"But what about me?" you ask.

"Now what?"

"So, what's the plan?"

"And what's the name of this awesome project that will change the world as we know it?"

Enjoy!

This is a darker version of the forest, there's a desolated feeling to it. I hope you like it.

Summer being the summer, it took me a bit more time to make it. I'm also working on a version of Wheelz for the coming Windows Phone 7 so it's taking a bit of my brain power.

On a side note, the great folks at Farseer Physics Engine just released a new version of their engine. I'll be migrating Wheelz to it in the future. There are some very nice features I'd like to play with, like destructable objet, moving platform, and curvy terrain.

Enjoy the ride =)

Actually it's more of a lake, and it features the new underwater gameplay!

It's quite common to hear from gamer that the worst level are the one underwater. They're said to be hard to control, feature complex maze with deadly enemies and you'll often drown if you stay too long. So I tried to avoid all that. There's no maze nor enemies, the controls are relatively tight and you can't drown. I've gone through quite a few iteration to get the controls responsive while still giving a feeling of being underwater. At first, it was behaving like a slingshot and falling into the water projected you miles away into the sky. Quite funny at first, but a little nauseating over time...

It's also more of an exploration and less straight forward then the previous ones. No worries though, I used a little trick to show you the way to go.

Here's a teaser:

Difficulty: Hard
Stars:48

I'm curious to hear your feedback on this one and like everything else, I'll be tweaking its gameplay overtime.

Talking about tweaking the gameplay, you might feel like you have a better control over the buggy. In fact, I added a damping effect. Before, the buggy was moving like it was on the moon, without any air resistance. Now it moves like on earth, where air resistance stops you from continously accelerating. The result is a control that feels less slippery.

Happy diving!

• 496 game sessions. 
• 326 levels completed.
• 144 "Old City 1" completed.
• 88 "Moutains 1" completed.
• 56 "Forest 1" completed.
• 37 "Sunset 1" completed.
• 2394 deaths from which 2187 were from falling in a hole and 207 from excessive damage.
• 376 235 of cumulative score.
• 67 Flaming Haircut challenge unlocked.
• 33 saw the credit screen.

I love doing todo lists. Sometimes I do one and don't even use it. The simple fact of creating it makes everything more clear and ordered in my mind. I also have a very high tendancy for disorder, so it helps me stay focused. More importantly, the todo list will be a good way for you to know where Wheelz is heading, which features I'm thinking about, and also what are the features I'm missing out.

Why no more patch-notes?
Basically, all the big changes will be announced in the blog so the patch notes are redundant. For all the little changes and tweaks, I'm planning to start using Twitter. I'll be displaying my latest twit just below the game so you'll always know the current news/changes/thoughts. Using twitter will also help me attract more visitors to the site which is always a good thing.

Go check it now, Wheelz's first todo list.

Music is back for everyone to enjoy,
composed by Duckett, find more here.

The idea is now "let's make sure the newcomer are asking for more" instead of "let's make sure the game is so hard that everybody will just leave after their 50th death". No worries I still have the old one in bank and I'll be adding more levels over time.

Also added a neat little camera zoom that, among other things, fix those bad "leap of faith" you could find here and there.

Keep the feedback coming!

The 31st of July I plan to participate in the IndiePub contest. It's an international competition where dozens of team face-off against each other to show their skills in game development. The grand prize being 100 000$, you'll understand I'd like to present my best foot forward.

With the beta, my goal is to get feedback about my game and make it the awesome game I believe it has the potential to be.

Being a one man team and Wheelz being my first project means I've got a lot to learn in a lot of different fields. There's visual design, gameplay mechanics, user interfaces, game design, level design, web marketing, sound design, story writing, etc. If you see something off or missing or just plain wrong, please use the feedback form or add a comment to the blog. Sometimes just a single sentence will hit the nail right on the head and make my brain go full throttle for all day trying to grasp all subtilities of a new angle. So go wild on the comments.

I'm not fooling myself though, this kind of contest will attract a lot of high quality competition from a lot of talented people, and I expect it to be tough. That being said, good luck to all the other participants and let the fun begin!

Welcome to my beta.

Hope it helps you drift a bit.

Have a safe ride  ;-)

-David