Introducing Dead West

Some time ago (November/December last year) we put together a prototype for a game titled Dead West. In January we effectively put it on indefinite hold as it didn't fit any of the commercial models we had for iOS (then iPhone OS) titles.

Since then, two things have happened:

1.) We freed ourselves of the commercial pressures we had on our creative decisions.

2.) The iPad was released.

The impact of the first is massive - it essentially means we can give the commecial risk element of any decision we make regarding games deelopment the appropriate weighting based on our creative desires.

We know (this has been written so many times by others - Seth included) that this has the net result of products that people are interested in because the people who made them were interested too.

We won't be developing any more titles in an attempt to fit in with whatever market trend or monetization opportunity presents itself. As much as we enjoyed working on The Gumbolts (3 months development and 20k+ downloads) and Bucket O' Mullets (2 days development and 2k+ downloads) we're happily jumping straight to what we wanted to do in the first place - develop games that we care about for no reason other that the fact that we give a shit and we think that others might do too.

The impact of the second is hopefully apparent - the iPad has provided a new (in our opinion completely new) platform on which to provide a rich, engaging and high-quality gaming experience. And it opens up a completely new scope for what was originally a relatively hampered (by device constraints) idea.

So, it's with some pleasure that I can announce that we're now a month into working on a completely new Dead West - an iPad-exclusive title that we'll be launching later in the year and blogging about a whole lot before then.

The art featured here is directly from the game's menu stills and level start and end screens - and aside from some last-minute tweaks and consistency changes nearer the time, is effectively complete.

Goose, our resident artist puts more stuff up from time to time on flickr here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/goosemouse.

You can follow progress on the blog by subscribing to our RSS feed.

And obviously on Twitter, you can find us as @36peas.

Oh, and one final thing - want to help us write/finish Dead West? We're looking for another experienced game developer with solid c/objective-c experience who's interested in freelancing and/or potential full-time work. Interested or know someone who is? Get in touch via help@36peas.com.