Why I Chose Portrait Orientation

Before I officially started work on Dungeons of Doom, or even knew what kind of mobile game I was actually going to make, I wanted to think very carefully about what orientation it should use: landscape or portrait?

Good UI is Hard

When making a game there are many challenges along the way. But one of the biggest and often overlooked is the effort required to create a compelling user interface. Not only does it need to look good, the experience of actually using it needs to be intuitive too. That might sound easy, but the reality […]

Sometimes Less is More

I decided very early in production that Dungeons of Doom would have only one game mode. Why only one mode you may ask? Wouldn’t multiple game modes keep people playing longer, increase retention, and drive revenue? Well that was exactly the plan when building our previous game – Dare the Monkey – but in our […]

Why I switched to Substance Painter

During the production of my previous game – Dare the Monkey – I leaned heavily on ZBrush for rendering my game assets. The reason for this was the simplicity and quality of ZBrush’s MatCap materials. The MatCaps really helped my characters and objects to pop out of the screen.

Say Hello to our Hero

I thought it was about time I introduced you guys to the hero of Dungeons of Doom. He doesn’t actually have a name yet but I do know that he’s extremely brave, has a spring in his step, and is also adept at climbing ladders.

Adding Ladders

When I think back to some of my favourite childhood platform games one thing stands out in my mind more than others – Ladders! Back then ladders were an integral part of the platforming experience, one which is sadly neglected somewhat these days.

Introducing Dungeons of Doom

I haven’t posted for a while and that’s because we’ve been very busy working on our latest game: Dungeons of Doom. I won’t say too much about it at the moment. Instead I’ll just let this little preview video do the talking.

Apple Watch and Unrealistic User Expectations

Let’s be honest, there aren’t that many great looking games for Apple Watch. When I decided to ship Dare the Monkey with a simplified Apple Watch version I thought I was onto something. Frantic platform action with great graphics. What’s not to like? Well one thing I didn’t consider was the unrealistic expectations an Apple […]

Is Apple TV Worth the Effort?

As you may know, we launched the freemium version of Dare the Monkey on Apple TV in tandem with the iOS version. However, what you may not know is that we debated over whether to create an Apple TV version at all. Was it going to be more effort than it was worth? Well read […]

Don’t Settle for Second Best

Dare the Monkey’s been available for approximately one year now. If you take into consideration the three years it took to make then that’s a grand total of four years I’ve spent on this project. Now that’s a very long time. It has been worth it though. I just thought I’d show off a couple […]