I’ve been working on a game with some other people from class for a little while now. It’s a platform game for iphone called The Comeback. It’s about a middle-aged, formerly famous but now retired rocker named Nicolas Dagger who receives a phone call from his music label wanting him to return to the business by making a comeback Christmas album. So he has to find his way from his extravagant mansion to the recording studio in time to make the album. On the way he encounters various obstacles, such as other musicians jealous of him and mutated rats and spiders that block his way. As you do.
This is serious business for Nicolas Dagger.
The plan is for it to be finished within the next few weeks and then it’ll be up on Apple’s App Store. Not sure if it’ll be free or not yet. Our college wants to publish it for us but I’m not entirely certain at the moment if they plan to charge for it on the App Store. If they do, I hope it’s cheap so more people can play it.
I’ve always liked platform games so it figures that my first game would be one.
I was made team leader of our group for this game, a role that I’d recommend every student tries to undertake. And not because you’ll go fantastic in the role. Quite the opposite I’ve found. You’ll make mistakes and then you’ll learn from them and realize what not to do the next time you make a game. It’s been a process with quite an interesting learning curve. I’ll have more to say on that once the game is completely finished and released soon.
So that’s all for now. I’ll have more to mention within the next few weeks as we race to the finish line.
Perhaps the title of the game, The Comeback, also reflects my own journey with video games. I grew up playing them and always wanted to make them myself. There were various vague attempts over the years but there was also this negative voice saying, “you can’t do that” or “it’s too hard”. I shouldn’t have listened to that voice, but I did. However, here I am, about to release my first game, and there will be more to come. Maybe this is my own personal comeback.
-Mark
Mark Duval 
Great work, Mark. The screenshots look even better than I’d imagined. Can’t wait to play it <3
Thanks Katie! Me too! :D Then it’ll be done done doooonneeeeee! *dances*
Sexy :) Really digging the look of the main character, and looking forward to the game! It’s awesome that you’ve gained such self-confidence Mark, good on you!
If you need any beta testers; hit me up!
Thanks Joe!
Not sure yet what’s happening with that and how close to the deadline we’ll be before we finish. But will let you know :)
Nice, nice. The game sounds pretty good, will look forward to seeing it on the App Store.
Can I ask what program you used? I’ve tried to get into game design, nothing fancy just used that RPG Maker thingy.
Thanks! :)
Yep, used GameSalad (http://gamesalad.com/).
I’ve never used RPG Maker, but I think GameSalad might be similar with its simple drag and drop approach. The downside to GameSalad if you have a PC though is that it only works on Mac.
Nice! I’ve been hanging for a progress-post from you ;) It looks awesome man – can we expect a video soon?? Ohhhh and have you got somebody on soundtrack? It’s all tantalising stuff.
Thanks Josh! :) Yep. Soonish. Deadline is about three weeks from now so around then I’d say.
Alas no. I’m just going to have to find this weekend some free game music and effects from opengameart.org or somewhere like that.
Anyway, almost there! :D
p.s. speaking of music, I played Eskimo Shuffle! I love the use of music in it. Atmospheric stuff indeed! :)
Awesome seeing ‘The Comeback’ in action last night at IGDA Bits+Pieces, Mark. (Being really explicit for SEO purposes, get your blog some nice ranking on Google). Don’t hold out on your public, you tease – get us some videos!
P.S your pixel-art is top notch. That tree – very very nice.
Yah. Glad you liked it :)
The positive reception was encouraging.
Actually, I found a programmer there last night who saw it and he’s offered to recode it from the ground up in Unity, which would be great considering the limitations of GameSalad. I think I’ll take him up on that and we might be able to have it ready sooner than I was anticipating. It’d be fun to actually display it properly at a future IGDA event.
Yup yup. I’ll put some more pics up tomorrow I think and a video a liiitle later ;)
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