Rumar development diary: #6

Sunday, August 30:
It’s about two months after my first development diary entry and I can now truly say that a game is emerging from the sweat.
Project Venus – still just a working title – contains most of its core features and is playable.
Sixteen levels have been implemented for testing and I (and the few folks that tested) must say that it plays really well.
It’s not quite ready for beta testing yet, but we’re getting there!
Looking back on the development time so far, I have to admit that developing a game from scratch – even a simple one like Project Venus – is ridiculously hard.
I’m really looking forward to this project being “done”, released and being played by other people so I can re-use the entire framework to develop the next game were I only have to focus on the core gameplay.
A lot of time was spent on getting to know the ins and outs of CocosSharp, the game engine I’m using for this project.
The developers behind CocosSharp are very helpful in tracking down and fixing bugs and implementing new features per request.
They are doing a great job!
There is still quite a list of unfinished features for Project Venus, but I can’t wait to give you a little preview of what is coming.
Here is a short video showing the game starting up and about a minute of gameplay.
Please note that the graphics in the video look blurry because it’s recorded over AirPlay and I also was not yet able to add touch/swipe indicators. The next video will be of better quality.