I know it’s been awhile since we’ve updated our blog (sincerest apologies). We’ve been pretty busy with some exciting things, so there hasn’t been much time for blogging. What I’m going to do today is give you all a quick rundown of what has been going on with us.

New Office (again…)

Since our last post we’ve moved our office to a new locale. We are now stationed just outside the heart of Burlington in a significantly better apartment building. No longer shall our development take place in a basement. We’ve skipped the ground floor entirely and moved straight to the 2nd floor. I’ll have Porter post pictures of our new setup as soon as they’re available.

New Server

I just finished transferring EpicShadow.com to our new web server. You may notice a few bugs here and there as a result of the move (the appearance of this blog being one of them). Feel free to point them out if you see them. Our new server also hosts a few other domains that we will be publishing to shortly. Stay tuned.

Traverse

Our latest game, Traverse, was just sponsored via FlashGameLicense by NinjaKiwi. Traverse is a tile puzzle in the style of Dominus Void and features polished graphics, non-linear level progression, and 25 levels of increasingly challenging gameplay mechanics. Play it now on NinjaKiwi!

Tower of Greed (Xbox 360)

Spoiler Alert! We are now registered XNA developers and are hard at work porting Tower of Greed to the Xbox 360 for the Xbox Indie Games marketplace. So far it has been really interesting working with XNA and developing for the Xbox 360. Tower of Greed feels a lot more natural with a controller in your hand. We are considering the possibility of adding local multiplayer to the Xbox 360 version.

Contract Work

A lot of our time has been spent doing contract work for fellow developers and sponsors. Among many other things, we collaborated with Ozdy.com on Dudes and Dudettes, which is now playable on FunFlow. We also did art for another of Ozdy’s games, which is currently in development (more details later). The time for contract work is coming to an end, however, as we would very much like to get back into developing games under our own brand.

What’s Next?

Once Tower of Greed (Xbox 360) launches, we’ll probably begin work on Tower of Greed 2, which we will release both on Xbox 360 and on the Web. We may release it to Windows as a downloadable app as well.

Well that’s about all for now. There are a lot more things in the pipeline for Epic Shadow Entertainment, so stay tuned. I’ll try to update this blog a little more frequently.

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?