Ooh! What's this I spy on page 110 of the latest issue of the Official Xbox magazine?

(The text on the left says 'Best of the indie games, five hidden gems we loved')

Good eh! Well yes, but I'd have preferred it if they'd bothered to get the name right. Has anyone here heard of a game called "Apple Jack's"? I spent two bloody hours carving that apple for the box cover, and this is the thanks I get.

Still,  the last laugh is mine: I actually cancelled my subscription to the magazine two months ago but Future publishing doesn't seem to have noticed and have been sending it to me for free! Ha ha!

Still designing levels...Blah blah...Taking a long time...Yadda yadda...lots still to do...etcetera.

In other news, the first game has done quite well this month with over 500 sales. I certainly didn't expect it to be shifting decent numbers 15 months from release, but it's very welcome. 500 is quite a lot of people when you think about it, isn't it?

In otherer news, I had a good idea for a new game in the bath today; a 2D shooter with a real sense of scale and more fruit. Once I've finished AJ2 I'll probably get cracking on it. Possible title: SPACE ORANGE.

Here is a frame from the Apple Jack's Great Escape intro, currently being worked on by a nice chap called Neil, who's a copywriter and who recently got married. Wave to Neil everyone!

Hmm, not much to report except that designing the levels for this game is taking longer than for the first Apple Jack, for these two reasons:

1)  Most of them are larger.
2)  They are now full of moving objects and often the speed and position of these blocks/ platforms/ switches/ saws has to be worked out using trial and error; changing something in the level editor and then playing the level to see if it works.

On the upside, having gotten everything working, some of the levels are, if I say so myself, very clever and unique. Since level 20 I've started adding switches which 'turn off' blocks of scenery as long as something is pressing them down, be that a block, an enemy, or Jack himself. I'm almost spoilt for choice, which probably isn't helping in terms of a speedy release.

Why Apple Jack is full of Pandas

Rather than name the levels after UK towns and villages as in the first game, I'm going to make up names for this one. Scribbled down so far are:

- The Pain Engine
- The Dawn of the Naked Eye
- The Bacon Exchange
- The Sky is Filled with Astronauts
- The Panda Factory

and so on.

I'm taking plenty of inspiration from short stories and chapter headings in J G Ballard books - I really love their pulpy surreal-ness.

PS- To answer Chris Mingay's question in the comment section below, I did set up a My Owl Twitter account but I never used it and I no longer even know where it is or what my password was! Perhaps I'll set another one up nearer the game's release.

Quick update:

I've designed a number of levels now and things are going well. There should be a great deal of variety from level to level, more so than in the first game, and most of the difficult-to-program 'objects' I've added seem to be behaving themselves. Little alterations to the code here and there as I go along helps keep everything else honest (pigs were literally flying during the last level!).

Just being able to set the size and shape of the level multiplies the possibilities many-fold. So for example I can have a vertically scrolling, block pushing puzzle fest followed by a forced horizontally scrolling saw and spike dodging level, with a free roaming enemy chuck-fest after that. Ideas are coming thick and fast and I hope I can do the game justice.

There should be some stuff in the game that even seasoned platform veterans haven't seen before.