Blox of Doom was created around the basic game play of Tetris. As our entry into the game development business we wanted to tackle a real game, but also give ourselves a chance to learn the ropes and sharpen our teeth on something that would not be too elaborate or mind bending.

This might be a Tetris game, but we've set out to create a game that is both entertaining and can definitely stand on its own as a complete game. That meant getting familiar with how to control screens, how to manage information related to the player and ultimately put everything together in a presentable package. This might seem like an easy task, but soon just the basic game mechanics exploded into multiple classes and namespaces. I won't bore you with all the details but be warned if you ever to decide to walk down a similar path, things snowball much sooner than anticipated.

What we have now is a product very close to the finish line. The different aspects of the game are slowly merging into a cohesive whole and (pun not intended) the pieces of the game are falling into place. One of the problems a developer face is to decide when enough is enough. Surely there will always be an opportunity to refactor yet another mehtod to simplify reading. Or create a new base class to expose common methods and parameters to derived classes. In all this I tried to strike a balance between providing good game mechanics and doing what is sufficient to satisfy the gaming community.

As with things agile I will probably return to this game in the future to tinker even more and fix the inevitable bugs that are sure to crop up as we ready for play testing and general review. It can be a daunting task to undertake and the prospect of failure is only as close as the release date. There are ample opportunities to polish a few aspects and simplify the structure even more but I think that the proof will be in releasing Blox of Doom to the gaming community.

This initial release had no intent to be the next big thing on the Xbox 360 community platform. Some may question why even bother to make a game that just replicate what has been done thousands of times. For the very simple reason that we needed some experience and start to understand exactly what it will take to walk down this path in the gaming industry. We learned a lot during this period and I hope we can use the positives to improve what we deliver next.

Where do groundupgamesonline go from here?

Firstly get Blox of Doom published and then tackle the next game. Check the general projects area to see what we're up to and what can be expected in the near future...

If you want to learn a bit more about the guys behind the projects, be sure to check out the profile area...