I am currently working on a new game which I plan to release on XBLIG, in the game you play as a small tank trying to eliminate the pesky enemy. The scale of this game is going to be pretty small for a couple of reasons. It is more manageable for me, being a noob and all, and also I think small quickly accessible game are what gamers look for in XBLIG.

I plan to incorporate 4 player local multiplayer in which the players each control a tank and work together to advance through each level. As of right now the game is progressing nicely but it is still in a early state. My goal with this game besides obviously creating a fun game is to help me progress as developer and to test the waters of developing for the Xbox 360.

Keep an eye out for any news on this game by following me on twitter and YouTube.

The Ritual is a game I made and entered in the first competition at The Indie Bay. there was a total of five submissions and I placed 3rd. Not so bad but not so good either. It was a learning experience for me I and felt that some aspects of my game came out nicely but there were other areas where it fell short.

The Good

I Finished! - I would by no means say that The Ritual is a complete game. But I did implement all the features I was planning to for my submission.

Difficulty - The difficulty of the game turned out to be balanced and well paced. The game was constantly increasing in difficulty as you progressed and while it was not impossible to complete, it was challenging.

Style - The graphic presentation was overall pleasing and worked well with the mystic style of the game.

The Not So Good

Fun? - The end result of The Ritual really wasn’t much fun to play, it wasn’t particularly bad but a few things kept it from being particularly fun. The game generally lacked in variety. There should have been additional enemy types with different behaviors to keep it exciting. To add to the fun factor the player also should have had more ways of interacting with the enemies, such as ranged projectile attacks similar to 2-stick shooters.

Sensory Feedback – The feedback in game was very minimal if it was played with an Xbox-360 controller and nonexistent if played using the mouse and keyboard. Adding some audio or additional visual feed back, such as screen shakes or tinting, would have helped the players kills and health deductions feel more intense and eventful.

No Audio - This also falls back on the sensory feedback mentioned. Adding audio didn’t cross my mind during the 48-hours of development but it certainly would have benefit the in game experience.

Nitpicky Nuisances – The minor annoyances.

• The game ran in a window, which is fine if it was played with an Xbox-360 controller. But it made it possible to drag the mouse off screen and lose control of the players direction until the mouse came back to the game window.
• Once the game was over it would present you with a victory or Game Over screen but in either case if the player wanted to play again they had to close the game and reopen it.

Final Words

All in all the game did not turn out great but I’m proud of what I did accomplish and I will use what I learned to make my next game that much better.

Download The Ritual here.

Hi and welcome to my blog I’m Hamzeh Alsalhi a budding indie game developer. I usually create games in C# using the XNA framework. Throughout this blog I’m going to be posting news/info on any project I’m working on including, screens, videos, and the code itself.