Balmung Cycle Part I: The Messenger and the Heretic

I have to admit even I was surprised that Balmung snagged six of the major awards this year. While even I can't quite say with honesty that it deserved each and every one more than some of its competitors, I'm certainly happy that many people have been able to enjoy the game. It confirms much of my game design manifesto and as a result I'm looking to tackle new grounds.

As of late I've been working around with Enterbrain's latest program, Action Game Maker and am feeling something so right about the software that has been lacking since the days of RM2000. Action Game Maker sets itself apart from all other Enterbrain programs for a number of reasons, but perhaps the most exciting is the ability to program plug-ins. Even users can write their own extensions if they understand, and currently a plug-in designed to add C# scripting capabilities is even being written. Impressive, don't you think?

And so with all this I've been rather preoccupied as of late and Balmung has unfairly taken a back seat in my activities. Trying to divide my time between several final projects for school and treading new ground in AGM, I've somewhat neglected things as of late. Hopefully that won't last too long.

Finally, here is a peek at some original graphics I have been hard at work on for a platformer in development:


Yeah, I can do that kind of stuff... Somewhat!

It is a work in progress unfortunately and needs much refining still! As anybody can see the aim here is to emulate the 8bit era. I've been adhering to using the NES color palette and restricting the amount of colors that can be contained in any single tile set and I have to admit it's been a challenging yet fun experience.

Take it easy!!!