I’m currently in the process of porting my Windows Phone game ‘Apple Bin’ to Android I thought this would be a good opportunity to re-design the levels to be a bit more challenging.
In general when I introduce a new mechanic such as a portal or gravity switch I’ll try and present it as simply as possible. Then ramp it up pretty quickly. The levels themselves are fairly quick to put together in GameMaker, the time consuming portion is the design. I try and sketch out ideas before i implement them. It makes it a bit easier to visualise the final result.
Apple Bin – early level designs
My five year old daughter Isabelle thought this was great fun and wanted to design a level of her own. I think we might have a budding game designer on our hands.
I’ve recently began the long arduous journey to port my games from a windows phone / Silverlight / xaml code base to a platform independent framework (using GameMaker). The name under which I’ve published those games is ‘Escape Development’. This was OK at the time, but it’s been starting to bug me recently. I wanted a new name / logo which didn’t have any connotations associated with it.
These days you’ve really got to start with the website and work backwards. There’s no use coming up with some cool name only to find out that there are 20 other names exactly like it. I wanted a short name that was easily identifiable with the games that I publish.
Pretty much every 3 letter website is taken so you’ve got buckleys of getting something there. I had a crack at a few four letter words, but five there were a lot more available. I got a list of a about 10 or so and gradually started whittling them down. I settled on Ruxar.
OK name sorted, now logo time. This is something that really conveys the spirit of your games. So you want to carry that through in the design. My games are colourful, tongue in cheek outings that generally don’t take themselves too seriously.
My first got at the logos was really just focusing on the text and using some variations around the X to add a bit of flare. These all seemed a bit too serious though.
Some early logo designs
Next up I tried adding a character to the designs. I liked this concept but the execution was a bit wonky. Back to the drawing board / sketch pad.
One of the better logo designs
This is the final result. I’m really happy with it.