Inverted Castle » personal projects

That Cactus kid ain’t got nothin’ on me!

Hunty — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:19:16 +0000

The other night I noticed that one of the things listed on my projects page pointed to a dead link, so I fixed that. In the process, however, I started looking at some of my old, abandoned projects, and that got me thinking about how cool I think it is that Konjak has a whole section of his website for projects he abandoned. So I started digging, and digging, and digging…

40 games later, I have an early Christmas present for you guys. Behold, the StudioHunty graveyard of unfinished games, and despair. Or rejoice. Or maybe a little of both.

Herein lie many — but not all — of the games that I’ve abandoned over the last 10 years, every one with some kind of executable or binary or swf!

Not that I’m comparing dicks or anything, but Cactus only has 39 games listed on his website, and I’ve got 40 games listed here. So, maybe he’s got me beat on finishing games, but I can start making games like nobody’s business!!

(Before anyone gets all indignant and rushes to defend Cactus’s honor: I am joking, and I’m not seriously comparing my number of unfinished games to his number of finished games.)

you too can do the grue

Hunty — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:26:05 +0000

The full-length version of In the Pit is now available via Xbox Live Community Games.

I am very happy about this.

If you have an XBox 360, and either headphones or surround sound, it would mean a lot to me if you at least played the free trial.

UPDATE: Due to some really bad design decisions on NXE, it looks like most people don’t know that XBox Live Community Games even exists. Here is a handy video showing a few different ways to get to the full list of community games. Note that, on the first method, pressing A gets to the community games “featured content” that only lists a couple of games, and pressing X is what actually gets you to the full community games list.

Studiohunty is now hiring artists and soundists

Hunty — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 21:56:09 +0000

…for the full version of Pretty Pretty Bang Bang. Details are here. Please forward this on to anyone else who might be interested.

Feel free to comment on this post with any questions.

Second place GET!

Hunty — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 19:53:32 +0000

The second Experimental Gameplay Competition is over, and although I fully expected the excellent and much discussed String Theory to get first place, I was pleasantly surprised to see my own entry come in second. Congratulations to everyone who entered, and tons of thanks to Red Octane and the Experimental Gameplay Project for fostering the development of experimental games!

And you thought Doom 3 was dark!

Hunty — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 20:08:28 +0000

I’ve done it again. This time, inspired by the audio-only “Space Invaders style” game Sonic Invaders, I’ve created my own audio-only “stealth action” game, In The Pit, for The Experimental Gameplay Project’s “CONSUME” competition.

The only caveat is that it requires a wired XBox360 controller to play, because scalable vibration is integral to the gameplay, and the 360’s implementation was the easiest to program for in the short time that I had to make a game. This means, unfortunately, that some people will not be properly equipped to play it, but hopefully those people who DO have wired 360 controllers will enjoy it and talk about it so much, that those without will be willing to shell out the $30 for the controller just to see what all the fuss is about.

I do this sort of thing a lot.

Hunty — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 22:58:41 +0000

For as long as I can remember, I’ve shown my appreciation for things by creating variants of them. When I was a tiny monkey, my room was filled with drawings of my own ideas for Pacman mazes, Donkey Kong levels, and elaborate “Castle Greyskull alternatives” made out of cardboard boxes and random odds and ends. I have a box somewhere full of original comic book characters I created when I was 12 and discovered comic books, and when I rediscovered and watched too much Mazinger Z a couple years ago, I outlined the entire first season of my own giant robot anime, but fortunately didn’t start trying to animate it. This blog itself is the result of my reading too many video game blogs and thinking “I could do that too, but differently”. I’m sure that most people do the same thing to some degree, but probably not many people do it to the same degree that I do. I also do my best to make my work different enough that it feels “inspired by” the original material (and I will always give credit to my inspirations) and not just “derivative”.

Since I enjoyed Every Extend immensely, it naturally followed that I was compelled to create a similar game. Pretty Pretty Bang Bang is the result of that “inspiration”, and I’m happy enough with it (and feel that it’s different enough from its inpiration) that I’m going to try to make a multiplayer “real” version of it for XBox 360 Live Arcade. Give it a whirl, tell me what you think of it, and hopefully I’ll be able to maintain focus long enough that you’ll see it on XBLA sometime next year.

Damn, that felt really new games journalism-ish, didn’t it? I promise I won’t mention myself at all in the next post.

Season Stacker demo now available!

Hunty — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 17:01:23 +0000

As threatened in the “about” page, I’m posting about one of my personal projects. Season Stacker is a “dropping puzzle” game for the Gameboy Advance, and my submission to this year’s Independant Games Festival. Check out the free demo, help generate buzz, and keep your fingers crossed that I at least make it to the finals, where I can show the game off to large numbers of potential publishers.

Also, please use the comments of this post for any feedback, suggestions, bug reports, love letters, offers of publication / money / candy, fan art, and erotic fanfic. Actually, maybe you should just keep the erotic fanfic to yourself.

Update: Alas, Season Stacker didn’t make the finals, but I’ve left the demo online for the good of all humanity, and to have something cool to show potential employers.