Guildmaster has progressed rather nicely in the months since the last update, so it is worth taking some time to collate some screenshots showcasing such progress. Most of these were initially posted on Twitter, currently the best avenue to receive bleeding-edge updates on the project. Let’s dive in:

About two years ago, I was taken by the idea of an adventurer management game in which, rather than participating directly in combat, you’d manage the top-level logistics of party composition, equipment, and the shuttling to-and-from adventuring destinations and rest-providing towns. Such a project began its life with a rather complex world generator, as Adventurers. After quite a bit of back-and-forth in technical foundations and overall development approach, I am happy to announce that the game, now titled Guildmaster is progressing steadily towards its first-playable alpha.

Abstractly speaking, as creators we derive inspiration from all experiences. The more deeply steeped in our craft, the more a once innocuous stimulus or perception can become the seed of a polished creation. However, the two best sources of inspiration are most likely to be other creations within your medium and other creators. Here are a few creators and creations that have inspired me to come into my own as a game developer:

Crossword Dungeon update 1.1 has just been submitted to the Apple App Store for review. This version was rewritten entirely in an effort to port the code from from Objective-C with Cocos2d to AS3 with Starling, allowing for multiplatform support as well as easier maintenance.

The long-in-coming 1.1 update to Crossword Dungeon is currently in the works. The main focus of this update is to bring the game to iPad with Universal support, as well as adding 200+ more words, fixing bugs, improving performance, and tweaking the balance.

I’ve codenamed my current project “Adventurers“, which, although somewhat telling of its theme, should give little away of its mechanics. Needless to say, adventurers will be involved, and there will be adventuring. It’s being developed in Objective-C and Cocos2d 2.0 for iOS, with iPad support from the get-go.

Crossword Dungeon update 1.0.1 is now live at the App Store. The changes for this version are listed below the update, as well as in the prior post. If you have been waiting to buy the game until after more content was added and the major bugs were resolved, I welcome you to try it now!

Developing and releasing Crossword Dungeon has been an amazing learning experience. Mobile, iOS, Objective C, Cocos2d, and a solo commercial release were all personal firsts, and releasing within a fairly tight window (for personal and motivation reasons) meant a good number of items slipped by untested. Update 1.0.1 has been submitted to the App Store for review, and contains the following changes:

During the past few weeks, I’ve kicked the development efforts of my latest project— sneak peek below— into overdrive, targeting a completion date of end of August/beginning of September. Here are some updates of note having taken place during this period of relative blog and Twitter silence:

Even though reception for The Adventurer’s Guild has been excellent, a few bugs, especially one particularly fatal one, have stopped players from diving as deeply as possible. These bugs are no longer.

I have uploaded an updated version in which I was careful not to fiddle with any game balance issues so as to keep with the spirit of the 7-day roguelike challenge. Here are the details:

Even though I’ve been working on non–roguelikes for the past year, I’ve been itching the entire time to return to my beloved roguelike and eventual tour-de-force Dance of Death; and what better way to springboard into roguelike development than the 8th Annual 7DRL Challenge on March 10th-18th?

The goals for the Dance of Death v0.6 release revolve predominantly around world generation, wilderness generation, and integrating these radically new features into the existing game. No small task, by any means, which is why I have devoted an entire version to this set of features, and also why I have made the decision to scale back on three non-essential items:

Recently, I have been posting near-daily Dance of Death development updates through @Nolithius, on Twitter. Feel free to follow me to catch a glimpse of how the game progresses from day to day!