We have rough draft sprites done for all of the main characters and Bill is currently working on polishing them up and adding the animation (main character is already done & he’s working on the rest today). I’d post them, but that would give way too much information about the game that we don’t want to reveal just yet (soon!)

We have about 7 songs so far, some of which are still works-in-progress. I’d say the battle theme and the rural town theme are both done or really close to done (and they both rock, especially the new regular battle theme).

I just finished coding the new map animation system. 4 frames of animation for characters moving around, up from the 2 frame system we used in Breath of Death VII. Oh and characters animate faster if they’re running. And map and characters can animate at different speeds as well. Oh and people can stand still.

We have all of the major gameplay & plot elements finalized (a few had to be changed several times before we found something that we really loved). I also have basic character gameplay outlines done for all of the main characters. I’m going to work on some of the specific LV-Up/Equipment/Ability information soon.

Oh and today, we decided that we’re going to try out a sort of Phantasy Star IV style interface for combat with your party members showing up on screen.

We’re not going to officially announce our game for a few weeks now (need to ready some media to go with the announcement first), but here are some clues that could help you figure out just what our next game is all about.

1 – The main character was originally going to share a weapon with a certain famous vampire slayer, but in the end, we switched back to swords since it’s like a law to have a sword-wielding main character in RPGs.

2 – At one point, we were going to have 3 main stats to track in combat – HP, MP, and a third stat, but we got rid of the third stat since we felt it made things overly complicated and we could do what we wanted just being clever with regular abilities and passive effects. I suppose we could get rid of another stat as well, but it would have to be MP since HP is essential.

3 – Our next game is not Breath of Death VIII, but there’s a really vague clue there if you do a bit of word association.

4 – You can make a comedy out of just about anything if you try hard enough and aren’t a stickler for accuracy.

5 – If you made an acronym out of the title, it would be CSTW.

6 – Oh and since I’m a nice guy, I’ll give you one of the words in the title. The.

Good luck guessing! (My lips are sealed!)

First month’s worth of sales data is in and it’s good.

Breath of Death VII’s Sales Data
April 22 – March 21 (30 days)
11008 Purchases
18517 Trials
59.45% Conversion

That’s an insane conversion rate for the first month (probably the highest of any XBox Live Indie Game ever) and the total purchases aren’t too shabby either. Thank you everyone for all of your support – we’ll be sure to make the next game even better!

MoonShine is a stock trading game set in the US Prohibition era. Buy various kinds of alchohol at low prices, sell them for high prices, and hope that the cops don’t confiscate your supplies. The periphal features of the game are well done – the newspaper reports are interesting, the music is nice, there are achievement-like goals, and many different modes (including a mode you can customize features as you like) – but the interface is needlessly complicated and the gameplay falls in this uncomfortable nether realm between being too complicated for the action crowd and not complicated enough for the sim/strategy fans.

Mostly playing MoonShine made me think of how you might make a better game. Instead of just buying and selling supplies, how about letting the player run an actual speakeasy? You could have some simple arcade-ish type elements for the actual serving (like Diner Dash) and you could also add some Lemonade Stand elements like paying for advertising (which would increase your popularity but also increase the chance of raids) and pricing your drinks (price too high & you risk losing clientelle). You could also have rival speakeasy that you would have to take into account. The police element could also be made more complex with things like bribing corrupt cops, switching locations to evade raids, or tipping the law off onto your competitors.

As it is now, I can’t recommend MoonShine. It’s unique on the service and certain elements are well done, but the poor interface, heavy reliance on luck, and lack of variety pulls it down. It’s not awful by any stretch, but it looks like we’ll have to wait a bit longer before a truly great business game comes out on XBox Live Indie Games.

News just in – Breath of Death VII just made the top 10 most requested FAQ list on GameFAQs.com. I believe this is the first time an XBLIG has made the top 10 list. Since the top 10 list is listed on GameFAQs.com’s front page, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of an effect on trials & sales this has.