Just received my third Anniversary badge!

Approw

Some of you might know me, most of you probably don't.

Why am I developing games?
The first app I ever made, was build in Xcode. At the time I was still in filmschool based in Holland. They had a terrible login system to access the portal with all your student information. When I started an internship in Sydney Australia, I had to fill in information every single day. It worked fine on a computer, but on an iPhone it couldn't even remember your password, and they gave you this incredibly annoying generated password, and you weren't allowed to change it. So I started to build a simple app which let you save your login details, take photos to proof what you were doing during a project, and save your location from were you took that picture with a description. I found this sooo interesting, but programming games was to complicated with the little knowledge I had. I already played with gamesalad in 2010, I found this software incredibly neat! But the lack of so many functions made me drop out of development for some time.

I haven't released that many games, this is because I'm a perfectionist. I'm never happy with the outcome, but it brought me where I am today. I made over 35 games/concepts, but almost all of them aren't finished. All my friends tell me to just release something, but I just cant do it when I don't think its good enough to go public. I feel like the games are a bit meaningless, and that goes a bit agains't my vision of how games should be. The prototyping of mechanics and designing a game is what learned me the most, even if I wasn't able to finish a game, I learned a lot from it. Of corse I released a flappy bird game and some other tiny games to earn some cash, and funny enough it reached the top 10 paid apps on amazon. However, during the developments, I kind of mastered the craft of pixel art (I'm a huge fan of monochrome art), 3D modeling and animation. Hopefully I can release them in the near future, I'm on it for almost 12 hours a day, 7 days a week;) Below are some screeshots which I haven't shown to anyone before.

I'm glad i'm still in this amazing community, and I would like to thank the Gamesalad team for all there hard work. I'm sure it's not easy to provide updates with such a small team.

The Legend of Dutchman's Gold:

Goldfield Ghost Town: Lots of buildings and the landscape are accurate to the real town.

Dig in the legendary lost mines.

Two Guns:
I am really excited about this game. I'm working really hard on this one the most at the moment. However I cant show you that much because I'm scared to get some ripoff games. More on this soon;)

MentalDonkeyGames

Wow. Those screenshots look amazing. Hope to see the games released someday.

Approw

@NipaDidIt Thanks:)! I'm doing the best I can to get it out

Braydon_SFX

Congrats on your third anniversary and on this amazing game! It looks stunning!

Approw

@Braydon_SFX Cheers, really appreciate the kind words.

Here is a little comparison with the real Goldfield Town and the game.

I will continue this project once Two Guns is finished:)

jamie_c

Congrats on the three years. Those screen shots really look great, hope you finish them sometime, i'd love to see the gameplay!

ogreofwart

I like monochrome stuff too, and those screenshots are brilliant. When can we play

Approw

@jamie_c @ogreofwart Thanks a lot guys! I like the fact that everyone wants to get there hands on it. Here is a little landscape demo, made with the advanced parallax demo I posted a while back. There's not a lot going on, and far from finished, but you might get the look and feel i'm after. The recording really stutteres for some reason, the real thing is butter smooth:)

robertkdale

@Approw Congrats! The game looks great! I love the style, and color scheme. When does it come out? The in game animation is nice!

BigDave

Congratz dude! AND OMG I LOVE YOUR MOCHRONIC PIXEL ART!!

About launching.
Of course you want to deliver good quality only. But think about your portfolio less about a quality portfolio and more like a you tubers channel. They don't worry about old videos just move on. Since Users do the same they mostly go for whats trending "NOW" and what you tell them in the "now" to also check out.

Approw

@robertkdale @BigDave Thank you guys so much, every positive comment makes me feel incredible. I'm always really scared and shy to show stuff. The Legend of Dutchman's gold should come out somewhere this summer. I have to finish Two Guns first, which is one hack of a pretty pearl too:)

Approw

@BigDave Cheers for the input. I understand your way of thinking, and thats good! But I don't follow any trend, I just create what I love and I actually want to play myself. Most of the top 100 arcade games (or games in general) are incredibly bad at the moment, they just got there because they can market, and have the recourses and/or money to get there. I do not want to follow these games in any way. Sure the way of creating short games is great and simply just works for mobile. But ever since Flappy Bird came out, the whole industry moved on with this idea on how mobile games should work, even if its not a flappy bird game. Now, I build small games as well, but I want to give a certain feel to it with a little story, and add a meaningful message behind it, not a lot of mobile developers do this anymore. And with a little story I don't refer to some dialog that has just been added to the game to add some content, but the game has to be based on that story. I guess this is why I'm struggling a lot with my developments, but hopefully one day in the near future I can finish one of them. Maybe I'm just weird about stuff haha, apologies;)

BigDave

@Approw yeah man

neoman

Congrats on 3 years! I like your philosophy and I loved the trailer. It looks great. Good luck with it.

Approw

@neoman Thanks! It's not really a trailer, but more of a teaser to show something of the game. The town is just going to be a part of the story, and the place where you can buy and upgrade your equipment and stuff. This is a more intuitive way for the player to explore and buy buy equipment. Ow and i'm glad you agree with my philosophy, I suppose a lot of people won't agree with it though, but thats fine by me:)

jamie_c

@Approw, that video is really nice. I can't wait to see more of the game as it develops.