This is a new painting I did – an illustration of one of the many climactic scenes in the Dwarf Fortress story “The Hamlet of Tyranny“. If you’re not familiar with DF… well, just know that these stories are not scripted, but occur naturally through the player’s interactions with the game world, which is procedurally-generated. Compelling stuff.

Anyway, just wanted to update my site before it hit the 2 year (!) mark. Over the past two years, I’ve mostly kept working on Spelunky, which is nearing release (!!) on XBLA. It’s also nominated for 3 awards (!!!) at the IGF this year, including the grand prize. If you haven’t caught on, I’m basically excited as heck on the inside but also so fatigued and “experienced” that my face is a permanent death mask and will likely remain so until they place me in the ground (upon which a slight smirk will mysteriously emerge on my ashy lips).

Just kidding, it’s not quite as grave as all that. But I am proud of our work on this game and I am looking forward to finishing it up and bringing it to the world. Another game, another era. I’ll see you on the other side!

(In the meantime, follow me on the Spelunky website and through Twitter.)

My contribution to the upcoming Lady Gaga fanzine Prison for Bitches, featuring an all-star cast assembled by rockin’ Ryan Sands and mitochondrial Michael Deforge.

In other news, Bit Blot is participating in the Humble Indie Bundle! Pay what you want for 5 DRM-free indie games (World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, Penumbra). The money goes straight to the developers or to two great charities… or both! Your choice.

Everyday I’m still Spelunkyin’, but it’s nice to have some diversion from it – especially when that means teaming up with my friends to make some cool stuff! (Or playing Super Street Fighter IV.)

The reception for Giant Robot’s Game Over 3 is tonight from 6:30pm to 10pm. I have a couple of pieces in the show, and so does my friend Anthony. That’s right, he did the awesome Ico piece you might have seen all over the place. And yeah, what about that amazing Grim Fandango painting?!

There is something really fun about doing game fan art, about reimagining someone else’s characters and world. I really love it when people make fan art of my games (even if some of them are rather perverse!). For me, it represents something I love about art – which is that it takes on a life of its own once it leaves the creator’s pen (or mouse).

Check out the work of Arne Niklas Jansson and Mike “Shag” Kime, if you’re still unconvinced! And come to the show tonight and see some more.

I released some screenshots from Spelunky XBLA earlier this week, just before the madness of the Game Developer’s Conference began (follow the link to view them). So far people have been very positive about the new look, although some have naturally expressed a preference for the original game’s pixel art, which is fine. Personally, I enjoy both styles, but for XBLA I really wanted to try something new.

If you’re interested, keep checking the Spelunky website for more information – I’m going to try and update it more and more as we get further into the development. Thanks!

So I picked up Tsutomu Nihei’s Biomega last night and it made me want to draw a cybermutant of my own. That guy is amazing at doing action sequences. Gad. Is there an English-language version of Abara? Because I’d be all over that.

You can find this drawrin’ on my new deviantArt account. I started it to push myself to draw more this year (and also see what other people are up to). I know, I’m only like a decade late, right? Oh, well…!

Anyway, I made some time to do some more Doom fanart. I always liked the creature designs in the original games and I thought they were very interesting. The pinky demon in particular – its broad, oversized head, delicate-looking human arms (by comparison), and vaguely bird-like legs struck me as being a pretty unique and memorable design (and very hellish).

Here’s an art I did for Electric Ant’s “Bloody Moments” – a series of drawings by various artists depicting a bloody moment from movies, music, and video games:

And here’s a page I did from a comic jam that’s also in the zine:

I know you want to know what happens before and after THAT!

This is my new gig!

Gad, haven’t really drawn anything on paper in such a long time. But this week I did a page for Ryan Sands’ Electric Ant Vol. 2 and got in some doodling time with Hellen, Calvin, Angie, Sophia, and Rob/Madeline(?). It was fun sitting next to Angie – she’s drawing these really beautiful and elegant women while I’m drawing Garfield about to shoot up liquid Lasagna heroin and generally farting all over myself. I’ve got some talented friends.

Game Stuff: Version 0.99.9 of Spelunky has been out for a while now, in case you missed it (my Twitter). The Escapist did an article about the game that made me blush. Except Asians can’t blush… we just sit around stoically and occasionally press our heads to the table in reverence. That’s what I did, though.

Also, Jon made a video tutorial for Diabolika for those wondering how it plays.

Heyo! Here to announce that Blackeye Software is NOT back, but Jon Perry and I are – we teamed up again to create a reboot of our puzzle game Diabolika for the iPhone and iPod Touch. You can find out more about it here:

http://www.diabolika-game.com/

It was a great experience putting Diabolika on the iPhone. We played with a bunch of ideas before deciding to recreate one of our old Blackeye games, and I think it was the right thing to do. The two versions of Diabolika we made for the PC were relatively popular, but were hampered in part by some design flaws and also technical problems that can be attributed to buggy tools and naive programming. But with Diabolika iPhone we put a lot of time into improving the game’s design and Unity 3d, the game engine/toolkit I used to code the game with, is very reliable and well-supported. The iPhone also just feels like the right place for this kind of game.

In a future post I’ll perhaps explain some of the ideas that went into designing Diabolika for the iPhone – for a game that’s based around a relatively simple concept and also had two previous versions to build upon there were actually quite a few design challenges we had to overcome. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy it! And please rate and/or review the game if you get the chance!

By the way, Jon directed and acted in the two hilarious YouTube spots for the game.