Shortly after my last blog post, I made the decision to stop working on YoYoYo for a while, partly because I'm not sure I was going in the right design direction and partly because I'm not sure I want to release it on XBLIG at all.  However the constant pressure to get some meagre sales in has seen me starting work on a simple, short, throwaway game which is provisionally titled "BSoD".  It's a Simon type game (press the buttons when the game tells you), set in a busy IT support office.  The IT setting isn't important to be honest - it's just dressing for the gameplay.  The code for that gameplay is pretty much complete, including combo bonuses and time bonuses, as well as inter-level stats.  I've got a list of 5 large-ish jobs to get through before the game is done - Avatar animations, environment models and animation, menu, sounds and tutorials.  Tutorials will be the easiest of them to get done in code terms, but the modelling is going to be a challenge.  I need very good models, with very nice textures and shaders bringing the scenes to life.  I recon its about 3 weeks of work before a brief playtest, then direct to peer review.

Part of the problem with YoYoYo was that I was feeling a little guilty about the basic simplicity of Xenocide, coming hard on the heels of 2 Blazin Balls games.  I'm now starting to realise that's just stupid - I write the games I do because I like the germ of gameplay that a tech demo has (or potentially has) and work it up from there.  With YoYoYo I had started trying too hard to add complex gameplay so I frankly lost my way.  The initial idea was a simple platformer where you could use a yoyo to defeat your foes.  Nothing more, nothing less.  A couple of months in and I found myself writing mission engines while postponing the core minute-by-minute gameplay development.  Silly.  So by way of teaching myself a lesson, I'm stripping the gameplay to its core for BSoD.  Sure buttonpushers might be old hat, but it's still a compelling gameplay model and, polished right, I think it could be a good game.  So there.

Finally, I just want to say that I'm going to be under the radar for a day or two, since I've got to housesit for someone on Thursday, but more significantly an interview I did earlier in the week will be appearing (possibly tomorrow) which might cause a minor shitstorm.  It's yet another one of my double-barrel assaults on Microsofts running of the channel and I've really not held back on this one.  Anyone smart enough to find me via email of XBL will of course be responded to, but this here blog will be a little quiet until the weekend, by when I hope to have some meaningful screenshots of BSoD to show you.  Until then, enjoy yourself and be kind to people.

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