Exam periods are the best periods for a game developer such as I. Stochastic was developed over a week in my 2008 exam period. Nautilus was developed over a month in the 2009 exam period, and Star Relic received a major in development in that summer’s  period. I have found that the biggest motivation boost to study something not particularly interesting is to do something you really like in breaks – in my case, developing games of course. This is not always a good choice, since I find myself developing games 10 hours a day and studying only 2.

Anyway, this exam period started 2 weeks ago, and I already find myself spending more time at work and developing my own ideas. I know some of you are eager to know what I’m brewing next. No, it’s not Star Relic 2 as some asked, but rather a tribute to my favorite game of all times. If you’re curious, either: find out what is that game OR find a clue I left somewhere in the site ^_-.

When this exam period is over, I’ll try to update the blog more frequently. Those of you who are interested in my new projects – stay tuned.

Update: Star Relic was also featured on Rock Paper Shotgun this week! Take a look.

Star Relic has been published by now only on a few sites but is already quite successful. With 120k players so far, a NewGrounds’ Daily 5th prize, and an awesome 4.3/5.0 review in JayIsGame I cannot complain. And that is not all! I already have fans! I never had fans! Players wanting to create RPGs based on the lore of the game,  a few more non-exclusive licenses sold to sponsors, and… take a look at this:

“Just wanted to drop you a line to say thanks for such a great flash game, developers like yourselves keep the gaming community fresh and fun.”

(Holy.)

I decided the best approach to handle this is to start building a small community around Indigon. I always believed communities are the core of small/indie games. It’s time I shall nurture one. There is nothing like a small group of loyal fans who track every update about your future projects and try to document the small text of the Klosian Nebula star systems… Thus, the AMAZING INDIGON’S FLASH STUDIO FORUMS were formed. Currently they look like a shoe-box, but in the future they will be fully integrated into the blog.

Now that they are set up and I told you a little about the success of Star Relic, some plans for the upcoming two weeks: I am planning to continue the distribution of Star Relic to the many-many Flash portals across the web, hopefully getting more than one million views by the end of June. Work on my new mega-secret game currently called Unannounced Project (creative) has begun, but now consists only of writing a design document (I am not going to repeat the mistake of Star Relic again…).

The factions of Star Relic in their full glory

Soon in a table-top RPG? O_o

To conclude, I decided to share some early Star Relic graphics, from the time I had a completely different idea in mind. If you don’t know, Star Relic was originally an arcade/simulation game, where the player controlled a fully upgraded star ship in the Klosian Nebula, fighting Sodinar scum and warping to various adventures. While I adore this concept, I didn’t feel ready enough to develop something in that scale back then. And now? Who knows what the future holds for Indigon Flash Studio ?

Enjoy, and don’t forget to visit the forums!

Warp Gate Online!

Star Relic is now out to the public! You can play it on the sponsor’s website here. The game will be distributed to more websites in the upcoming weeks.

What a relief. After a year in development (and a few vacations in between), it’s finally out. Now… Now it is time to start working on another game.

Enjoy the game!

Play Star Relic

Finally.

I accepted a bid on Star Relic after a month it was on FlashGameLicense.com (FGL). The game will be sponsored by FlashRelax and will be online next week.

The fact is I am a bit disappointed, since I am about to receive a small amount of payment for it compared to the time it was under development. As I claimed in previous posts – development without a definite idea in mind is a disaster. Star Relic was modified and patched with ideas and mechanics throughout the development. While people who play it are enjoying the orbit mechanics, many others claim the game is too difficult to understand.

Doh. This is true. But when I look back, this is not actually a problem for me. I have started developing games not only because of the potential profit, but because I enjoy playing games, thinking of new ideas, implementing them, and sharing them to the world.

Oh well. There is still much to learn and improve.

On the other hand, Star Relic was not in vain. After showing the game shortly on a monthly meeting of Israeli game developers, I was recruited for a new studio called Imba Games. Obviously, I cannot speak of the nature of the games I am developing there at the moment.

So what basically happened…

AdAware by Lavasoft is a great software. Found 200 Trojans in one of the computers in the house. One of them was probably used as a key-logger. I logged from that PC to my e-mail a month ago, and this is probably where all the mess started. The hacker got into my mail, changed my password so I couldn’t get in, and reseted the passwords for my Pay-Pal, Amazon and Newgrounds (?!) account. When he saw my Pay-Pal account was empty, he probably gave up and decided to mess up indigonflash.com. A few pages were damaged (previous posts with images and the Star Relic page), and I lost all the images appearing in the blog posts.

Now that this is solved, it is time to return to normal: Work on Star Relic is getting pretty well, and I intend to publish a not-complete version on FGL in two weeks. A few people are running tests on the current version, testing the AI and checking for various bugs.

More updates soon.