Good Morning Gato #23 – Pterodactyls, Zombies, and the American Dream

Changes are taking place here at Ska Studios. There are dev code changes being made. General life changes. The occasional change of previous changes which were made to change something un-changed. Yes sir, all sorts of changes are happening and are topics I’m willing to discuss with you, but only after the break.
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2 Comments July 16, 2010

Good Morning Gato #21 – Primetime Cable Superstar!

Gato wants you to read this week’s update. She said, in her own proprietary cat language, that she would be heart broken if you refused to read any further. Don’t break Gato’s heart … keep reading and please think of the children.
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4 Comments July 2, 2010

Z0MB1ES wins 2009 IGA Best Indie Game!

We did it!

Thanks everyone for voting!  Thanks everyone for playing!

1 Comment December 15, 2009

XNA, Flash and CD-ROM Graphics

I remember a conversation I had in about sixth grade, when CD-ROM was relatively new technology.  My friend Andrew was trying to convince me that “CD-ROM Graphics” was, well, something that only a CD could bring you.  Games like The Journeyman Project and 7th Guest definitely did things that you couldn’t do on 3.5″ floppies, but a graphic is a graphic, whether it’s stored on a CD, hard drive, laserdisc, etc.  Anyway, the dialogue would go something like:

“The background in Diamonds looks good, but it’s not CD-ROM graphics.”

“You know a 1 MB image will look just as good if it’s on a CD as it will if it’s on the hard drive?”

“Well, it’s still not CD-ROM graphics.” (more…)

6 Comments December 15, 2009

Z0MB1ES is #1 on Major Nelson's List!

Title says it all, we’re #1! (top rated, too!)

And holy roundup, Batman:

• Kotaku would pay $1 just for the theme song
• Destructoid calls it this year’s “Still Alive”
• Joystiq thinks it’s “astounding”
• GameGirl is hooked
• GamingAngels was blown away by the awesomeness of the game
• TheXboxDomain liked the awesome music, addictive qualities, great replay value
• IndieGames.com thinks it’s way too much fun for its own good

50,000 downloads, 6,237 ratings and an average score of 4.75, these are freaking excellent numbers.  This was exactly what I had in mind when I heard Microsoft was rebranding XBLCG as Xbox Live Indie Games and switching the price points to let us sell games for $1.  It’s indie! It’s a dollar! It’s the type of thing that would’ve seemed like a really bad idea if you were trying to describe it to someone you wanted to borrow money from!

And to think that Joystiq’s Andrew Yoon just declared that XBLIG is “floundering” (qualified by a 5-month old article, no less).  Guess we can chalk that one up to Playstation fanboyism!  Of course, if Sony created some sort of zero-entry-barrier developer-friendly platform (think XNA), maybe my PS3 could be more than just a protein folding Blu-Ray player… burn!

8 Comments August 25, 2009