Plan for Jeremy Alessi

... is coming along really well! At the moment I'm updating the original codebase and I'm reworking the demo. I've thought of rewriting the whole game but I've decided to take this thing in steps. I'd really like to improve the sales of what is already present before rewriting the codebase to handle new features such as multiplayer.

So ... the major problems were first -

I've found out about a lot of compatability issues throughout the time the game has been out. With a little more testing I'll know if we've squashed all of these issues or not. It's looking pretty good as I have gotten the game to run on some people's computers that didn't work just a week ago!

Another big issue was the speed of the game. It took very quick reflexes to play and it is afterall aimed at the casual player so I've toned down the speed of the game and early play test by casual gamers is great. Instead of becoming frustrated with the controls they had enough time to think and complete the levels presented in the demo which covers a decent amount of the gameplay in the full version.

Yet another issue ... the fonts in the game were all comic sans and in some places they were very hard to read. I've changed over to Arial and it's a much cleaner look that should hopefully please all the comic sans haters! There are still some titles on pre-rendered images that use a comic - y looking font but all the hard to read stuff is gone!

As I said above the demo now shows a decent variety of gameplay. This is something I should have done since the beginning. However, there were some things that I didn't want to show too early because I knew some parts were pretty difficult to get the hang of and the full game works you up slowly.

With the new gameplay speed adjustment this is no longer a huge issue and so I'm glad to present numerous challenges in the demo that I would have considered too difficult to show to a new comer. On top of this something else that we'd thought about doing was a cliffhanger level for the last playable level instead of just some normal level. So now there is a kick ball at the base of a ramp aimed over the lake which has a ball ring sitting in the middle of it. So the player kicks the ball up and it goes soaring into the air ... at which point time freezes and the player is asked

"Will it go in?..."
"Get the full game and find out!"


I think I need to add a "ooooohhh awwww" time sound effect to it and it'll be great. I already added a cool new camera angle for it so that the camera rotates around the player giving off a view of everything including the ball suspended in time close to the ring ... but not quite close enough to know if it's good.

Here's a shot of it so far ...


Overall I'm really pretty confident that this latest update will increase the sales of the game big time. A lot of the biggest issues are being addressed and there's even more polish and thought put into the game than before. Things such as a toggleable tutor so that players can hide and show the control tutor at will make the game that much more accessible for the player.

About the biggest issue that has yet to be addressed is a completely new front end. We're going to get to this after IGC for sure along with other features that we will continue to add until Aerial Antics is a must own game.

There are so many things I wanted to do with this title ... that honestly I never did because I got burnt out on the initial launch of the game. I updated it once a month for 6 months without seeing an increase in sales and I just got fed up. Now that I've had quite a bit of time away for this title I've got a new perspective on it and I remember what I loved about the title.

Anyway, got to get back to it. I'm very excited to release what I've done ... however it's going to be a little longer to make sure these new updates are right for the game. I'll post again sometime next week with an update.