Thursday, February 3, 2011

Praetor Progress


When we last left our hero--on Christmas day 2010--he reported in with 4 Praetor battles completed and good hopes for the future. Today, about 5.5 weeks later, the total stands at 23 completed battles and the game is looking great.

My wife is pushing me to declare victory at 50 levels, composing the game for a decent storyline completion halfway to my original goal and releasing it to the general public at that point with an upgrade (or "expansion pack" as she calls it) to follow down the road. And I have to admit I'm starting to like the idea; Praetor is turning out to be a lot of fun, and I'd like to see if it can actually build a following or not before I plow N more months of effort into it. At expert difficulty each battle still takes me 5 to 10 minutes, so 50 levels is between 4 and 8 hours of game play--perfectly fine for a 99-cent cell phone game.

I've also started adding more material to the web site--a couple of new screenshots and the beginnings of a strategy guide to help you get through the levels. Some of them are pretty tough, and reading through the guide you can see how your tactics have to shift as the opponents get stronger and you get new pieces to work with.