I just announced ChipWits in Some Geek Gamers Forum

This is a big night for me. ChipWits is ready for a fresh new round of playtesters and so I’ve asked for feedback on the Indie Gamer Forums, which is the best forum I’ve found for independent game programmers. Also Gamedev.net, which I am just beginning to explore and which looks quite good.

I expect to get some really useful crit out of these geek gamers. I’ve left posts asking for playtesters in a couple other programmer forums as well.

I had a lot of fun today working on a new type of mission – the mini mission. I decided it would be good to have a bunch of really small 1 or 2 rooms missions under 250 cycles. Once that thought popped into my head I began to get lots of ideas for actual missions. I knocked off 2 today and it was a blast.

A lot of the work we have before we ship the game is developing new missions – intro (tutorial) missions and game missions. This is really fun work and I’m looking forward to the next weeks.

I am keeping on an even keel – not stressing out – and that’s helping me be fresher in my creative efforts.

Usually the last month before shipping a game is hell, no fun at all. Concentrating on bugs and being very very conscious of time slipping by. Shipping ChipWits soon is crucial financially, but I am in a pretty good groove of productivity right now. I still get stressed, believe me, but I am enjoying myself, too.

It helps that this time ChipWits isn’t headed into a box on a shelf in a computer store. I’ll be able to keep improving it after our initial release, so I don’t feel that every second is do-or-die.

I spent yesterday in the Twin Cities at a friend’s house working on the Mac version. Made lots of progress, but I hit a snag when it started crashing randomly – a bug in MDM Zinc which is out of my control. This means I probably won’t have an installable Mac version ready for our initial release, bummer. Since I developed ChipWits on the original Mac it means a lot to me to get a Mac version running ASAP, but I can’t take the time to do it now.

I feel really good about the game. Within 2 weeks ChipWits will be released and raking in the dough. Count on it.