Sunday, July 23, 2023

Mid Year Update

The last year and a half has been quite busy. I've managed to release a number of new games including Brainiversity: Brain Training and Retro Arcade both on Apple Watch and iPhone. I've also been keeping older games like Snappy Word, Kepler Attack and Jupiter Attack up to date. 

One thing that has slipped is, you guessed it Return of the Amazon Queen. I'm putting the game on hold for the moment to focus on some smaller projects. The game looks great and using PowerQuest makes development easy and fun - but making an adventure game with dozens of rooms, lots of characters, heaps of puzzles and a compelling story takes a lot of time. 

Both Pete and I can't afford to work on it full time - which means at the current work pace the game will take quite a few years to complete. The original Amazon Queen was started in 1992 and didn't ship until 1995 - and we worked on it full time. 

My plan is to focus on some smaller projects using Unity (which Queen is being built in) and get some runs on the board. I haven't shipped a PC game in over a decade so I have lot to re-learn. I think getting some stuff out faster will only help make for a better Amazon Queen. 

So what are we working on now? Well, like everything, it could change - but the game we are building is deliberately designed to be a small game that we can build in a short amount of time (relative to Queen at least!) and that we can sell on Steam for under $10. 

If you'd like to keep up to date then subscribe to the Red Sprite Newsletter and also check back here.

And if you are on social media then check out my Twitter, Mastodon and TikTok accounts where I will be posting about the game on a regular basis.

- John