This weekend was Ludum Dare, a 48 hour game making challenge. This is my fifth time, and the theme was ‘Islands’!

This time was different, because several of us went to a cafe and did LD together, so it was two days tapping on a laptop.  I wasn’t able to wrap up the game as neatly as my previous entries, but I was very pleased with the results. What do you think?

Play it here! Web or PC download.

Tumbledrop 1.10 with 20 extra levels is now live on the iPhone app store!
Thanks Apple, nice last minute present! XD

It’s my 30th birthday today, and it’s been something of an introspective occasion. I’ve been evaluating what I’ve achieved and the position I’m in, rather than getting hung up on things I wanted to achieve and where I thought I might be. Life benefits from Agile project management too, Waterfall is outdated.

Moreso than new-year, I’ve had opportunity to consider my past year, and where I want to go from here as a game developer. I had a bit of a rocky beginning with my new life as an indie game developer, but I now feel happy and confident about the decision I made, and I’m committed to continuing like this for the foreseeable future.

I’m pleased that Tumbledrop has been received well enough to enable me to make this decision, and I’m very grateful to each and every person that has supported me by purchasing the game, or otherwise been supportive of my decision. Being independent is such a false term, because I’m entirely dependent upon my friends, the community of developers, and everyone that supports me by buying my games. A lot of people make it possible for me to have this opportunity, and I always grateful for this.

What’s to look forward to? Well, I have at least two major games I’ll be releasing within the next 12 months, neither of which has anything to do with Tumbledrop. I’m doing a lot of prototypes right now, and a lot of programming practice to lay down some solid foundations for my projects, and generally trying to broaden my skillset.

However, it’s my birthday today, so I’m going to get back to playing games, eating chocolate and drinking beer! Right now I’m playing ‘FFCC The Crystal Bearers’ on Wii, it seems pretty weird from first impressions! Whoo!

I’ve just submitted Tumbledrop 1.1 to the App Store! This adds 20 new levels, and 40 new medals. It also fixes a lot of bugs, so it’s something of a milestone for me. It’s been great to have received feedback on the original release, and I’ve been working hard to make new and interesting level designs that are tricky and puzzling.

Some people have asked about iPad support, so I would like to announce that I’m working on ‘Tumbledrop Deluxe‘ coming to PC, Mac and iPad! This is an enhanced version of Tumbledrop featuring all of the levels from the iPhone, as well as new levels to take advantage of the larger screen. More details on this will come later in the month.

So, please keep an eye on the app store for Tumbledrop 1.1!