We’ve been working hard on our future Xbox projects and wanted to post a small teaser image from our latest Xbox Live Independent Game, ‘Sentinel’. We’re not going to tell you too much more about it yet, but we’re trying to revamp some old classic game ideas and bring them into the 21st century…
A Teaser Image from the upcoming Xbox Game Sentinel
It’s worth remembering that while graphics can look pretty, it’s important not to let them dominate at the expense of other crucial elements. In this post I’m going to talk about the process of level design in the context of Ikaroids, including topics such as pacing, spacing of elements, and general look, feel and theme.
Well, Ikaroids is very, very close to a final release, we’re just in that last no-man’s land known as playtesting. Which basically amounts to us, and anyone else willing to do so, playing the hell out of this game. It also means that the above screens are a little out of date, as so much has changed since!
The XNA playtesting community has been utterly invaluable. The people there have been amazingly helpful, not pulling any punches when it comes to pointing out what could be improved, little nasty bugs that slipped by us, and giving us a valuable perspective that you can sometimes lose when you’ve been working on a game for this many months.
They’ve also told us that while the game is difficult, it’s also fun to play. And this is music to our ears. So after we get over this final run of playtesting, and there’s no further issues we’re aware of, Ikaroids will be unleashed on the general public on the XBox Marketplace! We hope everyone else enjoys it as much as the great folks at the XNA playtesting community do. They’ve been a massive help, and gone a long way to keeping us focussed. Thanks a lot guys!
