Finally after a year of toiling long days and nights, I have submitted Gum Drop to the Xbox Game Communities review process. It's been a long and ardous task but it's well worth it! Hopefully I have squashed all the bugs that will make the game fail peer review.

Exciting days indeed, but it will defnitely be a long wait to get the game approved :(

 Here's the box art for the game. booyah!

Seems like the delay of pushing out 3.1 stuff out the door on Games Communities will take longer than expected. So I will revert back to 3.0 and get my game to peer review possibly before the end of June. So the game will be playable to the millions of people out there soon!

I really don't have a good arguement to try and jam in Avatar and Video support into Gum Drop. Seems like a feature that is good to have for marketing but really does not add anything to the game for me. Plus, I want to get the game out before the glut of Avatar enabled games go out, and seemingly less games might go out before that so I may have less launch competition. 

Stay tuned for more announcements!

I was finally able to solve the crashing bug tha thas been bugging me the past week, and only affected trial mode timeout. Which in XNA terms did not allow me to debug it because there was no way to call to make the game timeout on the trialmode with a debugger on. But the issue is solved, and everyone is happy!

I have till the 23rd of July before I get the game to the review process, that would probably be my deadline for the project. Ahh, it has come along way and there definitely has been bumps and potholes along the way. I'm almost kinda glad this is coming to a close, because I have been working on this project for far too long now :)

Now that Gum Drop's features have stabilized, I am now working on doing level balancing and Release testing at the same time. The game has progressed so much since I started it 1 year ago, but I am really proud of what I have accomplished. All together now Gum Drop has 20 levels, over 20 different kinds of enemies, 11 different power ups, 10+ different projectiles. The game has also recieved alot of polish. What I am really proud of the game is that most if not all the work was done by me other than music. I had complete control on what the art direction and gameplay direction went. This is the type of game I wanted it to be, a really fun and unique shooter.

 But now things are starting to wind down to a close as I am wrapping up the project as it will be released sometime within the next 2 months  on Xbox Game Communities. Ahh.. Gum Drop!

Througout making Gum Drop, I've solicited tons upon tons of feedback from people from different groups,  male, female, hardcore gamer, casual gamer, non-gamer, etc ... They've all given me constructive feedback and insight into making the game easier to understand and fun to play. The female group in particular has always had a keen eye on making the game more approachable. My Girlfriend pointed out early that the colors I had in the game were unapproachable and hostile at times. Then a female friend of mine suggested that the shooting mechanic I had implemented in the game actually distracted the player from what was fun, which was the SMASH mechanic. Another female friend of mine pointed out I had too much text that nobody will ever read in the game. It's not saying that guys cannot notice these issues but it seems that females are more vocal about it. 

Well, other than that short blurb, progress on Gum Drop is moving along at a steady pace. I have now addded survival mode, which will pit the player against a endless swarm of enemies that the player will have to face. I've also locked down the number of levels to be 20 for the normal gameplay. There will be 20+ unique enemies that the player can fight. I've also decided to completely remove any sort of story in the text I have in the game. The game has been diluted along production but I will re-distill it to it's purest form which is "Fun" I've also decided to remove the Gum Drop collecting missions, as smashing stuff is the front and center of the game now. 

Hopefully the game will be out in Xbox Game Communities come Summer/Fall