Here is the final screenshots for Union of Armstrong. The game is now in peer review and I’m hoping to get it passed soon. I’ve been trying to peer review other games as much as I can. There is been a real lack of people doing reviews on the App Hub site lately. Which means it takes longer to get a game passed then it should. But I’m not complaining.

Microsoft has recently announced that they have raised the file size limit for 80 point Xbox Indie Games to 150 MB. As I’ve complained in previous blog posts, the limit was 50 MB.

So this is good news for the Xbox Indie service overall. This also means I can now offer the Mind’s Eye of Jupiter game episodes at 80 Microsoft Points each instead of the 240 Microsoft Points each. I hope you enjoy the new price point.

I am getting close to finishing Union of Armstrong. I just need to do some more testing and tweaking. I may wait until after the holidays to release the game into peer review. As the trailer below shows, Union of Armstrong is a tower defense game.

I originally envisioned the game as an adventure game. But as I thought about the story, I figured it would make a better strategy game. In the game you are the president of a Moon colony defending the historic Apollo 11 site from a corporate mining company. Enjoy the trailer.

Here is some concept art from Union of Armstrong. The image is of a Union of Armstrong solider. I’ve been making good progress on the game. I’ve even put an early version in playtest yesterday.

Now that Tourist Trap has dropped from current XBLIG releases, I wanted talk about the game and what’s next.

What Worked:

When I started Tourist Trap I wanted to create a standalone 80 point 3D adventure game. I felt this format would be a better fit for XBLIG than my previous games. Looking at my current numbers I think I was proven right. As of writing this post, I have 10548 trials downloads and 1797 purchases. Not bad at all. Thanks to all those who bought the game.

What Didn’t Work:

I restricted the trial experience too much. Tourist Trap is a fairly short game, so I wanted to make sure players had enough play time after the trial experience. In the trial game you can’t pick up and use exhibit items. Based on some of the feedback, it sounds like these restrictions may have turned off some people from buying the game.

What I’ve Learned:

One of the unforeseen benefits of Tourist Trap was all the different back stories I had to come up for each of the exhibit artifacts. There were some items that I thought would make interesting games in of themselves.

So my next game will be a spin-off of Tourist Trap based on the Union of Armstrong exhibits. Union of Armstrong is about the first Moon colony to secede from Earth. The game will have a similar format to Tourist Trap, but have more of strategy/tower defense element to it.

Let me know what you think.