Captain Walljump is a time attack platformer inspired by games like Super Meat Boy and Icy Tower. The goal of the game is to climb to the top of the tower as fast as possible, bouncing from the walls and carefully positioned platforms.

It was created for the Pirate Kart V event over the weekend, but we may continue working on it in the future and add more features and levels to it.

Screenshots:

Download:
Click Here (.rar)
Click Here (.zip)

Hey there, welcome to the second edition of The Weekly Report. It has been a busy week, and I’m currently taking time out of developing an entry for the Pirate Kart V event to write this blog (which i’ll go into more detail about next week, when that game will be finished and available for download). The header image this week is a piece of awesome concept art created by Willem Sporen for Planetfall.

This week, my main project has been to jump back into the development of the original Planetfall so that I can get a feel for how all the scoring, collision and movement patterns were put together. In doing so, I’ve actually added a few new things to the game, meaning an updated version will probably be uploaded to the site in the next few days.

These features include a new flak projectile that is different to the existing projectiles as it does not fly directly at your ship like the missile or straight down from the front of the ship like the typical laser most enemies in the game use. I’ve also tweaked the settings of a few other projectiles including the player laser to make it a bit more spaced out, although it still maintains a very fast firing rate.

The other update (which is hopefully more interesting) is the inclusion of a boss fight. The boss has a lot more health than the standard ships, has several different attack patterns and will move about the screen so that the player can’t simply exploit the dead zones in his patterns. This boss fight hasn’t been tested by anyone other than me, so hopefully I haven’t made it too difficult. It should be fun for players to attempt anyway, It’s nowhere near the levels of crazy you might find in Perfect Cherry Blossom.

I’ve also spent some time working on a potential new art direction for the game, which we will probably hold back with until we are ready to talk more about the mobile version of the project. This is mainly due to the screen resolution of the various iOS and Android devices, the current resolution of the game is the same as a 3G iPhone so would probably look blurry on newer devices.

Currently Playing: Space Pirates and Zombies, Mass Effect 2 (still) and Jetpack Joyride.
Current Goal: Complete Pirate Kart V entry.

A quick glance over the previous news posts on our site will reveal that we don’t really update you on what we are up to very often. In this new (hopefully) weekly feature, I’m going to try and provide a closer look at the development of our multimedia projects.

The most current version of our top-down shooter, Planetfall, was released way back in September of 2010. Since then, production on the game in Game Maker has pretty much halted apart from a slow trickle of art assets and experimentation for how we could improve gameplay. Originally, we had planned to create an extremely in-depth story mode that would flesh out the factions, history and atmosphere of the fictional universe it is set in, but while testing we realised that it was much more important to make sure the game’s core mechanics were better before attempting to increase the scope.

It’s very important to gather player feedback, as you can use it to inform your decisions about future projects and updates. Although we don’t include any stat-tracking tools in our games, looking at the online score board reveals that we really haven’t had a lot of people playing the game persistently over the past year or so, despite it having significant presence on our homepage and what we thought (at the time) would be an addictive system for players to try and one-up each other.

How can we improve this situation? Recently, I’ve been researching into the possibility of moving development of the title over to Flash and mobile devices. This is because the potential install base and promotional paths for the game will hopefully be much larger, and because of the inherent distrust visitors to the site may have of downloading an executable file from a practically unknown source. It will also allow us to experiment with alternate control systems such as the accelerometer and touch controls.

The most promising piece of software we have found so far is StencylWorks. It shares a lot of the drag and drop tools as Game Maker, while providing us with a lot of export options and support for services such as Game Center, Kongregate, Newgrounds and more. So far, development on a potential Planetfall remake has been limited to importing art assets and experimenting with ship movement, but so far it’s definitely working out well and we may even have a playable test build for next week’s update.

Over in Minecraft, the GateQuest fantasy server is developing nicely (although at a slower rate over the past couple of weeks). We have recently introduced a new towns system that allows players to group together, buy plots of land and form their own small factions. Its pretty fun and it’ll be interesting to see how it copes and what kind of towns might appear when we begin advertising the server more openly. The Last Outpost server is also running smoothly – earlier today it was upgraded to a 24 slot capacity (and higher RAM) and we will be running a special launch event sometime soon. Progress on both servers should hopefully pick up steam even more when the upcoming Minecraft 1.2 patch goes live, as we’ll have to work hard to make sure all the existing plugins are updated correctly.

Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2, Game Dev Story and Minecraft.
Current Goal: Learning the basics of Stencylworks and get a working prototype.

We’re happy to announce that the awesome folks over at The Last Outpost Star Trek gaming community have been working closely with us to set up a brand new minecraft server! The server is based around a science fiction theme (in contrast to GateQuest’s fantasy setting) and has a nice selection of worlds including a Spacebuild.

It’s currently only open to members of the TLO community, so if you’re interested in checking it out you should apply on their forums.

Happy New Year to all of our community members and visitors! We hope that you’ll have a great 2012 and continue to support us during the coming months. Just as a bonus small teaser, here’s a preview screenshot of one of the brand new worlds we will be adding to our Minecraft server sometime this month – The Shifting Sands!

Our Minecraft server is now open to the public! For more information about the server, including screenshots and how to apply, head on over to either our forum or the Minecraft section of the site.

Hey there everyone, we now have a number of awesome t-shirt designs available from our online store! To check them out, simply click the ‘Store’ link at the top of the page and you will be redirected to it.

Version 1.1 of our free downloadable SHMUP Planetfall is now available! You can download it from the revamped micro-site here:
planetfall.reddawnstudio.com

Need more convincing? Find a full list of new features and new screenshots after the jump!

New Features:
+ Online highscores
+ New user interface
+ New player ships
+ New enemy ships
+ New enemy spawning system
+ New ship destruction animations
+ New game mode – Iron Mode

Screenshots:

The official Planetfall minisite is now live! You can access it at now from planetfall.reddawnstudio.com.

The site features detailed information about the game including screenshots, a control list and download links for both the PC version of the game and the official soundtrack.

We are proud to announce the official first release of our new game, Planetfall!

Planetfall is a free, downloadable side-scrolling shooter created by Red Dawn Studio, with music from James Morrell. Download information for the Windows version of the game can be found on the official minisite, a Mac version is currently being developed and will be available fairly soon.

Screenshots:

Official Minisite:
Click Here