether and now you move from one area directly to other areas...

This new version features:

• Map game removed
• Heal spell
• Fire ball spell
• Armor spell
• A few dungeons

Now enjoy some dungeons!

skeleton

hero i14

Heya Folks!

For the first time ever I release a iteration of my very own game here at SoP! So it's a first time premiere right here and now!

Cthulhu Breaker is a pretty straight forward Breakout clone, takin' me back to the roots when I started out here at SoP and we were working on Time Breaker (then Spheroids).
I've worked on CB since I moved here to Gillhov, Jämtland about a month ago, feeling really good in my new place, and I think this is one of the reason that I've gotten this far with a project really.

This is as mentioned the first iteration of Cthulhu Breaker, I've not started putting in sound into it yet, and theres a lot of things that needs polish.
But all in all it's pretty playable at this stage! I'm pretty sure that there is a big pile of bugs hiding in it though, and I hope that the community can help out to report all problems encountered.

The game starts through Java Webstart, so all you need to do is to click on this link here: http://cthulhubreaker.fagertveit.com/cthulhubreaker.jnlp

And heres some Screens of the game!

Hope you'll enjoy it and I'm of to work on Iteration 2 right away! So more to come!

Menu Screen

Ingame Screen

I love the people over at Kokoromi and their annual Gamma contests and what they are doing for independent game development. This year they even got an invitation to show the Gamma IV winners at GDC! A great opportunity for many aspiring game developers. One problem though, such a display costs money and they need about $1600 for this to happen.

I have decided to help them by letting all revenue generated from sales of T.W.T.P.B. during February go directly to support their plea. Also I've got two game codes for some casual games that I will give to some lucky winners in a Twitter contest*.

You can help to!

• Support Kokoromi by Donating some $ and get some fabulous schwag
• Buy T.W.T.P.B. and all revenue will be Donated at the end of February
• Spread the word on Twitter and possibly win a game*

* The Twitter contest works like this

1. Tweet this message "RT @SpellOfPlay: Help Kokoromi Send #gamma4 To San Francisco and Win a Game! http://bit.ly/dmWiYZ"
2. Your entry will be collected in this post as soon as I see it in my timeline.
3. Wait... I will draw two winners at the end of February and send them their codes.

Oh... a new year has come and it's time for a view back on the year past from a Spell of Play perspective.

2009 was a social year for me. TWTPB launched late 2008 and much of my energy went into marketing and getting the word out there about twtpb, hUb and Spell of Play in general. This was also the time when I discovered twitter and I quickly took it to my heart... probably a bit too much There is even a way for you to connect your spell of play profile and twitter profile, via our twitter app Game Twtr

Via twitter we got a bunch of followers and visitors to our website, I tried doing twitter contests, blogging contests, appeared on some pod-casts and also a web show featured the spell of play homepage. We then decided to host a small game development gathering called SoPCon in Gothenburg. We also managed to end up on a list of Swedens hottest small game developers resulting in some local radio and tv-interviews. Things where looking good!

However, as it seems reality catches up sooner or later and I've felt quite uninspired, burnt out, call it what you want after summer. The end result was that I did not manage to pull through the latter half of 2009 and the result is that the number of visitors to the site is at an all time low Not much is happening and I've not been able to do much about it.

I also have not been able to get a real start on any new game projects this year. I'm torn between continuing working on TWTPB (I have some ideas for an expansion), Project L and some new ideas I have been experimenting with lately.

So what is my vision for 2010? What I would like to happen is to get the online community working and have some proper integration with our games. I want the homepage to feel more alive and kicking than ever! I would also like to at least start a new game project. I also have a number of improvements to the hUb backend that I would like to get on.

What will definitely happen is that we'll push our games to appear on Gamers Gate and also a port of TWTPB to XNA -> XBox is more or less done. So I hope we'll get accepted by Microsoft.

I will try to play more games 2010

I hope your 2009 was good and that 2010 will be even better for you!