Games. Furthermore, more Games.

Since I’m showing my game around on the TIGForums, I thought I might as well leave a post here!

Catcher is a game about (surprise!) catching things! Especially geometric forms. (In SPACE!) With two spaceships, here depicted as circles. These two spaceships are connected by an energy line, which you will use to border your enemies and open a dimension rift by closing it – and thereby defeating anything inside! It features over two dozen unique enemies on more than 30 levels.

Among the various things yet to be done, the most notably one is the tutorial. I hope you can get it together alone with a description of the keys and the menu entry “Demo“:

• X and C makes your spaceships (the blue circles) flying nearer or farther to each other
• The mouse wheel, if you have one, does the same as X and C
• Pointing the mouse makes your spaceships turn
• Clicking the mouse (left or right) makes your spaceships move

The energy line breaks when
a) one of your spaceships touches an enemy or
b) the energy line crosses another part of the energy line (remember: DON’T CROSS THE STREAMS!)
If the line broke, you can restore it by holding X (so that the spaceships touch each other).

Enough babbling, more playing:

(It is Java Web Start, so no installation or unzipping needed )

While all and every feedback is appreciated, I especially want to know:

• How do you think could the controls be improved?
• What didn’t make sense to you? What wasn’t clear? What needs to be definitly in the tutorial?
• And bonus question: Do you have any ideas regarding new enemies? (This is a bonus question because I don’t know if I will include any new enemies right now, but this will be good to know for the next version )
• Ultra-special bonus question: Anyone has an idea for a better name for the game? I’m not sure I’m content with “Catcher”, it seems kind of to general.

Still missing so far:

• Sounds/Music
• Tutorial
• Random Mode and Endless Mode need besser formulas
• General polishing

For the last months it was pretty silent here. So does this mean I turned my back to game development? Actually, no – it just means I am busy with projects bigger than a 7-days-prototype.

The first project I was working on is called Catcher. It began as a university homework and evolved into the first game project I ever started to make and was really determined to finish. Sadly my laptop was stolen, and while I have the latest (playable ) binary, the latest code backup is a bit older. I will have to rework a bit before I can publish it – and a few things like sound, music and polish are still missing entirely.

Furthermore I am working with some friends on an as of now unnamed multiplayer-tower-defense with the working title Netwars, which had reached quite a state but wasn’t yet playable. The thief stole me a month work on that, but since I really like this project I will work hard to make up for it!

And the best thing last: I am working with some students of the Games Academy Berlin on an as yet undisclosed Facebook Flash Game. Fame and fortune, here I come! (I am really excited about that and look forward to present it to all of you!)