Below are some pictures of the new office:

Andrew's Area

Porter's Area

Office Left View

Office View Right

As you can see, it’s not exactly a full blown office, but as we mentioned, we’ll be working our way up. Each work space is equipped with a decent computer, as well as a 22” and a 28” monitor, it’s a rather nice set up.  We’ve definitely got plans to expand, and it’s only a matter of time until our new work space pays off and makes that a reality. That’s all we have to show for now, but I assure you we have plenty in the works. We’ll be entirely active from now on, so you can get updates from the Epic Shadow Fan Page on Facebook, our Twitter page, and of course, here. All in all, I must say we’re enjoying the new work environment, it’s been a new experience, and a new beginning for Epic Shadow Entertainment.

Sorry for the recent lack of activity here. We’ve been hard at work on our latest game and have found it difficult to find a moment to update the blog with anything substantial. Now that it’s nearing completion, however, we’ll be able to post more frequently and ultimately get back to a consistent pace. What better to throw us back into the groove than a post featuring the very thing that occupied so much of our time? Here’s a little about our game, Tower of Greed.

Tower of Greed is going to be the first game released under Epic Shadow Entertainment with me officially on board (I officially joined soon after Gravibounce was sponsored). It’s an original concept that I came up with shortly after we finished Gravibounce. The original game concept was inspired by a game called “Icy Tower” which was developed by Free Lunch Design, however the game quickly spiraled into an original concept with a bit of thought and input between Andrew and myself.

The object is simple, climb the tower and collect as many gems as possible without dying, which is caused by falling below the screen as it constantly rises (think mario 3, level 4 but vertical). Obstacles include 3 enemy types (each with their own unique behavior), breakable ground, spikes, difficult layouts, and of course the number one killer in this game, you. We’ve spent a lot of time refining the maps and the difficulty curve to make it so greed is constantly tempting you to enter a dangerous scenario. We find that at least 9 out of 10 deaths are caused by the player being too greedy, which is exactly what we were going for.

The game is designed to randomly select your next floor (map section) based on a scaling difficulty formula that we developed. The odds of you playing the exact same sequence of floors are incredibly slim at best. Every 5 floors you will find a door. It is up to you to take this door and cash in, or see how you fare against the next 5 floors. Here’s the killer, though: dying yields nothing. We designed this game around the “quit while you’re ahead” advice so many of us have heard at least once. You must exit the tower via a door to submit your score and save your trophies (64 available). Each door section comes fully equipped with a tempting amount of medium-value gems to further influence your decision. Every time you have the opportunity to exit, temptation laughs in your face.

We’ve created an atmosphere the leaves the length of the game up to the player and tempts them to keep going on. The player must take it upon himself to overcome their greed and exit the tower if they are to make any substantial progress. You’d be surprised how much you’ll get into the game and how much adrenaline you’ll be pumping when you get to the higher floors, collecting the more valuable gems and navigating chaotic situations. Will greed consume you?

Foundations Are Built

Production on our newest game has begun, and I must say that hopes are incredibly high for this one. I’ve personally been on fire with work pertaining to this project. It’s been incredibly beneficial to us in many ways thus far, and I’m sure there’s more to come. Bare with me being rather abstract for the remainder of this, it’s still a bit early for us to give out details, so you’ll have to do with a bit of suspense.

First off, I will say that I’m proud to announce this will be my first game as a technical member of Epic Shadow Entertainment, or ESE as you may often see in our future posts. We’re doing things a bit different with this next title, and it’s sure to go over well, both for us, and for the public.

We’re finally taking a step away from puzzle oriented games, and diving right into the action. We were never primarily a puzzle group, it’s just that we’re both into using our heads as many programmers are, and puzzles do just that. So without to much detail, I promise that this next title is a full on action game that will surely impress thousands of people worldwide, and I might add that it’s pretty neat to think of at such an early stage. It will use ideas that have been done, (rarely, but have been done) and build upon them in a way that has surely never been done in a game before. As I said, I really can’t give out any details yet, but as we continue to torch through production, have some game-play ready, and some screen shots, I’m sure you’ll get your fix.

As I mentioned above, this game has been incredibly beneficial to us. As a programmer, I’ve finally grasped the importance of Object Oriented Programming, or OOP, and I’ve made incredible strides with what I know as a programmer in just days. I’m an idea kind of guy, and my-god is my head filled with ideas that are now within my grasp of programming ability. Another way this game has brought Andrew and I together as a team, is through motivation. I’m not going to sugar coat the very well known truth that many game designers lack motivation, and don’t work as many hours a day as they would like, there’s definitely some truth to that. However, this game alone has got us so motivated, that we are now easily spending 6+ hours a day on work, and I must say it feels good.

It’s not often I doubt myself on a game idea after production has begun and the idea is flushed out. It’s even more rare that I begin production on a game and realize that there is absoultely no way the game can fail if executed as invisioned. The current project meets such criteria. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this game will be a small internet success at the very least, it’s just not possible for an achievement of lower standing to come of it. I don’t say that as a pompous game developer, I say it from the outside gamer perspective. This perspective is one I’ve forced myself to take on in order to make sure I wasn’t getting too deeply into the idea, it truly will be an amazing flash game.

Expectations and build up aside, the foundations are coming together and the game is taking basic form. We have a lot more work to do, and I mean a lot. We eventually need voice acting, script planning, graphical work, more design work such as  game balancing, there really is a ton to be done. We do however have a large motivation to get this game out and finally give ourselves a well deserved name, so rest assured it will get done.  Motivation is definitely present, and it’s staying for dinner, possibly desert.

Node Engine

Today I thought I’d give you a sneak preview of what we’re working on.

We created this node engine to be used in our latest upcoming Flash game. Though I can’t tell you what exactly we’re using it for just yet, I can explain how it works.

Essentially, our node engine starts with a single node, then loops through the data we provide and creates child nodes to orbit our first node. Then, for as long as it has data to work with, it creates orbiting children on those nodes and so forth. We can easily adjust the pattern the engine creates, simply by playing with the variable data it takes in.

Here is a preview of the engine in its current state:

An engine such as this can be used in a variety of projects, from dynamic menus and particle effects to orbit simulations. You’ll just have to sit tight and see how we implement it in our upcoming game.

Gravibounce

You learn something new every day.  Even more so when you finish a large project and send it out into the harsh wilderness of the internet.

We learned a lot once Gravibounce launched.  A lot more than we expected from our “weekend warrior” in any case.

In the beginning we had very high hopes for the success of Gravibounce. The game was well polished, had a unique game-play and was clearly of good quality. However as time went on, and lack of finding sponsorship got to us, we started to look down upon it. That was our biggest mistake for sure. We knew our game was good and we foolishly lowered our expectations due to the outside worlds treatment. This led to us accepting a deal that wasn’t horrible, but was nowhere near what we could be rolling around in right now. We later ran into a rushed situation that forced us to accept a deal which was also a determining factor in the lack of success we could have seen.

Our first big mistake was to not include ads in our game, MochiAds, CPMStar, anything would have
done. Gravibounce was awarded daily 2nd place and a front page position on Newgrounds.
This of course granted it a large amount of views and some widespread attention on the internet.
In it’s life thus far it’s recieved over 50k views on Newgrounds alone, that’s a nice chunk of
change via in game ads. The game radically spread to flash portals all over the net after that,
earning it thousands upon thousands of more views. We however cannot track that number due to
our next mistake.

Imagine having a child and letting it loose into the world, only you didn’t teach him/her to communicate with you in any way, shape, or form.  That’s essentially what happened with Gravibounce.  We poured all this work into a game and neglected to install a tracking API, such as MochiBot.  Had we spent the extra 5 minutes it takes to install, we’d be looking at a detailed list of places our game has been and what it accomplished.  We’d have graphs showing not only how many plays our game received, but from where and when as well.  It goes without saying that this information would be invaluable, not only for our personal portfolios, but for planning an approach for our next release.

One of the other weaknesses in our market strategy was that we never really looked into specific sites that offer revenue share programs. Gravibounce had a much higher success rate then anticipated, so it would have definitely done well on these sites and at the very least earned us a few extra dollars, if not into the hundreds of dollars. Some of the sites that offer these programs are Fizzy and Kongregate, the lack of a list shows that we still have research to do in order to further this portion of our marketing plan. We did however learn of a new program when Tom Fulp of Newgrounds messaged me personally, asking if I was interested in joining the beta of their new revenue share program. I signed up quickly and that 50k+ views should bring us a nice bit of cash, I’ll update you on that amount when I receive payment in a month or so.

The most important thing to do no matter what is to make sure you like your idea and keep faith in your project. A prime example of this is with Gravibounce, we lost faith due to it’s lack of expected attention from sponsors. We were offered a performance like deal from Armor Games that would have seen us another $1,000 given our achievements on Newgrounds. The initial upfront pay was lower, but the bonuses added greatly, where as the deal we had was in the middle but risk free. In the end, we should have stayed positive about our game and taken the performance based deal, because despite the lack of attention it was getting, we knew our game was of great quality.

Gravibounce

Epic Shadow Entertainment’s first game since Porter joined the team is now live and doing far better than expected.

I affectionately call this game our “weekend warrior” because we had originally planned on creating it over a single weekend.  This, however, was not the case, as we ended up spending the better part of a month polishing it to the state you see now.  We just couldn’t stop ourselves from adding features and visual flair to the game.

For those of you who have not yet played it, I encourage you to do so.  It received exceptional reviews and even earned Daily 2nd on Newgrounds as well as making it to the front page for a spell.

Many thanks to Arcade Bomb for the primary sponsorship.  If anyone is interested in purchasing a non-exclusive license for Gravibounce, you can find our prices in the Game Shop on Flash Game License

We plan on developing a sequel in the coming months, so keep your eyes peeled!