Let the nervousness begin! We officially submitted Pew Pew Pod to play testing this morning (night?). After one month of working, bargaining, pleading, reasoning, threatening, and least of all lauding each other’s strengths, we have little left to do but to twiddle our thumbs and hope for the best.

Let me back up a few steps for those of you that may not be a member of the gaming community that know the ins and outs of putting a game on Xbox Live Indie Games; I’ll give ya the basics. Once you’ve completed your game, and you’re convinced it’s ready to ship out, it’s time to roll up your sleeves because you really need to whip out the EVIL LIST. Does your game work with a guitar plugged into third control socket? How about half past noon with a five o’clock shadow? Confused yet? I am.  If you truly seek a deeper appreciation for what game developers go through, from the greatest gods to the lowliest mortals, you can check out the full list here: http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/19525.aspx.

Once we dotted our i’s and crossed our t’s, we were ready to submit. Microsoft has a process called the Peer Review system, in which the game is pushed to the limits of sanity to ensure it will provide a reliable experience to even the quirkiest of users. Peer Review takes between three and fourteen days, and at the end you get either a simple pass or fail for a spot on the indie game marketplace. Which brings me back to being nervous… Wish us luck!

p.s.- I start back on Shattered tomorrow morning, so hopefully I can get some more audio clips and blog posts coming your way in no time. I have some great ideas for a dark forlorn castle… But I’ve already said too much!

Trey Castle, Sound Slinger

After two weeks of hard work the art for one of our forest levels is now finished. I wanted to post some videos showing how the level and art were made but unfortunately we ran into some problems with our video recorder. However I am happy to release some concept art that I have made for the game.

We also have a new in-game screenshot. You can see that I made a new dynamic background. And now Arthur can climb. Arthur will be able to climb vines, ladders, and soft rocky walls to complete puzzles.

I hope you enjoyed the new update. We will try to fix the video recording issues and get some speed paint videos out there.

Snow. AGAIN. Once again making us put on our work gloves and do our jobs.  I’m happy to say that Shattered is making huge leaps and bounds in progress. As of this evening, all of the art is done for the game’s first true level. This is a momentous occasion for the team, finally giving us an example of what the finished game will be like. Oh, and it shows that Alex is worth all the trouble.

Now onto the next 19! We have plenty more levels designed and ready to be worked on and/or destroyed. As time goes on and more levels are finished we’ll be able to reveal what types of worlds we’ll be bringing Arthur to in the future. We’ve discovered that finally releasing some of our work to the public is one of the most fun things about this project.

As always, please feel free to comment about what you read and see. We’re always open to suggestions and opinions!

So as we’ve all been snowed in the past couple days during this fine Virginia January, the team has been getting a lot of progress in on production for Shattered. Kevin’s done plenty of raging, Alex has had plenty of time to think up excuses, I’ve had time to procrastinate and Trey has been…Trey. Strangely enough progress is great!

So after after Kevin’s miniature commercial post that was recently put up, we’re very interested in what people have to say about our ideas. If you have an opinion, feel free to post it, email it, sing it, draw it, anything! Compliments for Alex are greatly appreciated so he’ll stop trying to think up reasons not to color in Arthur. Thanks for your support!

Today, we release a (very) first look at our upcoming title Shattered.

A short concept overview:

Shattered is a side scrolling platformer where you rearrange the landscape to solve the puzzles required to save the world.

Features

• Unique gameplay in which the player rearranges the level’s landscape in order to collect new pieces of the world and solve the puzzle
• Intriguing story which persists into the game world
• 5 Detailed and Rich Worlds
• Custom Soundtrack for Every Level
• Mind expanding puzzles that build upon each other for a bigger challenge
• Gameplay that doesn’t become frustrating through a unique checkpoint system

A much more detailed description will be online in the coming weeks, with a page devoted to the game and its features.

Here is Arthur exploring a forest, although he appears to not be colored yet.

First Look - Arthur explores a forest. (1280x720)

We believe the art style suites our vision, and thanks to our amazing artist Alex, our vision can become a reality.

Introduction

After the feature post, I figured I would introduce myself as well. My name is Kevin Pfab, and I write the code for Bad Egg Studios, as well as some business related things and running the website. I’m a freshman Computer Science major at Virginia Polytechnical Institute, and have been playing video games my entire life. I was a computer nerd from the start, and have been hooked on programming every since I touched Adobe Flash back in my 8th grade year of middle school. I hope to bring you an excellent gameplay experience and to make somewhat of a splash into the indie game development field via Shattered.

P.S.

Follow us at: @badeggstudios or the Facebook Page