Hello everyone. I’ve finally updated again, this time adding a contract game I worked on and that was sponsored back in February, as well as finally updating the Flashplok project page. Check them out via the sidebar or portfolio page!
I’ve also added a PayPal donations button, so if you feel as though you want to help me out (everything helps as I’m a poor freelancer these days!) you can drop me a dollar or two. Thanks!
In other news, I’m working on my third Flash game, due to be finished in the upcoming weeks so there’ll be more news about that as it begins to surface. Music is also going exceptionally well; I recently composed the score to the epic game Castaway 2 which is among the most followed and anticipated RPG Flash games around. I absolutely love composing for RPGs and I’m currently working on the soundtrack for another upcoming RPG in the form of Amiran developed by Zac Linton. Lots of projects are coming up and it’s looking to be a fun and busy month for music and programming alike!
I’ll later be adding some of my more recent music to my music portfolio as well as creating a page specifically outlining the terms of my music contract work so that more people can use my composition services.
A new Flash game by Cacti Games has been published around the web – Deep Diver (Kongregate link). Cacti Games is a friend of mine from university and I often make music for his games. This particular game is doing very well having had over 100,000 views in its first few days; that’s 100,000 players who have heard some of my music!
There are two tracks featured in the game: “Tropical Paradise” and “Deep Explorer”. I’ll be uploading these short tracks to the site at a later date.
Rock Band is a game I’ve been playing for a long time – about a year. Actually, I’ve been playing Rock Band 2 mostly, but since I’ve moved I only brought Rock Band with me and have gotten back into it. For those of us who’ve been living under a rock or are otherwise uninformed, Rock Band is technically a casual party game involving the use of pretend instruments to form a pretend band and do a pretend tour around the world. The available instruments are guitars (standard and bass, both play the same), drums and vocals. Having been a fan of Guitar Hero for a while I’m pretty experienced with the guitar gameplay, so my primary interest for the last year has been the drums; an instrument I’ve had relatively little experience playing over the years but one I’m extremely interested in. The thing that makes Rock Band great is the escapism that comes with playing it; for the few minutes you’re mid-song you can actually believe you’re playing these instruments for real, and as silly as it seems, this makes you want to play it more and more as you improve.
The first thing I’ll admit is that I’m not normally a big fan of First-Person Shooters… Very rarely do they manage to keep me interested, especially when they have no unique or defining qualities. Most of the major FPS IPs are ones I have very little interest in including but not limited to Unreal, Call of Duty, Quake and Far Cry. However, if there’s one games company that anybody who’s anybody seems to love, it’s Valve. I’m no exception; although I haven’t found the time to play through all of Half Life and I don’t play Team Fortress 2 that much, there’s an undeniable quality about the games they make that is only seldom seen these days. Now that the obligatory introduction is over, I’ll say this – Valve + Zombies = Fun.
Having played and greatly enjoyed Persona 3, Persona 4 has been on my radar for some time. Reviews of the game have praised it as being significantly better than the 3rd game, particularly referencing the fact that some of the original problems I found with Persona 3 have been addressed; mainly the inability to control the party members other than the main character. This bodes well for the game as Persona 3 with these fixes would’ve made an absolutely stellar game. The thing that took me by surprise is that Persona 4 seems to be so much more than just a fixed Persona 3 – the characters are excellently developed, the dialogue captivating and the game mechanics polished to a mirror shine. Where Persona 3 was a great game but fell short on a few counts, Persona 4 is one of the strongest offerings of the RPG genre.
