My game, Blackwood Prologue, was published to Newgrounds today.

This is my very first flash game, slowly developed over the course of a year, with a lot of trial and error along the way!
It's (meant to be) a moody atmospheric side-scrolling game, more focused on art and sound than actual game play. This style, some might recognize, is based off of games like Coma and Nevermore.

In-fact, Coma was my main inspiration for this game.. As I was playing it for the third of fourth time, I thought, "I could make a better game than this!". A pretty bold statement, because I quite like Coma, but the reasoning behind it was the fact that Coma lacked a real tangible storyline. The storyline of Coma is obscure and more of an allusion to a storyline. By that, I mean that rather than having a storyline, Coma forces you to imagine your own storyline for a game. A cool Idea, but I think a game that has a solid lengthy story, as well as the deep atmosphere and feeling of these types of games would be even more well received, so I began to plot out a story for my own game. Blackwood Prologue is not that game though.

As I had never made any games before, I wanted to make a short little game to test my skills, and see if I could actually pull off the game that I wanted to make... Blackwood Prologue was born! I didn't put much thought into the storyline, and in-fact, it has no storyline... it simply carries symbolism and hints that point towards important events that will happen in the true Blackwood game/series. In this regard, it came out looking a lot more similar to Coma than I had planned (with the whole dreamy atmosphere, the purposeful confusing state of mind that it puts you in as you try to work out the symbolism), and I hope that no one, least of all Coma's creator feel like my game is a rip-off of his great work.... I certainly promise the next Blackwood game I make will stray much farther away, and truly be it's own game.

That being said, I'm taking a break from Blackwood while I work on my new game, as I wanted to try out a different style, so a sequel to Prologue will be quite a ways away from now. Hopefully by then I will be able to shore up my weaknesses that were clearly evident through the development of Prologue, and be able to create a game of higher standards. That's not to say that Prologue is a horrible game, I am quite proud of it, especially as my very first game, but as my first game, I could only accomplish so much, and there are places where it is lacking. But those are my own opinions... make sure you go play the game and leave me yours, so I can see it through your perspective!