Attention!

I have finally finished designing all the levels! There are 61 in total (so I can cleverly put 'over 60' in the item description), including three boss encounters.

Now that's all done I can finally get around to redrawing some of the blocks, getting the checkpointing fixed and the other million things that have to be done before I can release the game, probably in the space year 2025.

The new game should have been finished and released by now, but I've still got a couple of levels to finish, and god knows how much stuff to do after that. Given that the game is built on a modified version of the first game's code, it really has taken an age.

Going forward after this game, I've got three options:

i) Keep going as I am, taking over a year to make games with a lot of content, and hope the quality is good enough for it to get noticed outside of the Xbox Indie games service (ie. Steam.)

ii) Find someone to do all the graphics for me, which would speed things up a bit but give me less control and a smaller percentage of the profits.

iii) Scale things back to focus on games which will only take 3-6 months to finish. Soumething like 'The Impossible Game" on XBLIG would be an example of such a game.

Regardless of what I do in the long term, I'll probably try and knock something out in a couple of months after this game, just to see if I can.

PS. Congratualtions to Steve W (full name withheld) for being the only entrant and therefore winner of the competition below. If he had an apple for a head he says he would hide in a tub of water during halloween and terrify the participants of an apple-bobbing competition. Well done Steve! (Although frankly you could have said anything and still won). I'll probably do something similar when the new game is coming out and hopefully get a few more entrants.

Competition time!

This is quite a long shot, but are you a fan of this blog who doesn't own the original Apple Jack on Xbox?

Perhaps you love slightly wonky platform games but don't have the funds required to play it?

Or maybe you bought it a while ago and your house burned down, killing your entire family and melting your Xbox. And then when you bought another console you forgot your Gamertag and lost all of your downloads.

Well in either case, TODAY IS YOUR LUCKY DAY!!

My Owl Software is giving one lucky person the chance to win a code which will let you download the popular Indie platformer Apple Jack ABSOLUTELY FREE! That's an astonishing saving of 65 new pence!!

Interested? All you have to do is email me explaining how you would spend your time if your head was replaced by a giant apple. I think the My Owl email address is on the right hand side of the page somewhere.

In the unlikely event that I get more than one reply, the winner will be the one I find most entertaining. And please don't bother entering if you have the game already, as it would be pointless.

Good luck, Apple heads!