Developer's Notes - 2

I want to tell you a little bit about the projects I’m working on this week. There are two that are really exciting to me.

First, I want you to imagine a city. It’s a sprawling metropolis. Skyscrapers peer down onto a concrete jungle where thousands of people conduct business, fall in love, and commit crimes. Welcome to Freedom City. It’s the setting of a new podcast series I am creating called “Manic Mysteries.” We follow the adventures of two private detectives, Robert Stone and his partner Styx. Robert is styled after the hard-boiled detective novels of Dashiell Hammett. Think Sam Spade. Styx is a geek and treats most of life like a role-playing game. I swear he’s only slightly autobiographical. Freedom City has elements of steam punk. There’s 1950s machinery, cabs, and railcars with a dash of magic. There are werewolves, elementals, and demon-summoning accountants. Each episode features a new mystery.

My goal is write, record and publish six episodes this year. So far I have written two and I one more in the works. I’ve done some preliminary voice acting tests. Yes, I’m wrangling some friends into doing this for me. I’m also looking at good delivery tools. If nothing else, I hope to put it on the Team Sidequest website. I plan on releasing them for free. I enjoy writing, I make killer murder mysteries, and this is a creative outlet for me.

The second project is our first game: “Texas Zombie Massacre.” There are a lot of great and bad zombie games out there but most of them focus on survival. We decided to mix things up. Instead of survival, the goal is to rack up points, which are earned by the shooting zombies. It’s a card game with a touch of tower defense mechanics. You kill zombies with guns, tanks, and lawn mowers while knocking back moonshine in place of green herbs.

The game has been in the works for a while. We’re happy with the general mechanics so the goal now is to refine them and create the artwork. I am assisting Gothic Panda on this task. As with most of our creative projects, the game is filled with our strange sense of humor. There’s the gluten free zombie, Rob the zombie, and a Texas speedbump (AKA: a zombie armadillo) just to name a few of the cards.

Okay. I don’t want to give away too much at this point but I will leave you with a teaser from the first episode of Manic Mysteries.

STYX: So why are we here again?

ROBERT: Well, it might have something to do with the corpse.

STYX: That’s a dead guy?

ROBERT: He has a dagger protruding from his back.

STYX: I thought it might be a throw rug. You know. A new fad. Kind of like those sleeping kittens.

ROBERT: Who would use a fake, dead body as a living room decoration?

STYX: We’re in rich-side. Nobody really understands these people. You’ve heard the expression, “Those with too much money and time are likely to waste both.”

ROBERT: Too true, Styx, but I think presence of blood and police officers suggest that we have foul play on our hands.