Plan for Justin Mette

Back in January, 21-6 made a special trip up to Eugene after MacWorld SF to visit with Jeff, Jay, and Mark from GarageGames. During our dinner we were discussing the plans for the Mac/Linux release of Orbz and we said "You know, we really need to add a single-player component to the game."

Well, 4 months later, here we are! Not only did we complete the Mac/Linux versions and add single-player but we also added Online High Scores (like Labrat's mod for Marble Blast but built into the game), Botz, Demo Playback, a Tutorial, improved performance, and created a new and improved demo. Orbz 2.0 has so many new features we actually had to go through another Beta phase to get all the bugs worked out.

The goal with Orbz 2.0 was really to make the game we had always intended to make. The response to the game has been so positive (especially at GDC) that we felt justified in spending 3 months giving the game all the features of a retail-quality product. It's interesting to note that Orbz 1.0 took only 10 weeks to develop but Orbz 2.0 (with an established base) took another 12 weeks of development to reach maximum sales potential.

The process of releasing a game is very challenging and I'd like to take some time to thank Jay Moore for helping us out so much. In the last week outside of product testing and tweaking; we've had to do interviews, prepare loads of screenshots, create the new product page, new box shots, write a press release, send the Orbz newsletter, update the 21-6 web site, update existing Orbz coverage throughout the web, and ... well the list goes on like that.

Every time we release a product, our team becomes stronger. It's really an amazing experience when so many people (most of whom have never met) can work together so efficiently to crank out an awesome product. The fantastic team that made Orbz 2.0 a reality includes; Ryan Mette who wrote all the back-end server code and contributed to shell coding, Mike Nelson who was primarily responsible for teaching the Botz how to beat us (and be nice to us), Christopher Brethen who was responsible for level design and art assets on the new courses, David Chait who managed the Mac OSX version of Orbz, and John Quigley who took care of the Linux builds. I had the pleasure of designing and implementing the single-player component of Orbz which is a topic for a whole other plan or post mortem.

We even had some special guests contributing on this version including Clark Fagot and Mike Jahnke (from BraveTree Productions), Pascal "decoy" Bos, and Matthew "Chemeleon" Mittman. Of course, the Orbz 2.0 Beta Team was fantastic but there were so many people on the beta, I won't list them all here. Don't worry though, everyone should be listed in the credits for the game.

This is getting pretty long so I'll wrap it up by inviting you to try out the free demo of Orbz 2.0 which you can download from any of the sites listed on this page: www.21-6.com/orbz_downloads.asp.