Good news!

Our game: ‘Mole’ was picked as one of the nine finalists in this year’s Game Developer’s Association of Australia Indie Game Awards.

We will be showing it at the GCAP 2009 conference in Melbourne in just a few weeks.

We are pretty excited about this, however it does mean that the iPhone release probably will not be out by Xmas which was the plan had we not gotten into GCAP. We hope to get some great feedback on the game and gameplay during GCAP and be able to make the game even better, so it will be worth the wait.

If you haven’t already, you can play an early version of the game online, just go to the Mole page, and hit ‘play now’.

Cheers!
-Ben

Along with the book being released today, I am proud to announce three new Escape Factory titles coming soon to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

First on the list is ‘Mole’ which is a collaboration between myself and Chris Watts, a Melbourne based game designer. You can actually play (and vote!) on an early prototype version of Mole. Check out my earlier blog post about it. (update: mole now has its own page with screenshots, video and a playable prototype: The Mole Page)

Second and third are two follow ups from Snow Dude, where the dude tries his hand at a few more sports. This brings us Skate Dude, and BMX Dude. The new Dudes bring more challenges and more opportunities to earn points and pul off amazing tricks.

We will be posting more information as these games get closer to completion.

Cheers!
-B

A few months ago I got a random email from the guys at Apress. They had gotten my contact details from someone who had read some of the blog posts on my blog where I try to explain how to code some things up.

Well, I guess they liked what they read and they asked me to participate in a few iPhone development books.

The first of these is “iPhone Advanced Projects”, a compilation of useful iphone development stories from various professionals in the field.

My chapter is all about building particle systems in OpenGL, and there are other chapters covering a wide range of iPhone topics like utilizing wifi to talk with other iPhones, Cocoa Touch tips and tricks, GPS, porting non iPhone apps to the iPhone etc..

The whole book is great and if you are an iPhone developer of any level, you are sure to get good value out of it.

If you have any questions about my chapter specifically, do not hesitate to post here or email me directly: support@benbritten.com

Cheers!
-Ben

About a year ago, I bought a PS3 for my man for his birthday.  Not only did it promise to have some amazing platform-specific games but it had the blu-ray player and I was all about watching HD movies.

Well… I thought we’d watch more HD movies than we  actually have.  They do look stunning but we watch way more On Demand and HD TV than blu-ray movies.  Also, as I’m sure happens with many early-adopted technologies, I became frustrated that I can’t loan my blu-rays to anyone because we’re “the only ones on our block” with a player.

The graphic quality and gameplay for PS3 games are indeed impressive.  I hadn’t really played anything on it before my man brought home Little Big Planet, a game aimed right at me and my demo.  I’m a casual gamer and I’m big into art, creativity, and crafting.  When we got it, we stayed in all weekend playing with huge silly grins on our faces.  It was superfun.  The problem solving was interesting.  The settings were neat with cardboard and paper and textures and layers.  It was so darn… cute!

I became particularly enamored with the avatar, Sackboy.

And, as a knitter, I knew that I must make one.  Upon research, many had already done so and with great diversity of execution.  There are 3,690 photos on flickr tagged with “sackboy”.

This became the first knitting pattern I actually devised myself.

I made the test from remnant yarn and a zipper I had.

And, amazingly, it got some attention on-line.

Not only was I asked to join a couple of flickr groups but it was also picked up here:

http://www.craftycrafty.tv/2008/11/sackboy_style_little_big_plane.html

Then a friend asked me to make two for his kids last Christmas.  These are much more like the real thing, with clothing inspired by what they can wear in the game.

So… LBP is pretty freaking cool and fun and appeals to my supercrafty side.

You should play it immediately, if you haven’t already.

Now if I can just get past the spinning wheels in Sensei’s Lost Castle…

In early October I started a new game project in conjunction with Chris Watts, a local game designer here in Melbourne. The game is called ‘Mole’.

It is a mining game where you play Mark the Mole and race against your air supply time limit to find gems and mine metals. Once you run out of air you have to get back to the surface where you can use your gems and metal to upgrade your various bits of equipment, (better air tanks means you can dig deeper to find the more valuable gems, better mining pick means you can dig faster and through harder types of earth, etc..)

It is built entirely in Unity3d, which is how we were able to build the prototype in just a couple of weeks.

We entered it into Muse Games Immunity Game Prototyping Competition. You can play the single-level prototype there, so go check it out! (and vote for us!)

While it would be great to win the Immunity Challenge, the biggest reason we put it out there is to get some early exposure to the users and see what their reaction to the game would be. So, go have a look at Mole (and the other Immunity entrants) and then leave a comment here, or post one to the immunity forums, or email me directly and let us know what you think!

Cheers!
-B

Since it is still early days here at the escapeFactory, I have continued to blog the Snowferno stuff over on the Snowferno site.. Ultimately everything will end up here, but for now, I will just drop a link to the post over there.

http://www.snowferno.com/2009/09/23/playhaven-unity-and-snowferno/

Basically outlines exactly what you need to do to get Unity to pop open a UIWebView over the game engine (with code). So if that is your thing, take a look!

Cheers!
-B

I’m the writer… I am creating the story framework and copy for the game and the website.

I’ve written tons of things but never the script for a game so I’m still figuring out how to go big on a small platform.  The story needs to be interesting but it can’t be so complex that the game wouldn’t fit on the iPhone.  I also have to make sure that the action will read on a small screen… that the puzzles are challenging but not impossible… etc.  I’m still working it through in my head, but we now have a pretty solid framework to build upon.

Though I am fairly technical for a writer, I am the least technical one of the escapeFactory collective.  I take my opportunities to lend the nerdy book-girl perspective to the project and to ask the boys to decode their geekspeak.

Since we’re working from some pretty far-flung areas in crazy time zone differences (NY and DC, USA, Victoria, AU – it’s tomorrow morning in Australia right now) we have a virtual office/basecamp where we meet and compile ideas.  I’m starting to wish all my clients operated this way.  The internets are great!

Hello and welcome to the escapeFactory development blog.

escapeFactory is a collaboration between a few composers, a few artists, a developer and a writer. We make games. This blog will hopefully be a fairly constant stream of interesting tidbits from our experiences in the game development world.

Check back often!

Cheers!
-Ben (the developer)