with only 4 (technically three full days) left before submissions are due for Dream Build Play, things are heating up. With some of the entrants so far that have been kind enough to post their games on the XNA creator's site, its looks like the competition will be pretty stiff. I'm glad though to see so many people behind the indie development of console titles.

Our team will be working over the weekend to put on that layer of polish. I have to say I feel much better about where we are today than where we were last week. Each step along the way, I've said "well, if we have to ship with this I'd be ok with that", and then David (our programmer) says, "naw, we can make it better. I can get [feature x] in!." We have gotten to point where we can tune most of our major mechanics and we are no longer guessing as to whether or not they are fun. It's now all about balancing for a great gameplay experience. I think we can directly attribute our current position to our constant focus on the game and mechanics over graphics early on. It ensured we didn't get here and have to scramble to put in 'the fun' and then just hope the first pass would cut it. We have some solid tunable mechanics and thats about the only reason I'm not pulling my hair out.

It's going to be a sleepless weekend (no one likes to crunch), but come Monday it will be all down hill. The 4th of July here in the states will also be a great break from our day jobs.

Again, best of luck to all entrants!

Throughout the course of development on our XNA prototype / DBP entry, we have really learned a lot - and not just about making great games, but working as a team to make great games. Outside feedback and testing has been huge in calling out some pretty obvious issues. That coupled with regular play tests and constant new builds have made iteration and ultimately making a better game, much much easier. I'd really like to do a full postmortem when this prototype is all said and done, but until then, a few things that have gone well:

Diversified core team:
We have been fortunate enough to have equal representation from all major disciplines. Our core team is comprised of one programmer, one 3d/2d artist, and one technical artist / animator. All three of us contributed to the overall game design as well as wearing many different hats along the way. Some would say our core team is really lean, but considering what we have been able to achieve thus far, I'd say its impressive at any rate. A small core team is also helping in narrowing down our scope and keeping us on track with our original designs. With the core team handling the bread and butter we then turned to outsourcing for some of the additional content needed - though we didn't use a major outsource company, just friends and colleagues. Oursourcing took care of concept work, characters and character animation, a decent chunk of what makes up our game.

Focus testing and bug fixing early and often:
As soon as we had something playable, and I use the term playable loosely, we play tested it. Whenever we put in a new feature we play tested. This was to ensure at all times we had a working build that would run on our target platform (in our case Xbox 360), and that any obvious issues could be called out. This also meant we could address bugs as they popped up and squash them early. Waiting till the last minute to bug fixing is never a good idea. As the game began to take shape we focus tested the build w/ friends, roomates - anyone we could find. Even when all our mechanics weren't  in we tested the controls, visuals, and overall how much sense everything made. This went a long way early on in deciding what to focus on next, what was weak and what was strong. By making control changes quickly and testing them we immediately saw results in how the game was played and how much fun others had. Play testing has become a part of our daily work cycle. Implement feature x, commit changes, push the build to the Xbox 360, and play it. Talk about it and provide feedback.

Narrow scope - strict focus:
When designing or building anything it's incredibly easy to get off track and bite off more than you can chew. Many teams take on more than they can handle. Instead, we looked at our core concept. We then matched that up w/ our core team abilities. In way, our small team forced us to be more realistic about what we could achieve and since we were well balanced and not heavy on the programming side, we had to figure out which mechanics we really wanted - which ones would be fun to play and make our prototype stand out. We didn't have time to just try them all and decide. We used our play testing to focus this. Once we had our mechanics in we then iterated on them till they were fun before moving on. In the end, even with such a narrow scope on what we wanted, we still ended up cutting a few features for this prototype.

As this contest nears an end, one very interesting fact shines through. With a programmer who had never touched XNA before May of 07', let alone C#, we were able to knock out a prototype we are all proud of. Again I'm really impressed with the ease and speed of XNA.

More when the contest is all said and done.

The XNA Dream Build Play contest is drawing to a close. With only 11 days left I think our project is on track, with the usual uncontrollable variables. I'm really impressed with how much the team has accomplished, and in such a short period of time. XNA has proved to be a great platform for quickly prototyping a game for the Xbox 360.

All that aside, we have a few small hurdles left before we are done. After 11 days, It's out of our hands and the waiting game begins.

Best of luck to everyone, it looks like it will be a close one...