Following our initial mini games were many years of Isles of Keo progress. I moved to Florida to marry my now-wife as Jacob was still in High School in Arizona. We made little progress over those years. Eventually, as Jacob moved on to college, Jess and I moved back to Arizona. Not long later, Yo Yo Games, the company that bought the game dev software we were using, started doing game contests. Needing a break from the rehash cycles of Keo, we joined the contest and threw together the first section of a game called “Mage of Seasons: Winter”.
Jacob and I spent long hours at the house Jess and I were renting between November and December of 2007, working on the game together in a collaborative environment. It was an extremely healthy and inspiring way to work on this game project. We didn’t have very much time and (as is our habit) became a little ambitious with how much we wanted to put into the game. The best we could do by the contest due date was a buggy first stage of a game which we hoped to have at about 3 or 4 stages in. Regardless, we received an honorable mention from the judges and some good reviews. It was nice to have the whole game community playing our game.
After the contest was over and some time had passed, Jacob went back into the game code and cleaned up a lot of the bugs, making the game a fun hour or so to go back to once in a while. Looking back, I wish we had made the game less of an experience grind, and had more of a world to explore and characters to interact with, but I’m still happy with this, being something resembling a good start to a real game.
Play directly from the YoYo Games page
