B O N D P H O N E.
Words and pictures by Chris Lamb.

A particularly appropriate installment of Scary Go Round today, as Confluence and Ideaspace seem particularly out to get me.

Fucking girls. Fucking bears.

posted by chris  # 10:29 AM 0 comments

So, the game we did for Naruto is up on CN as of today. You can find it here.

I really can't tell you how happy I am to see this thing done and dusted. What should have been a very simple project (top-down scrolling shooter, nine levels, three bosses) picked up when CN yanked it from Some Other Company who couldn't get their shit together evolved into an all-consuming monster, a flash-based Devourer of Worlds that sucked up all of June and most of July while probably dipping into the future to steal moments like my grandkids' first words and finally beating P.N.03 on hard mode. There's a whole other post to make dealing with the frustration at dropping so many eleven-hour days and lost weekends into something based on mechanics as old as video games themselves contrasted with the overwhelming delight at seeing how all that work finally paid off (and on top of that, simultaneously realizing that that's pretty much going to be the way it goes for as long as I want to do this and that hey, I'm actually okay with it) that I can't even begin to put together just yet. It's just done, done, done!

Erm, actually, there's no need for another post. Turns out one jumbled ramble of a sentence does the job nicely.

At any rate, despite having a young, inexperienced, good-but-my-god-so-sloppy programmer, three producers (including, for the last third of things, me), and our every art decision being second-guessed by mysterious Overlords based in shadowy Japan, the things finally up to play and stuff. There are still a few bugs, like the ability to crash the entire thing by right-clicking, but all in all it's pretty solid. I was more involved with this game with anything done previously, handling the game design, level layouts, and the aforementioned producing chores. It could have been better, but that goes for pretty much everything.

Oh, and I designed a game for SpikeTV's latest entry into the "unemployed guys spend the day hurting each other in front of a camera" genre. You can find that one here.

posted by chris  # 11:23 AM 0 comments