I've been working diligently on Zombie Epidemic Simulator on Windows Phone 7 and have made some big improvements. First of all the graphics and level design have been increased in quality. Meaning the actual game levels will look a lot better have more interesting gameplay per level. I'm trying to avoid repeats of levels that only tweak a few variables. There might be some but most of it will major changes to an existing level design. I've also gone for the retro 8bit-ish graphics, but not quite pure 8bit, more like 8bit inspired themes to set the art direction correctly. 

 Also the notion of the heroes being human have been changed. Now as the player you are the human controller of 4 intelligent H.E.R.O (Human Epidemic Response Officer) units. This will fit better into the story and theme of the game and allow me to have a bit more freedom in designing and illustrating the heroes. Also a new zombie type has been added, our favorite zombified canine.

Well I can talk all I want but that won't be fun, so here is a video of the current work in progress. The game is slated to ship when WP7 devices start shipping.

A few days before this post, I embarked on a mission to port over Scribble Defense from Xbox to Windows Phone 7. I estimated it will take a few weeks to finish, given that I have tried to port over Neo Terra to the Zune, in a matter of a few days. However the Zune version was very limited because of the hardware and debugging tools that were available, was pretty much crap. Now skip a few months ahead and now I am using the Game Studio 4.0 Beta SDK. It has a mostly fully functional emulator (no throttling, or accelerometer data), a stablized API (meaning less breaking changes if any until RTM), and more educational samples. Right now, after about 5 days of working on porting the game part-time(4 hours a day), I am able to say that I ported 100% of the code over to be Windows Phone 7 compatible (using touchscreen, going through the certification checklist, performance, etc ...) Now I am in polish mode, tweaking the touch interface, adding better assets, toning down some of the particles to compensate for the phone, as well as playtesting.

What I learned:

1. The emulator is not throttled, so if you are developing on a beefy machine then you will completely screw yourself over if you do not test your game on a phone before hand. My development machine is a Quad Core I-7, 4 gigs of ram, and a ATI HD 5730. 
2. The emulator is not enough to get the feel of the game. Holding a phone will be a different experience because for one you are not using the mouse as a touch device, and two the way you play will be different on the phone because you hold it different and have a far smaller screen
3. Porting over Scribble Defense has been really easy for me because my game did not use any custom shaders, and if you designed your game properly porting over the controls should not be a problem as well. It took me probably an hour to make a new windows phone 7 project and import over all the files and content, as well as draw something on the screen. It took another 5 hours to resize assets, move around menu objects, as well as creating a rudimentary replacement for the controls.
4. Use the Creators Club Educational samples to your advantage. It would have taken me far more time to figure out the new gestures api, if I did not base it off the sample on the site. There will be new ones coming out in the future, I suggest trying them out even if you don't think you will need it for you game. Just knowing what tools you have available is a tremendous help in your confidence when porting your game
5. Touch Screen controls are a whole different paradigm than controllers and keyboard and mouse. Doing gestures like pinch, drag, and flick will not always work for a game because it might not be something the user might think of doing. Consider using buttons, and alot of reminders to the user that this action is available to them.
6. You can get away with more on the smaller screen than on the Xbox. The good thing about the smaller screen is that you can cheat on alot of particle effects by making them have a lower quality and quantity. Remember, the phone will only have a 1ghz CPU, and a even weaker GPU. If you relied alot on the GPU on the Xbox, you will want to rely more on the CPU this time around

Introducing Scribble Defense for Windows Phone 7. I have begun porting over Scribble Defense from Xbox and PC to the new Windows Phone 7 platform. New art assets are being used to bring Scribble Defense to life in Windows Phone 7. As well as a new control scheme and gameplay tweaks to make the game a natural fit Windows Phone 7. Scribble Defense for Windows Phone 7 will try to launch the same time the marketplace for Windows Phone 7 launches

Here is the video of Scribble Defense in action on the Windows Phone 7 emulator.

Welcome to another round of analysis on my indie game sales on Xbox Live Indie Games. Now that a month has passed since Scribble Defense has sold, I am confident to say that this is my best selling game yet (yay!). However that still does not mean I am making gangbusters with this game, in fact I am still net negative in terms of the amount of time I put into this game. Good news though is that whatever monetary resources I put into this game was gained back through the sales. 

Before I delve into the actual sales numbers, I want to talk about what I did different with this game that made it my most successful game to date.

1. I had someone now involved in the development process critique my work as a game designer. Vernon Dunmore is a very talented game designer that helped me refine the gameplay and push the quality bar higher. I believe without his critical input the game would not be as high quality as it is now.
2. I pushed really hard with marketing. This is a definite must in any indie game development push, because without people knowing your game exists no matter how high your conversion rate is nobody will know your game exists. I almost exhausted all my 50 game codes giving out to journalists and contests. I would say effort to market the game is around %30 percent of the whole time I worked on the game.
3. Experience does matter, having published 3 other games before this, I have a greater understanding on what works with selling a game and making it fun. 

That is what I learned from working on the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7.!

I decided to give the game's philiosphy a name. That is the Active Movement System, with this philosophy the player should never sit idle for long periods of time waiting for things to happen in a tower defense game. The player's direct involvement is crucial to winning the game. Having the player dynamically upgrade and pick up money are core components to the game. Also having certain nodes be movable adds another dimension to a already crowded tower defense genre.

After weeks of trying to find a name for my new tower defense game I have settled for the name Scribble Defense. I chose this name because the game reminds me of scribbles I made when I was younger. Mixing contrasting white lines on a black background, as well as having colorful towers to accentuate and add colors to the game.

Currently I added some new concepts to the game. First of all the game now supports 2 player co-op. Having two players in the game will increase the challenge level to account for the added player. Also I have added a money drop system, money no longer automatically add to the player's bank, but has to be picked up by either player to be added to the bank. This makes the game more dynamic as the player has to constantly move around in order to get money he needs to buy more towers.

General Thoughts:

1. This is my third game to be published on XBLIG
2. Code base was derived from a unpublished game which had the framework setup
3. I just wanted to create a simple shooter game
4. Attempted to do cross marketing between my games
5. Development time took 2 months

What went right:

1. Very fast development time because I knew I just wanted a simple dual stick shooter
2. The code base I have been using has been mature enough that I did not spend alot of time scratching my head
3. Simpler menus allowed me to concentrate on the gameplay better

What went wrong: 

1. The cross marketing seemed to have ticked some people off, even comparing my game to the Yaris game that came out of XBLA
2. The game was not quite as impossible during the first release, I had to fix gameplay for a patch but that probably hurt my sales
3. I did not try to innovate as much with this game to differentiate it from the dozens of twin stick shooters out there 

I recently put up the alpha version of Neo Terra Zune HD here. It is a simpler version of my Xbox game Neo Terra (Xbox.com).  You can download the game from here: Neo Terra Zune HD