Blockhead Gameplay Video

Demonstrating gameplay for the Windows version.

2D Lighting Engine

Boxland, inc.

Very early version of the new action/puzzle/adventure game in production. These are just test graphics; everything's going to be redrawn and spruced up before anything playable gets released.

Cakehead

Superdeluxe Blockhead Commemorative 2011 Launch Cake, devised by Mrs. Raiza Bowman.  You know what they say about the green blocks...

Blockhead 2.0 (PC & XBOX)

Blockhead is out for Xbox 360 (for the low, low price of 80 points) and there's a new Windows demo on the right panel for the same version.  Tell your mom.  Tell your congressman.  Tell your turtle.  The biggest difference you'll notice is background music, but everything's been tweeked a little bit.  There's also going to be a full, non-demo Windows version as soon as we find distribution for it.

- Zach

Oblivion Evolved

I've been working on a partial conversion of Oblivion into one of our big, ridiculously-impressive game ideas.  The plan was just to make a demo to throw in my portfolio with one fully mapped area featuring a new weapon, a new enemy type, npcs, quests, scripting, sound and music.

Here's the downside:  When Bethesda made the Elder Scrolls games, they didn't make their own engine.  They licensed one called Gamebryo and just thinking about it makes my sphincter clench up.  Instead of just using textures and walls, Oblivion uses prefab models to represent everything (and the files are in a weird format called nif that no one's ever heard of).  This means mappers can't just use a mapping program like Worldcraft to make a building.  You've actually got to use modeling software to make these prefabricated chunks and then snap them together in the construction set editor.  3ds Max needs a bunch of plugins to actually make this work, and even then it's kind of like trying to kill a fly by swinging an anvil around.  This combined with all the weird, little issues with wall textures (i.e. more silly file formats, mandatory normal maps, etc) leads to about ten different pieces of software to get one idea from my brain to the game.

It's taken probably two weeks just to figure all this out and another two weeks to accomplish what I could have done in any first-person shooter in two days.  Porting this to Half-Life 2 or Doom 3 would be easy, but it would defeat the point.  I love the idea that the Oblivion guy gets sucked through this weird oblivion gate and spat out in this old train station on another planet, but adding acid-bullets and dna-changing mutants to a sword-and-shield game is what made the idea impressive.  Anybody can add guns to a game that's already full of guns.  At this rate I might not actually get that far, though.  We'll see.  Next time I mention modding and Elder Scrolls in the same sentence, scrub my face vigorously with sand-paper first to remind me why I shouldn't.

- Zach

XBox Blockhead Pending

Blockhead for Xbox 360 is in the approval stages with Microsoft and we're anticipating its release soon.  How soon?  You'll have to ask them...