357//GAMES @

Right. So. At this point in time, 357//GAMES as a company and as a developer is in pretty much the same situation as it was way in the beginning last year. But not for long.

Every now and then I come back on the site and tout a new project or a new game and give promises of updates and releases coming soon, and then day after week after month passes and nothing changes. For you at least. I sit at home (when I'm not working during the week) and I work my ass off on these games and projects, but because it's just myself and Nic.X working on these projects, it takes a long time to make any reasonable progress.

It's for this reason that I make no major updates or changes on the site for months at a time. However, this should be changing soon. At the moment, we have two new projects to announce that most definitely will not be falling by the wayside. As a precursor to these announcements I'd like to just let you know that the previous games I had mentioned, Solitaire games, are being postponed for the foreseeable future as I'm distinctly unhappy with the work we've done with it. The engine is very basic and doesn't even do undo/redo or tabulate scoring yet, and the graphic design is far too primitive and needs a significant overhaul before I would even consider releasing them and expecting people to pay for them. That being said we will be rewriting the engine and creating brand new high-quality graphics for them and packaging multiple card games together along with the ability to play locally and online through Xbox Live with or against your friends. Our motivation is pretty straightforward: Card games are simple and cheap. If we're going to expect people to pay for the same old crap they can play for free on their PC, we need to offer something new and unique. That's our plan.

So, as for our new projects, there are two distinct items we are focusing on. The first is going to be our first official game release and I am extremely excited about it. I'm not going to release too much details just yet until I've got more prototyping and initial designing completing, however what I can tell you is that it's going to be a Beat 'em Up along the lines of Streets of Rage or The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai (a fantastic XNA developed Indie game) and it's going to have a massive emphasis on music, primarily metal music and I'm working closely with some amazing Irish metal bands to provide both the music for the game and other content to feature them largely in the game. The story is pretty much concrete and I've approached some different event locations around the country to allow me to feature their location and their name as part of the in-game locations also and I've received some good feedback from them already. The main thing I'd like to point your attention to is that I'm going to begin doing Developer Diary style entries on the blog and begin providing more and more information to you to keep you in the loop. It's easy for me to see the progress I make with the development process, despite how slow it can be, but you guys don't see any of it until I do an update here. That's going to change with another revamp to the site whereby this section you're reading on the main site will be migrated to the blog, and will be summarised here and linked directly to the blog, and we'll be adding images, blog posts and video blogs (in the form of a Developer Diary) regularly and the initial focus will be this first game we're currently developing.

The second project we are working on, is a 2D Tile-Based Editor using C# and XNA to help create maps and levels for XNA based games. Nic.X is focusing on the development of this tool and we will not only be using it for developing our own games, primarly for work on RPGs a la Final Fantasy etc... but we will also be polishing it to such a point that we can release it as an actual tool both for PC users to create their own content for our games but also to use the editor as a tool for creating their own games and/or content.

So, aside from all this stuff, we, well just me actually, will be interviewed in the coming weeks for an article for an as yet unknown eZine. By which I mean, I'm not sure where it will appear but the guy interviewing us will let us know if they've accepted and at that point I'll update you guys and hopefully post a link to the article. He'll be interviewing us to get our view on Games Development and Design from our point of view as Indie developer. We're looking forward to the exposure, and the article should hopefully be out around May/June.

So, that's it from me for the moment. The site is still being polished and revamped, so keep checking back for site updates and hopefully we'll have some initial Diary entries and images for you from our current development cycle. Have a good one!

Peace,
dj357

So, yet another update for all you eager people out there.

(also apologies to the more observant readers about the re-use of this post :D)

We have added a Forum to our website, so now you can contact us directly there, chat about our games, talk with other players, get support for our games, or any other issues, and find out more info about us and our products.

Along with the new Forums we bring you news of two upcoming releases for Xbox 360, Spider Solitaire and Straight Solitaire. Both games are 357//GAMES versions of the standard Windows single-player card games and feature high quality digital abstract artwork from Debi Peralta, an independent artist who graciously let us use her work in some of our games.

Both games are just coming out of the Development cycle and are now entering a short phase of beta testing before we hand them off to the Creator’s Club to playtest and peer review the games for us. After that, assuming a successful playtest and peer review, our games will be available in all participating countries through Xbox Live. As soon as that happens, we will let you all know on the blog, here on the site and in the Forums because we will be having a nice little party for ourselves :P

So, anyway, for the moment, we hope you enjoy the news of our new games on the way, and we hope you all come and check out our forum. Without your input it won’t be much use, now will it?

Peace,
dj357

13/06/09: Make-over and New Focus by dj357

Hello all. Thanks for dropping by our humble site. We will slowly but surely be expanding the scope of this website and our products, so check back here regularly for updates.

Alternatively, follow us on Twitter (see conveniently located widget above) for the latest from the horses mouth. Or in this case a cartoon bird.

Anyway, we've completely revamped the website, and currently we're well underway with development of approximately 5 brand-new games to be debuted on Xbox Live within the next few months. These games range from the standard, obligatory card games (Solitaire and the like) to a full-on 2D platformer that we are getting really excited about.

To start us off on the release of brand-new products, check out our new HexConverter program. Alright, yes it is little more than a glorified "Hello World" piece of software. However, it is the very first, publicly available piece of software to come from us, and darn it if we aren't proud of our little baby. It's based on the .NET Framework 2.0 so if you're not a Microsoft fan or you're still living in the 90's you may want to get that framework to check out just how fantabulous (yes I did just say that) our HexConverter is.

So, that's all from us for today. Check back with us soon as we update you on some of the details of our upcoming games for Xbox. Also for those of you who prefer the PC (like myself) we won't be forgetting about you. We are developing our games with Microsoft XNA at present and as such we can concurrently develop for Windows PC, Xbox 360 and even the Zune, if we're feeling fanciful, so there will be just as much opportunity for you PC geeks to enjoy our products. For any of those with burning questions, a desire to help us, or anything else they absolutely feel deserves a response, check our Contact Us page.

Peace folks.

24/04/09: Total Learning Experience by dj357

So, not too long ago we decided to enter the Imagine Cup which dj357 previously competed in in 2007, and the idea we presented has gotten us through the first round qualifiers into Round 2 which is a National Final of 12 teams from around Ireland. The team in 2007 had a similar idea to this year's but unfortunately placed outside the Top 3. This year we're aiming much higher. We've come up with (what we believe) is a brilliant idea for an Educational Learning platform that integrates hardcore gaming aspects and concepts to provide a more rounded learning experience than one would normally receive either in the classroom or through other Educational Games and allows constant and flexible integration of new components. You can find more details of the project under our Projects page. More details will be made available as we move past the National Final on April 30th

18/01/09: The Faen Legacy by dj357

Welcome to the first project of 357//Games! The Faen Legacy is an Action RPG currently under development as part of dj357's Final Year Project for his college course in Software Development. The game is based on the Microsoft XNA Framework and is designed for both Windows and the Xbox360.

17/01/09: by dj357

Welcome to the first update! This is the new 357//Games website, dedicated to the upcoming projects. We will be featuring 'regular' updates of progress, screenshots and offering free media for download every now and then, so make sure to watch this space!