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

So after Kevin’s mildly overdramatic last post, time to get back to the good stuff. Pew Pew Pod is right around the corner to release! All the work as of now is officially done, after one HELLUVA day of Alex and me making the trailer. Which coincidentally is the best part about this update! Enjoy!

Several pints of blood, sweat, and tears (mostly tears) went into the making of this trailer. Fortunately Alex and I learned a lot about the programs we used to make it so the Shattered trailer should be absolutely outstanding.

What happened to Shattered you ask? Well we’ve restarted production as of…About 15 minutes ago. Look forward to future updates and an in depth post on the details behind Pew Pew Pod!

We’ve been absent from this website for a few weeks, which is largely due to the slowdown in interesting progress in our major title Shattered.

This absence, however, does not come without good news. We’ve been working furiously on a smaller side-project that we are putting the finishing touches on this weekend! This week has been Trey and I’s (Kevin) spring break from our second semester of university, and we’ve spent nearly all of it finishing this project so we could have a game that people besides us were playing! We’re really putting our hearts into this whole ideal, with each of us invested in our own regard.

As I am sitting here, watching an episode of The Office before I pass out asleep, I’m looking back upon the past few months of Bad Egg Studio’s existence, and our path to releasing our first game. We’ve had quite the journey (already!) as a company, but not without many bumps in the road that we never thought we would encounter. Being comprised of four friends that have known each other much longer than the existence of the company itself, Bad Egg Studios has experienced tension pushed into personal spaces that a traditional workplace would likely not threaten. It has become apparent that it is impossible to keep all past experienced together separate from the job, and although it hindered us at first, we have recently been learning to channel these experiences as part of a larger drive to push forward and continue working on (what we hope to be) quality products. Having been gamers all our lives, the very fact that we have reached a point where we all are working towards a finished game is extremely exciting in itself. Having done it with people we’ve been friends with since before this endeavor is making it an even more rewarding experience. Having a perfect set of skills amongst us has almost a touch of destiny applied to the whole idea, even if the end result is only the ability to say we did it. And that end result, although never a legitimate goal of a business, can be more than satisfactory in regards to its members.

In actuality, Bad Egg Studios is driving forward with even more intensity and passion than ever before. We are truly coming together as a team, and I hope this is a process everyone can experience once in their lifetime. The feeling of getting a project, of your design and ingenuity, completed with people you care about beyond the workplace, is more real than any emotion I would have admitted to having, possibly ever. I type this to the world, on the advent of our first great success as a team, to share only with it our gratitude for the possibility, and the path thus far. As I hope, the journey for us as a group has only begun, and we can make our experience through college more than just slacking and studying. That we can give one of our dreams an honest chance, when that touch of destiny seemed to deem it time.

If you happened to read this far, I’ll reward you with the title of our side and first-to-be-release title: Pew Pew Pod

Sound odd? I’d tell you more, but I’m too busy playing to throw any media online tonight. We’ll give a formal announcement soon, so check back!

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!