City Block - Super Mega Awesome Surprise Early Release

Well, City Block was released a few days ago, and even I did not know about it. Indievania, one of the distribution sites I use, mistakenly released the game three weeks early. The other site I'm releasing City Block on, IndieCity, has not yet released it. I have decided to embrace this early release, and will not be removing the game until its intended release date. Go get it now on Indievania, and it's coming soon to IndieCity!

City Block Release Date!

I have decided that my new game, City Block, will be released for Windows on December 12, 2012, at a price of $4.99! It will be released on two different indie game distribution websites, Indievania, which I have used before for Invasion Breaker, and IndieCity. The IndieCity version of City Block will be integrated with IndieCity's achievements API, and achievements you earn in the game will appear on your IndieCity profile. As Indievania has no online achievements API, copies of the game purchased via Indievania will be limited to local achievements. The game will not support Windows XP initially (for a detailed reason why, see here), but will likely gain Windows XP support within a few weeks. I have greatly enjoyed working on this game for the past eight months, and I hope you'll enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed making it!

City Block Progress Update

Back in May, I announced City Block, my latest major project. However, I have not released that much information about it since then, so here's a progress update:

First of all, I have almost completed the game. I sent out the first release candidate to a few friends who have agreed to beta test the game last week, and I hope to have the second release candidate out by the end of this week. I was able to finish the game this quickly thanks to my decision to develop it in Game Maker Studio, a rapid development tool that handles most of the back end stuff, such as graphics rendering and keyboard/mouse input, automatically. It is an incredibly full featured and easy to use game engine. I highly recommend it. That said, it does have a few problems. Some of the graphics functions cause games created with it to crash on Windows XP. Unfortunately, City Block uses some of these functions, and there is nothing I can do to fix Game Maker Studio. I have to wait until YoYo Games, the developer behind Game Maker Studio, fixes these issues. Therefore, City Block will be launching without support for Windows XP. If the issues with Game Maker Studio are ever fixed, then I will release an updated build of City Block that adds Windows XP support. Until then, City Block will not run on Windows XP.

Despite the Windows XP issue, I still plan to launch City Block soon, hopefully by the end of this month. The game is nearly feature complete. I have one or two more things to add and a bit of polishing to do, then Release Candidate 2 is off to the beta testers. I'll fix the problems they find, if any, and then it's time for release. Until then, here's the trailer: