Disqus - Latest Comments for aschearer

Re: Brilliantly original puzzle game Tumblestone out now

Alex Schearer — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 16:55:27 -0000

Yes we're aware that Tumblestone is expensive in this day and age of bundles and summer sales, but we feel the game's worth the price because it has so much to offer: local and online multiplayer, 40+ story campaign, 3 arcade modes just to name a few things. Furthermore we've been honored with some big awards such as being selected for the PAX 10 and PAX East Indie Showcase as well as winning Intel Level Up's Best Puzzle Game. Altogether this isn't some casual puzzle game or shallow experience. This is a really deep, critically acclaimed game you'll be coming back to again and again.

Re: Brilliantly original puzzle game Tumblestone out now

Alex Schearer — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 12:28:39 -0000

Thanks for your encouragement! I'm glad you're enjoying Tumblestone so far. As for more music, skins, etc. I will bring this up with my team. As for unsolvable puzzles that should never happen -- all the puzzles are designed using a computer program and then tested for solvability and difficulty using the bots, so anything that can't be solved would be filtered out before it made it into the game.

Re: Brilliantly original puzzle game Tumblestone out now

Alex Schearer — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 12:25:50 -0000

That's great feedback thanks for sharing. I'm going to add something today to the Steam user manual: http://steamcommunity.com/s... but will discuss what to do in-game with my team.

Re: Brilliantly original puzzle game Tumblestone out now

Alex Schearer — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 00:37:05 -0000

Yes! This is a hardcore puzzle game. There are 12 worlds each with 30 levels. Each level is a unique, challenging puzzle. Each world adds a new challenging mechanic. Beyond that there are three arcade modes, practice puzzles, and tons of metagame quests to complete.

Re: Brilliantly original puzzle game Tumblestone out now

Alex Schearer — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 00:29:27 -0000

Hi thanks for the feedback on the trailers. I felt this video did a good job showing off what the single player puzzle mode is like: https://m.youtube.com/watch...

As for a demo, Tumblestone will be free on Xbox One as part of Games with Gold starting Saturday. For Steam we have a Friends Pack which lets you play online with a friend - anyone with a copy can send you a key. There's also the ten dollar Multiplayer Starter Pack which lets you try the single player modes as well as play unlimited online and local multiplayer.

Re: Brilliantly original puzzle game Tumblestone out now

Alex Schearer — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 19:23:59 -0000

Hi I'm one of the devs, it is actually not reflex based at all --
each player starts with the same puzzle and races to solve it. One wrong
move and you have to go back to the beginning! The story mode takes
things up a notch by introducing game changing "modifiers" which make
the puzzles even more challenging. In fact a common thread in reviews to
date is that people want *more* skip tokens because they find the
puzzles so challenging.

Re: What Happened To Silverlight Games? (Or, Why Flash Is Still The Platform Of Choice For Web Games)

Alex Schearer — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:07:37 -0000

I'm curious if things have changed at all in the last year? Silverlight 4 is out now and adoption is around 50%. Microsoft has announced that Silverlight will be the main development environment for the Windows Phone and using Bill Reiss' Silversprite it's possible to write a game in XNA which runs on the phone, desktop, and browser.

Still, it's not all roses. 50% seems like a big step forward but is dwarfed by Flash's 95% market share. In addition, it doesn't look like Newgrounds, Kongregate, or other portals support Silverlight at the moment meaning you need to find other ways to distribute your game.

Re: Silverlight Game Source Code

Alex Schearer — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:22:57 -0000

What exactly do you mean? A tutorial going over the specifics of creating Asteroids in each language?

Re: Super Mario World AI

Alex Schearer — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:34:19 -0000

Pretty sweet right? Like I said I think someone needs to make this into a screensaver -- way better than floating text! By the way really nice web site, you're an awesome graphic designer!

Re: Thoughts on Silverlight Game Development

Alex Schearer — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:14:34 -0000

Actually you can use Moonlight to run Silverlight on Linux. That said it's at least one version behind the plug-ins available for Windows and OS X.

Re: Switching to Disqus Comments

Alex Schearer — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:28:47 -0000

Glad you support the move :-) By the way, how is your platformer coming? Or have you moved onto something else now that the contest is over?

Re: PushButton Engine Open Beta Launched

Alex Schearer — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:02:45 -0000

Hey, it's exciting to hear you finally published your library! Also, good choice on the license -- and very interesting to hear you're going to work with an open source business model. Out of curiosity do you plan to accept community contributions? If so is the code hosted anywhere? What's the procedure for accepting changes? etc etc If you haven't found a home for it yet I would suggest hosting it over at the fabulous GitHub -- free for open source projects. Looking forward to learning more!

Re: Gestating ideas for new games

Alex Schearer — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 05:11:40 -0000

I really like the concept art but I'm not sure I agree with your stance on new ideas. On the one hand I do agree that when you're in the middle of a long project it's dangerous to get distracted by new ideas; in that case I would agree with you sentiments. However, if you are in between larger projects or still finding the "one" then I think working on a series of smaller ideas in rapid fire can be a great process to weed out what doesn't work. Clearly, Crayon Physics comes to mind as a game that was born from this type of process.

Re: Risk Assesment: Don’t Put All Your Games In One Market

Alex Schearer — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:15:21 -0000

I'm looking forward to the engine, too. I am curious how do you manage a flash file between multiple authors? I'm finding it to be a complete pain to manage changes between users as the file seems to be a black box -- clobbering it each time is a pretty crappy way to go!

Re: Hey Whiners, the iPhone Market Owes You Nothing

Alex Schearer — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:06:39 -0000

I appreciate the negative argument you put forward here but do you plan to follow up on this post with a positive argument about what a developer can do when it comes time to bring his game to the market? For instance, I imagine simply buying a bunch of text or display ads wouldn't make for a successful marketing campaign, but what would?

Re: Forum Management

Alex Schearer — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 04:30:08 -0000

Another option that you could consider is to let the community manage itself. One way to do this would be to add some sort of voting/ranking on comments in a thread. If a user found something truly disagreeable he could mark it with a thumbs down, say. If a comment had accumulated enough thumbs downs then it might be disabled or trigger some action in the thread itself.

Re: Game Pricing, Look Out Below

Alex Schearer — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:30:04 -0000

Tried to do a trackback since this ended up being longer than a comment...

In a nutshell I think that games will continue to sell for some price above $0 as long as there are consoles and other locked platforms. These create an excludable good which I think solves the problem facing the music industry. Anyhow, feel free to read more.

Re: Game Pricing, Look Out Below

Alex Schearer — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:00:55 -0000

I think there is something wrong with this thesis. Take the economic appeal to supply and demand. But let's look at this from the supply side. As the market becomes more competitive and the means to generating profit less clear can we really assume that new developers will enter the fray? Discounting the people who will do it for the love of it I think that this line of thought would generate some sort of equilibrium, and that the balance would have to stick somewhere greater than $0 in order to attract new developers. That is, at a certain price point the number of developers making games will go down thus impacting supply, at that point the price cannot fall further without undermining the consumer.

Granted, this is the old way of thinking, and I suppose you'll counter with promises of merchandise and spin offs. Still, I think we need to wait and see how those strategies work for the music industry. It's not at all clear that the revenue lost through sales of IP will be offset by that made through sales excludable goods.

Re: 6 Tips For Becoming A Game Developer

Alex Schearer — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:53:20 -0000

Hm, this is interesting and really connects to something I wrote the other day: Reaching the Next Level

I have to say that I disagree with your first piece of advice. Obviously starting early can be an advantage but I don't think it's necessary nor is it a good indicator of long-term success. Instead I think the key is to push yourself by deliberately and aggressively working on things outside of your comfort zone. You have to work a lot but you also have to work smart.

Re: Motivation

Alex Schearer — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:59:24 -0000

After watching this video I was reminded of a book I recently read titled "Talent is Overrated". I think the speaker and the author of said book are coming at the same problem from different angles. Personally, I think that what these people have to say is pretty obvious, but what's more interesting is what it takes to become a world-class game developer. That is, what separates the world-class game makers from the rest of the pack?

I wrote something in response to this post and my question which you can read here: http://www.anotherearlymorn...