Hi people. I know I’m one day late for my intended monthly milestone, but this delay was intentional and for a very good cause.

The big news in my life is that I’ve finally completed Connexus! This was the game project that I’ve been working on in my spare time over the past nine months. Today is the deadline for the 11th Annual Independent Game Festival contest entries and at 4:00 AM today, I submitted the final build of my game.

Considering the number and quality of the IGF entries, I will probably not be a finalist in any of the categories. However, I had a hell of a lot of fun making the game and I’m really proud of what I’ve come up with. I’ve got a huge pile of game ideas laying around, so I might just try it again next year.

Most of you have not seen or played the game. I haven’t posted any screenshots since it was just a prototype either, so you might be wondering "What is this Connexus game?". Well, for that, Wayne helped me put together a handy webpage: Connexus. Check it out for a brief game description and some screenshots. Just to make this post appear like it has more content, here’s a screenshot of me beating the living crap out of my AI:

Now that that project is done, I have a couple of open questions to answer. What should I do with Connexus? Should I look for a publisher? Polish it up to make an Xbox 360 community game? Just release it on DM? Delete it from my HD? More importantly, what should I do with my free time now that I don’t have to feel guilty about not working on Connexus? Should I start a new game? Continue to clean up and polish Connexus? Take a break for a while?

In any case, I don’t think I’ll have any problem with just slacking off until I see if anything comes out of the IGF.

I’m sure some other interesting things have happened in the past month, but I can’t recall anything that’s not Connexus related right now. Check back around Thanksgiving. Oh yeah, Wayne and I dressed as Mega Man and Proto Man for halloween, that was fun but also impractical and totally ghetto.

Fun Facts

• Prototype complete, began production on 3/9/08
• Initial esimate: 202 hours of work
• Actual work: 192 hours
• Total timespan: 34 weeks
• Work per week: about 6 hours
• Weeks that I didn’t make progress: 11
• Vacation time taken to complete: 10 days