Vote for Shatter! (AKA Shameless Begging)

Of all the games I have worked on, of which there have been quite a lot, the one that has had by far the most attention and praise is Shatter. And deservedly so - we poured a huge amount of time, effort and love into it; it was not an easy game to make and you wouldn't believe the amount of paper design that we tossed away. 

Now it might get exhibited at the Smithsonian! But it needs your help, it needs your vote, and I implore you, I beg of you, please, please, please, please vote for it. Please!

Shatter's there on the left, under Modern Windows...

Inspiration Everywhere!

When Gameful was announced last year I jumped at the chance to sign up to fund it. Admittedly, I'm not one of the big spenders but it was just the kind of website that I wanted; over the years I've tried a few times to get into serious gaming (as a contributor, not as a player) and have never quite managed it. 

Of course, things don't always go according to plan, and I haven't been anywhere near as active in the Gameful community as I expected, but I do try to keep an eye on what is going on, so I knew there was a challenge on there to pick something that could be measured and build a game around it.

And I thought and thought about what problem I could tackle and I failed and failed to think of anything new... until I was visiting the hospital every day last week. There I discovered a challenge - remembering to sanitize my hands whenever I entered or exited the ward, which is an important step in preventing incidents of MRSA infections. 

I cobbled together a notional game in my head, to help motivate me to rise to this challenge, which you can read about here. I posted on Gameful more in the spirit of community than anything else - I know it's the barest bones of a game at this stage.

To my surprise I actually got a mention by another Gameful member, which I am pretty pleased about - pleased enough to do a print screen and put it below in fact.

I Know I Said...

It's a couple of weeks since I last posted and said "there's an open beta of my most recent work coming out soon", and that still hasn't happened. This is because a couple of things got in the way. Firstly, there was a delay in acquiring test equipment. 

However, this actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it was only in this delay time that it occurred to us that there was a way to make the whole open beta plan about twice as good, both for the players, in terms of fun, and for us, in terms of data.

So, fingers crossed, the game will be out on Android for zero pounds, pence or sheckles this weekend. Let the excitement begin!

When I typed "excitement" into Google I got this picture, so I thought I'd share it...