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!

For an idea of what games COULD and SHOULD look like, have a browse through this blog:

{feuilleton}

It brings home the incredible diversity of visual art, of which videogames exploit only a tiny fraction.

Hello! I've finished designing all the forest levels and now I've got the final beach environment to finish. There will be 60 levels in total (16 left to do), and while this isn't as many as the first game had, most of the levels are larger this time around.

Every level in AJ1 was laid out on a [50 x 50] tile grid, since I wanted to make something akin to Bubble Bobble, with lots of small, short levels. In practice, this led to many of them feeling a bit cramped, so I made sure to give myself enough room for the sequel.

So now we have a [350 x 30] tile level,  followed by a small [40 x 55], then a [27 x 350] level which has AJ dropping all the way down through the clouds, weaving through spikes as he falls.

I think the next one will have AJ trapped in a maze of blocks that he has to push his way out of, a bit like a Professor Layton puzzle, but with pandas and owls patrolling in little pockets of enemy resistance [80 x 80].

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.