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Concept art for the second female protagonist in GRAVEFIRE: Dr. Storm, The Alchemist

by Matias Cabezas 

Her key strength is brewing potions and poisons.

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Concept art for another one of the main characters: Blade, The Rogue

by Matias Cabezas

Her key strength is her speed, the ability to “vanish” and stealthily attack unsuspecting opponents.

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Concept art for one of the main characters: Crow, The Necromancer

by Matias Cabezas 

On the other side of the lake, by the woods, lived a hermit. He used to live in the town nearby working as a medium not so long ago, helping people communicate with the other side to settle their griefs of loss of loved ones. 

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One Month of Sheeping Around: Thoughts and Numbers

It has been one month since Sheeping Around released on the App Store. 10 days after the game was released, I did a retrospective of the game’s launch and how it performed. It is time to look back on the good, the bad and the ugly. It was the first game that I actually released, so the learnings that it brought me has been immense.

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Concept art for one of the main characters:  Skull, The Knight

by Matias Cabezas 

An exiled ex-general of the army of a distant kingdom, The Knight is a warrior that spent his days before the grave fire in a small cottage by the lake, training alone. 

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Before the Grave Fire

The grave fire chewed everything and everyone up in flames. It was the end of all we know, and no one knows why or how it happened.

The survivors of the grave fire, though far and few between, were the ones really that were impacted. To survive an event that was supposed to destroy the entire planet was nothing short of a miracle. And it indeed was, because they remembered nothing of the event - only how good and peaceful life was before it, and what it is now - a meaningless existence. But they did have some things in common that perhaps made them survive. As the future events unfold, they will find out more.

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Gameplay Thoughts and Inspirations

「 G R A V E F I R E 」will be a deck-building roguelike, as has been pointed out in its subtitle, and will be its key selling point. There are a lot of players who love roguelikes and a lot who like card games as well, and quite frankly there aren’t enough games out there to cater to the demand. I can barely count the most popular roguelikes on my two hands. As a deck-building game, they key difference from roguelikes would be that everything would be a card, and you build a deck as you progress through the game.

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The Ashes of the Grave Fire

Several years ago, a huge fire broke out, and all of humanity was burnt alive, chewed away by the flames. The fire was unlike any other: it pierced through oceans, shrivelled up all rivers, vaporised icy glaciers into thin air, and made the mountains bleed lava. And it kept burning - for years, until one day only the ashes remained.

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Sheeping Around Retrospective: By The Numbers

tl;dr: Scroll all the way down for the numbers.

Sheeping Around has been live on the App Store for a little over ten days now. I think it is about time I look back at the development cycle, the good parts, the bad parts and also share some sales figures while I’m at it. I’m following the trend of transparency to help other indie game developers know and understand the market of premium games, for which I gained inspiration from Eric @ Slothwerks and Arnold @ Tiny Touch Tales. I’m also inspired by the way they work: solo devs working with talented people across the world on a contract basis, and I follow the same pattern.

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2018 comes to an end with some great news! Sheeping Around: Strategy Card Game is now available for pre-order on iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sheeping-around/id1369538992

Get it now!

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Sheeping Around is now in closed beta on Android and iOS. Sign up here to get access: https://goo.gl/forms/rj0iIot4hlWFOWJb2

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UI design for the Gallery section, showcasing all the characters in game, whether locked or unlocked. Kinda like a Pokédex.

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The pastures are green and the day is warm. Shepherd Hazel Woof is grazing her sheep peacefully. What could go wrong on this bright sunny day? Little does she know, her sheep could be ambushed at any moment. Poacher Alex Fox has been luring her sheep to traps he’s made. Fortunately for Hazel, Alex gets spotted and she can now take action. Will she be able to defend her sheep or will Alex steal them away? 

The fate of the sheep is up to you to decide. Take control of either of the two characters and prepare for a shepherding duel with your opponent. Art by @rashichan​. Stay tuned for Sheeping Around. Coming soon for iOS and Android.

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Inspired by Card Thief and More

In my previous post, I talked about how Sheeping Around was going well as a tactics like turn based strategy game. However in mid 2017 I would purchase a game on my phone that would not only have me addicted to it, but also change the face of Sheeping Around for the better. That game was Card Thief, designed by TinyTouchTales.

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Sheeping Around: Inception

This post introduces my game Sheeping Around to the world. It has come far along now in its development, but it had its humble beginnings at a game jam.

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Long time since I posted on my blog. I’ve just updated it with an ‘Artwork’ section that contains art I’ve done in the past couple years. Hosted on DeviantArt. Go check it out in by clicking the ‘Artwork’ tab on the left or by visiting this direct link.

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Looking Back At The Future

This post is about new years resolutions. And the irony in the title is just to attract attention. And I think pandas are cute. And I love Kung-fu Panda. And no, they’re not all unrelated statements. It is as Master Oogway said, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift, and that is why it is called present.” That implies that what is bound to happen will happen anyway, so then why bother making any resolutions this time around? Well I believe it is a part of the big, divine plan, and for us as individuals, it is a composition of our past and our future and makes us who we are at the present.

Philosophical gibberish aside, 2015 was an eventful year, a time when lots happened and lots did not. Glad for things that happen, no regrets for the things that didn’t. Here are a few things that make it to the list:

Travel is the primary goal of my life. I did not travel as much as I did last year, though I could have, and I even had the opportunities. I did travel for three conferences this year: Meta Refresh, Bangalore in February with Wingify team, Casual Connect Asia, Singapore and Casual Connect USA, San Francisco. I also transited in Tokyo, Japan for a few days on my way back home from USA.

While in USA, I had the opportunity to visit the Google Campus in Mountain View and Zynga’s studio in San Francisco. I attended a Javascript meet-up hosted at Autodesk gallery, SF where Ariya Hidayat (the maker of Phantom.js and esprima) was speaking. It was good to speak to him, as both of us were admiring the same model of a monster on display in the gallery.

At Singapore, it was my fourth visit, as an indie showcase volunteer at Casual Connect, and the place feels like home (I seem to know it better than Delhi now). I played guide for all the fun (or so to speak) activities our group took part in. Not to toot my own horn, but I could now go around the sidewalks and underpasses around Orchard Road without getting lost!

2015 was also the year of being more social and letting anxiety aside, which used to be a bigger problem earlier than it is now. It was also the year of trying to be carefree, humorous and yet be humble. Long loads to tread in that direction though. I got involved in interviewing candidates for Wingify, organizing small meet-ups and events, going to meet-ups and talking to strangers, which has been a major factor. 

I wrote less code than I did last year, but thy output shall not be judged by thy number of lines of code. At Wingify, I, along with others in the team revamped the architecture of the visual editor of VWO, whilst also building features alongside. I open-sourced a project (angular-q-directives) on behalf of Wingify and contributed to the engineering blog.

I rewrote my old game Spellbound in cocos2d-JS, just as an experiment in a matter of a few weeks. I also began working on a new game project, which took the shape of what is now called Constello. Watch the video here.

I also began work on my next mildly ambitious project: Sheeping Around, a cross platform browser-based strategy game. I talked about the game’s idea at a game-dev meet-up (Tokyo Unity Developers) at Akihabara, Tokyo and people found it to be quite appealing. I believe that is quite a feat. More info on it coming soon.

And to be a little poetic, the year waned away like the moon, yet did not lose its shine. December has always been one of my favorite months, and this year’s was even more so. Because this is the time when anticipation built up for the next year, to be more awesome than ever before, in terms of work, travel, happiness and relationships with people.

2016 will be a big year, a year of travel to newer places, newer adventures, facing fears, seeking thrill, and in general, taking the road not taken in more aspects of life than ever before. Plans are already in place for the most part, but they shall evolve as time goes by. 

The primary goal for this year and onwards is simple: happiness. And happiness comes best when it is shared. I am lucky enough to have found things that make me happy. In no particular order:

- Travel: A no brainer, this shall be the goal for every year until the end of time. Meeting new people and witnessing new cultures as onwards I go. This plan has already begun execution as an upcoming trip to Amsterdam and Paris in February. However, other than that, I plan to do more indigenous travel this year.

- Games: The goal is to create and release three games this year, all of which are currently in the pipeline. This shall also be a never-ending goal of my life, with the eventual goal of being nominated for an award at Independent Games Festival at GDC, San Francisco.

- Speak: Do more public speaking, this time with a hint of humor. Share and spread the laughter, organise meet-ups and go to more events.

- Exercise: A healthy mind resides in a healthy soul.

- Creativity: Write and draw more. Stories, poetry, blogs, whatever. Maybe learn an instrument (maybe).

All in all, things will fall in place as the year goes by, and it has only just started. For all I know, if you truly believe in something, it shall come true.