There Will Always Be Someone Better Than You

I’m really chuffed with how Dare the Monkey is shaping up. I’ve poured my heart and soul into the game’s visuals and generally speaking I think the effort has been worth it. However, I must confess to feeling the odd jealous pang when I look around at the amazing work being produced by other app […]

The Right Tools for the Job: Sculpting

I’ve learned to use a huge number of software packages over the years but by far my favourite has to be Pixologic’s ZBrush. In fact, it’s an integral part of my art pipeline. Not only is it a stunning piece of software but it’s also priced fairly competitively when compared to the likes of Autodesk’s […]

Indie development Vinyls

I recently popped round to my folks for a visit and found my dad clearing out the attic. After constant pressure from my mum he’d decided to finally throw out his entire vinyl collection which had been gathering dust for years. My gut told me this was a huge mistake and pleading with him to […]

Gameplay Footage

I thought it was about time I showed off some actual gameplay footage from Dare the Monkey. This is one of the levels from the Jungle world and features some of the jumps, obstacles, and platforms that our little monkey hero has to contend with.

Make It Snappy

Here’s one of the baddies for your viewing pleasure. With many of the levels being based around both land and water I thought a crocodile would work well. On land the player needs to jump over our cool croc to prevent getting eaten, while on water they can jump onto the croc’s back to keep […]

Work-Life Balance

Developing an indie game can be an incredibly time consuming and stressful experience. You need to find some way of balancing your workload with family and leisure time.

Plan to Succeed or Fail to Plan

Being a lone developer can be a daunting and difficult task. Get it wrong and you’ll spend a year or so of your life making an absolute turkey of a game or worse still the game might never actually get finished.

Run Animations

Just thought I would share a couple Maya playblasts of Dare’s various run animations. For the most part our little hero runs on two legs to show his more human qualities but on occasions he reverts back to his more primal roots and runs on all fours.

Fan Art

Yup, that’s right, I received my very first Dare the Monkey fan art last night. Ok, so it was from my five year-old son, and his daddy did help him, but wee Freddy’s drawing was just so adorable I had to post it here for the world to see. What do you guys think?

Starting with a Sketch #4

It’s important that there’s variety across each of your game’s levels. A change in scenery acts as a reward for many players. Also, knowing that there’s something new just around the corner can keep a player chipping away at their current level just that little bit longer. If you think about it, along with high […]