-
Published on Tuesday, 14 October 2014 15:41
The calendar tells me it's Autumn and that Summer is technically over, but you wouldn't really know it by the temperature here in Malta which is still in the 30s. True, it rained quite a bit last week for a day or two…the first proper rain we've had this season. But knowing our climate, we'll probably still be wearing short sleeves well into November. It's been a lovely Summer though, so it's high time things started to cool off a bit.
Which is more than I can say for Pixie Software, where things have really been picking up steam! (wow…nice segue!
*sarcasm*). But seriously, things have started to fall into place this year. We've grown into a well-rounded team and have just brought another programmer on board. I'm now able to start making proper plans to revive some old projects which were put on the back burner in a semi-completed state.
However when it rains, it pours, and I'm finding myself trying very hard to not let things get out of hand, and I say this in a positive, self-restraining kind of way. Things had been moving a little bit too slow for my liking. This was partly my fault, but was mainly due to certain circumstances which were beyond my control. So stuff had been piling up for quite a bit and I'm very eager to move things forward now.
Over and above all this, the rest of the year is promising to be quite eventful and hectic, with a number of local events coming up, some of which are virtually going to be back to back. Yet these will present an excellent opportunity to showcase the game we've developed as part of the Malta Digital Games Fund projects, so I'll be working hard to prepare some proper demos for the game and set up some custom gameplay modes.
I've also been planning (with some fantastic people) something very exciting for the first week of December which we should be announcing quite soon. So that's something else which I've been working on and am really looking forward to sharing with the local gamedev community.
All of this revolves around game development work though, and it is very crucial that I do not turn it into a plate-spinning exercise and lose focus of what's important. I think I'm doing OK. We're currently in pre-production for our next game, which is actually a complete overhaul of one of our "back burner" projects. We're simplifying the main mechanic to making it tighter, and then leveraging it to create some unique gameplay. We have a few early concepts and prototypes but nothing I'm really comfortable sharing just yet as it's still all a bit premature. I should have something to show relatively soon, so more on that in a short while.
Funnily enough, I've been struggling with the most trivial and insignificant of problems. I'm trying to find a suitable working title for this project which doesn't sound too ridiculous. I'm playing around with something along the lines of "Project Janus" (which I think sounds weird and pretentious). Of course it has nothing to do with the Judge Dredd franchise (I wish!)…it's more of a reference to the Roman god's duality, his transitional nature, the future and past.
My main annoyance is actually that I'm more of a Greek mythology buff and don't really fancy the Roman varieties. What a silly problem to have!