Disclosure time. I don’t have an xBox. I did, however, work for these guys on this xBox game for the 360’s Live service. It should be out… sometime in the next 12 hours. Or thereabouts.
It’s a fun sandbox style kingdom building game that I’d definitely play… if I had the machine for it. As it is, I’ll probably be playing on our company’s machine here and there under the Gamertag “Silverook”.
Here’s the Facebook release party… thing. I don’t have a Facebook account either, so I’m pretty much out of the loop. All my blathering goes, well… here. EDIT: OK, I’ve caved and made a Facebook account. This is so… weird. I’m much better with blogging… and that’s still a hack job.
For the game, I did technical art… stuff, so the game would look all pretty and appealing. I built buildings, textured them, and handled some of the tech art geek stuff making Microsoft’s Avatars fit into our game. (Our engineers did the hard work, I just did some Maya and Max rigging and animation.) It’s very cool seeing their avatars in our game. (The pain making Maya play nice with Max is totally worth it.)
Other links:
NinjaBee Forums (with various other links)
So yes, this is me shilling for a cool game that I worked on. Please tell anyone and everyone who might be interested about the game, and if all five of you buy the game, I might get a few cents in royalties. Whee! If all of your relatives and friends buy it too, that would make me happy.
It will be available for download on the Live service here fairly soon. If nothing else, there should be a playable demo, and you can get a feel for the sort of zaniness and fun that I get to work on. It’s really good to see everything come together. I’ll admit, it’s nice to earn money for it, too.
If there’s interest in it, I could probably construct a post mortem for the game, too. We’ve talked about doing one, so I’m sure that I could put together something interesting. I’m just a lowly technical artist, so I can’t promise anything… but I’d certainly welcome the opportunity to explain a bit about what went into the game.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
I have a coworker gamer with an XBox. I’ll pass this on to him so he can check it out.
Ah, great! I’d be interested in what he thinks about it. (Good or bad.) It’s not going to be for everyone, but it’s a fun sandbox to tinker in.
Damn you Tesh! I don’t have a 360. I would almost buy one just to support you and your efforts, but that’s a big purchase (regardless of how nice of a guy you are).
I still haven’t picked up the other titles you mentioned to me before for the PC, but now I feel guilty for not doing since I can’t support you on this title.
So there you go. In a roundabout way you are still getting support. Congratulations on the release =)
*chuckle* Thanks!
Of course, the irony is compounded by my own inability to play the game, except at work. It’s a bizarre life, sometimes.
Argh!
I have a 360 (possibly one of the only launch models to never RRoD! Oh Yeah!), but I’m at my parents place for a month with no decent internet to get it off Live Arcade! D=
I’ll be sure to check it out once I’m back in civilization though! Congrats!
Especially cool you’ve got the avatars in there, if enough Live Arcade games get the avatars in it could really take off.
Wow, the Official Xbox Magazine gave it 9/10! For reference, they gave Geometry Wars 2 a 9/10 so that’s really amazing. They tend to be very harsh on Live Arcade titles.
Definitely something to be proud of contributing to. =)
Yup, the MS avatars are in there. It’s the first game where you can actually play in the game as the avatar, rather than just having them as window dressing. It’s pretty doggone cool. I’m biased, though, since that’s one of the parts of the game that I spent the most time on.
I didn’t know we were in such august company as Geometry Wars, though. That’s really good news. 😀 Thanks for that, and for stopping by!
Np, unfortunately because I can’t get Live here I can’t even download the NXE to make an avatar. =( MS hasn’t released it in a burn-to-disc format on their site yet like they usually do for updates…
BTW, hope you don’t mind there’s a link to your blog from mine. Just posted a new article you might be interested in if you have time.
Links are good. I like links. That said… I’m not seeing a link to your blog. *shrug*
If you hazard a guess my name .wordpress.com might reveal some answers…
I guess that’s just bad design on my part – assuming the player makes the connection between the name and address. Next time I’ll be sure to leave early hints via an obscure drunk rambling NPC and it written in binary on a mystical computer terminal left by the ‘ancients’…
The then inevitable consultation with gamefaqs.com would reveal my blog address is:
ajbaldwin.wordpress.com
=P
Actually, in my experience, that nomenclature is rather atypical. I suppose it’s the obvious route, true… but so obvious, perhaps, that it’s obscure. What a crazy life this is.
*wanders over*
Ah, yes, the “Avatar Issue” fellow. Excellent. 😀
*adds to blogroll, contemplates commentary over there on the NXE*
[…] a brighter note, if you have an Xbox 360 our good friend Tesh has a highly rated game released through Xbox live that he worked on. Check it out and see if it is up your alley. As much as we bitch about the bad, we need to support […]
Tesh, a demo for Kingdom for Keflings is on the latest Official Xbox Magazine’s demo disc, I just got to try it. =)
I have to say, it has a strange addictive charm I’d attribute to the player having an actual physical body in the game world despite playing like a simcity-esque city creator. I don’t have the full NXE (only the preview) so I couldn’t try it with avatars, but I can see it would deepen the immersion to have your own creation in there playing god instead of the generic non-avatar characters. It’s quite unique to be wandering around as a giant person teaching the little villagers how what to do by picking them up and giving them hats.
Congrats on an awesome game, I’ll definitely be shelling out for it once I’m back in decent internet range.