Coming Soon: Sleuthhounds – The Cursed Cannon

October 23, 2015

Exciting news today! My ever upcoming computer game Sleuthhounds – The Cursed Cannon has a scheduled release date now! If all goes well, Wednesday, November 4th will be the big day.

I started working on The Cursed Cannon shortly after completing the first Sleuthhoounds computer game The Unlocked Room. That was back in March and at the time I thought the second game would take about two to three months to complete.

Then I started adding scope. I decided to go for a more ambitious game than I’d first planned to see how far I could push the game technology I’d developed. As a result, the development time for this game soared to over seven months (yikes!). But the finish line is very much in sight.

As I write this blog entry, the official outstanding to do list is down to six items left. The largest remaining item is to do a final dialog recording session. While I’ve already recorded and integrated the bulk of the dialog a few eleventh hour script changes require a final short recording session to get the last of the dialog for main character Jane Ampson. I haven’t pinned down an exact date for when that will happen, but I’m hoping to do it in the next week.

Beyond the outstanding dialog recording, I also have to do some final testing of the game on different systems. I’ve resisted upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 on my development computer because I didn’t want to take the risk that bad stuff would happen (like Cortana breaking the Start menu) when I was trying to get the game finalized. As it is, I’ve had to do some bug fixing already to work around differences in the way Windows 8/10 works from earlier versions of Windows. So a good part of the final testing will involve playing the game on Windows 10 and making sure I’ve indeed squashed all those bugs.

Things are shaping up nicely for that early November release. It’s been amazing to look at the nearly completed game these past few weeks and think back to when it was just a few scribbled design ideas and sketches on a couple of sheets of loose leaf. Once the game is out and the dust has settled I’ll be doing a full look back on both Sleuthhounds games. So expect to see a post mortem on their development in the not too distant future.

Bonus Blog: CMYW Out Now

In other game related news, my friend, Shane Berezowski, has released his local co-op computer game CMYW. It actually came out last Friday, but since I prepare my blogs in advance I wasn’t able to write about it then. So I’m writing about it now!

As I previously blogged about, CMYW is a local co-op version of the classic game Asteroids. You and up to three other players take control of small space ships colored Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and White, hence the game’s name. As asteroids zoom in to smash your base, death is assured. The real question is not if you can survive but for how long?

I’ve had the privilege of seeing Shane’s game evolve over the past few months. It’s a fun game to quickly jump into. If you have a Steam account, I highly encourage you to support Shane and plunk down the price of a coffee or two to buy his game, CMYW. If you don’t have a Steam account, I highly encourage you to get one so you can support Shane by plunking down the…well, you get the idea.

And be sure to connect with Shane on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube to stay up to date on all his latest developments.