#dreambuildplay

[ryupold]

Playable preview of Yellow Bounce for the dream.build.play contest

[indie-arena]

Dream.Build.Play 2012 eröffnet

Wie schon seit einigen Jahren üblich veranstaltet Microsoft auch 2012 wieder das hauseigene Dream.Build.Play. Wer mit seinem Xbox 360- oder Windows Phone 7-Projekt am Wettbewerb teilnehmen möchte, kann sich ab sofort dafür anmelden. Die beiden zentralen Deadlines:

Registrierung: 5. März bis 15. Mai

Projekteinreichung: 15. Mai bis 12. Juni

Sämtliche Teilnahmebedingungen hat der Hersteller hier aufgelistet. Als Hauptpreis hat man 40.000 und 20.000 Dollar für das beste Xbox 360- bzw. Windows Phone-Projekt ausgelobt. Des Weiteren winken noch die Option auf einen Publishingvertrag mit Microsoft sowie ein nicht näher benanntes Windows Phone für jedes Team, das es mit seinem Projekt in die Top 20 geschafft hat. Eine ausführlichere Preisübersicht ist auf dieser Seite zu finden. -Julian

[iapetusgames]

DreamBuildPlay and Beyond!

The DreamBuildPlay2011 submission deadline arrived a few days ago, and we've all taken a well-deserved break.  The final weeks saw us through the expected crunch period, where we were spending many hours a day ensuring SoL was of an acceptable quality.  We're quite pleased with the result, which is showcased in the game trailer:

Our actual submission to DBP can be found here.

We hope to have SoL qualify as a finalist, as this would make us rather happy and proud.  Being a finalist would mean the game ranked in the top 20 out of the almost-300 games submitted in the competition.  However, these results won't be revealed until late August.

The total development time, including design and prototyping, was just under 14 weeks; we started shortly after the competition began.  We created everything in the game -- no resources were developed externally (the only exception being some royalty-free sound effects, but even those were remixed and edited heavily).  The soundtrack took roughly five days to produce, and I think it came out quite nicely.  If you're a fan of the aural arts, you can listen to it here:

With DBP out of the way, we're preparing for the Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) release, which will add a few gameplay features and extra polish to the game.  We're also hoping to distribute this on Steam for a PC release.  I've also been learning iOS/Cocos2d for a potential iPhone/iPad port, which has proven to both exciting and challenging -- there will definitely be more updates about this as it develops.