Hey folks, so I forgot to update last month, my bad. Let's see if I can remember some of the stuff that happened:

• Made gingerbread house for the first time (I can remember)
• Celebrated Christmas at the Knutsons
• Celebrated Christmas again at my parents
• Happy birthday Amanda!
• Went to my cousin Amanda's wedding in Virginia and had a blast on New Year's Eve
• Went skiing with the Knutsons in Breckenridge for a week

It was all great fun and, as usual, I didn't take any pictures. However, I was able to find at least one picture of holiday festivites to share thanks to the facebook:

I learned that perhaps the most important part of a gingerbread house is the path leading up to it

Exciting news at work: we've released our iPhone game Hero Academy! I think it turned out great. Although I don't have an iPhone, I do have an iPod touch at work that I can use for testing/playing so if you want to play me, send an invite to "MikeD".

Yo dawg, I herd you like tactics so I put tactics in your phone so you can stay awake while you sit in a meeting

Also, I've gotten the chance to play a lot of video games in and around the holiday season. Here are the ones I'm working on (I recommend them all!):

• Dark Souls
• The World Ends with You
• Super Mario 3D Land
• Mega Man Zero Collection
• Advance Wars: Dual Strike
• Cave Story+ (Steam)
• Jamestown (Steam)
• Bit Trip Runner (Steam)

I don't know if it's sad or awesome that the wikipedia page on any given game is so much more useful than the game's official page. Anyway, see you next month.

On Friday, November 4th I proposed to Amanda Knutson and she said yes. This is how it went down.

On this particular weekend, Amanda was scheduled to fly into Dallas to visit me for the weekend (we typically visit each other every two weeks, alternating who travels). When she got home from work she found an envelope left on her doorstep with the ominous instructions "Open Immediately". In the envelope was short illustrated book of how we met and got to know each other, what made us grow close, and the challenges that we'd overcome as a couple. Towards the end of the book, she reached a page instructing her to stop and open the front door. When she did (with eyes already full of tears) I was there on one knee and proposed. We then flew back to Dallas together (I secretly booked a ticket on her flight when she made her reservation for it a month before).

The book I gave her was entitled "Mike and Amanda's Go Time (Oh Yeah!)". The title is a reference to an electrical engineering hobby project that Amanda and I worked on once upon a time that we code named "Thursday Night Go Time Oh Yeah!" in which we made an LED keypad puzzle with a custom programmed ATmega328 micro controller.

Feel free to nominate me for a Caldecott Medal

The ring itself was custom made (thanks, Chris Van Dyke) based off of a design I came up with. On either side of the diamond is a small yellow gold castle set against a white gold background with a circle above it. The castle (in addition to being a fine symbol of strength, safety, and stability itself) has the proportions of the castle you find at the end of a stage in Super Mario Brothers, which I felt sybolised both our shared love of video games as well and victoriously reaching a milestone. The circle above the castle is a little firework. It also proves what a dork I am, which perhaps has some value too.

I think it turned out pretty classy looking

We are both super excited to be engaged! However, we still have a lot of stuff to figure out. We still don't know who will end up moving, but us being together in either NC or TX is way better than us being apart so I'm sure I'll be happy with what we end up with. We haven't settled on a date yet.

In other news, I've almost completed Orcs Must Die! on Nightmare difficulty, which is no small feat! Also, we've announced a new game! Meet Hero Academy! I'm not working on this one (the game I'm working on hasn't been announced yet) but I've been doing a lot of playtesting and I'm excited to see it so close to complete. I feel like there are probably other important things I should be mentioning, but I can't remember them. Oh well, I think that's enough for now anyway. Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey all, a lot has happened over the past 2 months.

China 2011

Amanda and I finally got around to going to China together in September! It was a really awesome vacation consisting of things like:

• Visiting my brother Dave and his family including new niece Kaylin! (super cute)
• Taking a train out to an old water town for a day (temples, gardens, and hunt for non-sketchy food)
• Visiting Old Town Shanghai (fancy tea house, dumplings, and cool gardens)
• Tallest observation deck in the world
• Pixar museum
• Tasty breakfast buns and Happy Lemon bubble tea

Young Trevor is quite a handful these days

I even added a few of the pictures to the China Gallery.

Orcs Must Die!

So the game I spent much of this year working on FINALLY came out. I'm really proud of Orcs Must Die!. It's a really fun game, and I'm not even the only one that thinks so, it's getting great reviews as well. EVERYONE SHOULD BUY 10 COPIES!

Lucky for me, Amanda was visiting Texas the weekend of the release party, which resulted in this awesome pictue:

I worry sometimes that Amanda is a little hesitant to kill orcs

One thing that was not so awesome about that weekend was that I got all 4 wisdom teeth removed right before it. Once again, I was lucky to have Amanda around to help me out with that.

As for what I'm working on, I've been having tons of fun doing preproduction for future projects, although what they are must remain a mystery for now

New car

After Amanda left the weekend of the OMD release party, I managed to get in a pretty serious car accident that totalled my old 98 Honda Accord. It seems that neither myself nor the guy that hit me have any permanent damage which is really fortunate considering the state of our cars.

So that meant renting a car, doing a bunch of research, then setting out the next weekend to find a new one. I considered many different types of cars, went on a few test drives and haggled with a bunch of salesmen until finally settling on a 2012 Honda Accord LX.

So new, it doesn't even exist until next year

Well, I think that's about enough for one update. See you all later.