One week on from the 2011 Global Game Jam, it's time for a quick look back on how this year's jam went for RocketHands. It's was our third Global Game Jam so we knew just what to expect, and that seemed to have a calming influence on us; a contrast to some of the desperate, crazed all night programming sessions that defined the 2009 and 2010 jams. This year we were so chilled that we actually worked unbelievably sensible hours - finishing around 10 PM each evening and starting again at 9 AM the next morning.

Team RocketHands has spend the last 8 weeks beavering away on new ideas in a concerted effort to start 2011 with a bang, kicking of two simultaneous dev projects which will enable us to launch two commercial titles as early as Q3. It's been super-fun, and will culminate next Sunday when we comb through 35-or-so game ideas to choose the two that we'll develop to completion.

OGMO Editor is a totally awesome 2D level editor for indie game devs. It's written in Adobe Air, and hence runs across Windows, OSX and Linux. It works pretty well with FlashPunk, an equally awesome ActionScript3 framework for 2D Flash games (which RocketHands has been known to use).

Here's my second prototype, written as part of the previously-blogged-about RocketHands end-of-year idea creation phase, or REOYICP.

Over at RocketHands HQ we've entered a game prototyping phase. We plan to spend the rest of 2010 discovering and proving two totally awesome game concepts that we'll develop and launch in the first half of 2011. We're doing this by meeting up on Sundays for a "weekly scrum", during which we pitch and demo the game ideas that we worked on the previous week, and brainstorm what we'll work on the following week. It's fun!

One idea that I've had for a very long time (meaning, at least FIFTEEN YEARS) is to make a game engine based entirely around a cellular automaton.

Maxxor & Kranzky's epic Double Rainbow song and video recently broke through the landmark of 100,000 views on YouTube. To celebrate this momentous occasion, I'm now going to present a collection of our favourite comments from viewers on YouTube. Because what's not to love about YouTube commenters?!

WARNING: foul language ahead. It's how those commenters roll!

I thought Rocketfans might be interested that I finally posted the (windows) executable and (python) source for a one button game I made called G.Rid on my personal blog. It was a rush job for a gamejam style game competition early this year where the only rule was that the game only use one button.

I only just now got around to posting the game and source for curious people to try out. If you're interested you can get it from my blog.

A few months ago, we here at RocketHands put together an awesome original song and music video in an obvious attempt to profit from the "Double Rainbow" meme. Well, that didn't work. But today our video did bust through the psychological barrier of 81281 views. Go, you good thing!

It has been a while since my last Halogen related post: many apologies! It isn't because the game has been forgotten or development has stopped. Quite the contrary - this post is late because Halogen has demanded so much time! And now, it is time for a special announcement!!