Design | Midnight Tangent Devblog

Planning is the key to success

When I started programming The Christmas Trail, it was a very fluid process. I thought about some cool game mechanics and implemented them, not thinking too much about how everything would work together in the end. I’ve found this to be a great approach when prototyping or exploring new mechanics. However, I got to a point where every time I went to implement a new feature or mechanic I was forced to do a lot of refactoring and bug fixing. I also came up with some better ideas to implement core functionality that I has sloppily implemented in the beginning. It was at this point that I should have put my hands up, stopped coding, and started planning. I didn’t do that. read more

The Christmas Trail is a game based off the 1974 hit educational video game The Oregon Trail. I’m not entirely sure where this game idea actually came from. I’m a big fan of Christmas time, and I tend to theme my crazy game ideas as such. There was a time I was very keen a dwarf fortress-like game based at the North Pole, where the elves were the dwarves and the goal was to please a rather eccentric Santa Claus and his over-the-top demands… but let me stay on topic.

The Christmas Trail

So here we are with The Christmas Trail. You’ll get to manage your crew of elves and reindeer through the long journey from continent to continent, delivering presents to all the good boys and girls in the world. The RNG gods will be active, determining if any of your crew comes down with an assortment of sicknesses. You’ll stop at major cities along the way, giving you time to evaluate your situation. Stock up on more cookies or carrots to feed the lot. Call in for a delivery of presents from the North Pole if you’re running low. Make sure this next leg of the journey won’t be your last! read more

Due to our new found fame tiny community of players, we’ve decided to put the afterburners on all of the improvement projects we had scheduled for UPSAT. Some of this you have already seen when we released the Version 1.1 update last week which featured some minor bug fixes, but I’m here to tell you that, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

Throughout the past couple of weeks, Ryan and I have had many meetings and brainstorming sessions to come up with all the improvements we’d like to see implemented. The first major improvement will be a developer notification system. We want to be able to communicate with you about promotions, sales, upcoming updates, etc from right within the game, so we’re working on something that will allow us to do so easily. The second major improvement is going to be the addition of several language settings from within the options menu. I’m developing a list of all the text we currently use in game and we’ll be translating it into Spanish and German to start. A huge, “Thank You!” goes out to one of our Twitter followers @kurtextrem for helping us with the German translation. We’re working hard right now to get these out to you by late next week with a Version 1.2 update. read more

Guess what!? UPSAT has launched! If you haven’t already, go check it out on the Android Market!

It has been an insane couple of months, and I personally cannot believe we made it this far. It’s been a great experience and I have to thank so many people. Of course, I have to thank Chris because, without him, there wouldn’t be any game (just silly, stationary pictures!)! Also, my girlfriend Ali, who had to put up with me on many occasions telling her I couldn’t spend time with her because I had ‘just a little bit more to do tonight.’ And then there are all my friends, family, and followers who were so supportive through this whole process. I’m really glad that we got this project done, and I am very much looking forward to starting work on the next one! (With a short break of course, I’m sure my girlfriend would appreciate that!) read more

Let’s get you updated on our recent changes to our Main Menu and Mode Intro screens… We’ve spent the past couple days refining our look, and we’re pretty proud of what we’ve got. It’s a lot cleaner and slick, so hopefully you like it as well! BTW, did you hear, WE’RE RELEASING ON MONDAY! Everyone get ready for some fun! But first, here’s some ooey-gooey pictures!

Banners!

Brand new Main Menu layout! We have all our Social Media links right at your fingertips, options to the side, and oh yeah, some banners to remind you about upgrading to the full version of UPSAT! Speaking of which… read more

No, I’m not talking about some pop musician, I’m talking about our Android game icon! It’s the first thing people see on the AppStore and it’s what is going to grace their screen when they put in on their home screen because they are so addicted to it… That’s right! So let’s take a look at the process of creating our game’s icon…

First of all, we wanted something catchy, something interesting. We needed to show the potential customer something special about our game. The first couple of mock-ups had some game images in them, with ‘UPSAT” along the top. Common colors to our theme like the blues and oranges seemed to be the obvious choice, but lacked detail and depth. read more

We had a productive weekend here in Pennsylvania, and we have a lot to show for it. Of our 5 remaining games, I completed the artwork 4 of them. Woo! There are still some tweaking to do (the background jungle of the monkey game is not complete), but it feels really good to have pretty much everything done. We also implemented the dynamic sound which is AMAZING! The game feels so much more whole now, and I cannot wait until we finish this bad boy up and release it for the world to see!

Enough jibber jabber, take a look at some sweet new games! read more

Midnight Tangent Devblog

Game Design Documents Are Important (Or Any Sort of Planning)

What Is The Christmas Trail?

New Games Coming Soon!

UPSAT Is Live!

New Menu Changes!

The Evolution of an Icon

Right at the Edge!