First let me tell you a little of what has been happening in my life:

At my last job I was able to focus a lot on VGI while at work because I didn’t do much, mainly I was support for the office. After that company went through hard times I had to find some work so that I could continue with VGI. I thankfully found some good contract work which has now turned into an amazing full-time job. This doesn’t mean that I’ll be forgetting about VGI and in fact that couldn’t be the furthest from the truth. I’ve recently purchased a house and a new car (my old car died) so that is extra financial responsibility, but it just means that I need to watch my finances a little closer.

Now about VGI and our games:

Right now we are working on one new game for the iOS called Tribble Sports, and updating Disoriented to v2.0. This is actually a lot of work that we are doing. On top of all of this we are actively seeking investors for a couple different investment opportunities and hope that something will come through by Q1 of 2012. If it does that means we should have a functional studio up and running by mid 2012, which would be awesome! Let’s hope that things only get better from here on out.

So I know this isn’t a lot of information, but it is enough to give you all an idea of where things are going for myself and VGI. I would very much love to run VGI full-time in an office with a staff of people, but that won’t happen unless one of our games makes it big, or we get that investment I was talking about. Here’s to hoping for both!

One last note is that we will be beta testing Disoriented v2.0 soon which will include multiplayer over Game Center, a map sharing/rating web service, and some bug/feature fixes including touch to turn and a simpler beginning tutorial. We will be sending out emails to all of our past testers to see who will be interested in testing again, but since I doubt everyone will we will be accepting new testers into the beta so if you are interested then please fill out the form here:

http://vortexgamesinc.com/beta-signup.aspx

We also have a new “unannounced” game in the works which we will be releasing Q1 of 2012 that we will need testers for so be sure to sign up quickly! It’s a first come, first serve + experience type of acceptance program.

~Richard (aka Geograd)

I’ve always wanted to say something like that lol. This isn’t going to be a long blog, just a brief update on past, present and upcoming events. Right now I am personally involved with purchasing my first property and it is a little scary yet exciting at the same time! I honestly don’t know what to expect and after I get the place there will be some work to do on it still. So just keep me in your good thoughts if you would.

As for our games:

There is a contest coming up for Disoriented where someone can win a 3 day PAX Prime badge and a dinner with Ciji Thornton aka StarSlay3r. We’ve been talking more with Ciji and will be sponsoring her at tournaments and events and in exchange she’ll be helping promot our games and our company. She is an amazing person and gamer and we are proud and honored to have her with us.

Tribble Sports! Yes, our new and very exciting game for the iPhone is underway. We have a couple artists and an awesome programmer who has past history with Gameloft so we are morethan excited about this game. The controls for Tribble Sports is different per sport and yet all of them are simple to use and master. We looked at our past experiences and the games that are successful right now and tried to take from them important lessons. One of those lessons was much simpler controls and use. An example is that the golf game only requires one finger to touch and play. The game is also different from any that I’ve played so I know it won’t just be reskinning.

The other games are pretty much on hold for now though how I wish we could be working on Adventurers Wanted!

So that’s a brief update. Hope everything is going well with you guys and gals and thank you again for supporting us.

~Richard

The first three games that will be with the release will be Golf, Bowling, and Beach Volleyball.

More information coming soon!

I apologize that it has taken me so long to write another blog entry. Over the last month I unfortunately had to look for another job that can pay the bills and keep Vortex Games moving forward. After a month and some I finally found that job and this is my second day there and it is going great! This job is almost everything I could ask for except of course I don’t get to work from home so I cannot do VGI work while at this job, but since that is the only downfall I am happy.

What does this mean for VGI? This means that VGI is now back in production of games again. We always were but at a much slower pace without the proper finances. We have a few games on our plate that we’ll be working on either strictly as Vortex Games, and a few we will be collaborating on with some of our artist friends who want to break into the gaming industry also. I’m going to detail out what we are working on below, but some of the games won’t have much detail, sorry.

Adventurers Wanted! – This is still unfortunately waiting for funding. It’s also waiting for the main coder to get some free time so we can at least get a demo up so that we can pitch for funding. This also isn’t the kind of game you can fund with something like Kickstarter. So for now it sits and waits as a great idea.

Araya: The Awakening – ATA is now actually named Project Araya (Temporarily) and is being moved from a Facebook concept to an iPhone tactics game. We have a good strong background story already and we are collaborating with some of our artist friends to get things moving. You’ll probably see this progressing in the next month or so. This is going to be similar in style to Final Fantasy Tactics where you have different jobs that your characters can be, but there will be limitations. Like you cannot just go from being a Paladin to becoming a Thief. That means there will be an alignment system for each character that will change throughout the game based on decisions you make. This will also affect the type of equipment that your characters can wear and the spells they can cast.

TTS – Not going to reveal the actual name just yet because we are still in discussions with Paramount about licensing for some aspects of the game, but this one is more of a fun play when you have some free time type of game. It will be fun for all ages (which not a lot of games can claim) and will be cute yet entertaining at the same time. We should have some concept artwork for the characters in the near future. Look forward to this one being a HUGE hit.

That’s what we have brewing right now. Disoriented was released and didn’t do as well as we hoped, but the sales increase some when we released Disoriented LITE so that was a plus.

You can get both at the following:

Disoriented – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/disoriented/id418515594?mt=8

Disoriented LITE – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/disoriented-lite/id421088659?mt=8&ls=1

Also we are still talking with people from GDC and there definitely could be either some potential investors or perhaps even collaboration that goes on with some very big companies. We’ll let you know what happens towards the middle of this year. We are hoping to get at least two more games out before PAX Prime this year and who knows, maybe even appear on a panel! I’d love to be on a panel and talk about the experience of starting a casual game company.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’ll try to keep this blog more up to date.

Thanks for reading and supporting us,

~Richard

Disoriented has officially launched. We want to thank everyone who has supported us on this journey and we hope that you will continue to follow us through our success. We will be bringing everyone along for the adventure of a lifetime!

Be sure to share the link with your friends and family! The more support we get the faster the game comes out on the Android market also!

New Trailer:

We are in the second phase of the Disoriented beta test. In this phase we have the menus in and working and a few of each difficulty of levels. In this test we are focusing on the ease of the menus and gameplay bugs in particular. The first test we were focusing on the Level Designer and bugs dealing with that. It went well and we found a few bugs and fixed the biggest of them. There are still a few that need to be addressed.

We have about 40 testers who will be participating in the second phase test and 35 in the first phase. We did not get any negative feedback about the game at all. This is a huge sigh of relief. We got a lot of positive feedback and a lot of comments about what could be improved upon in the game. Along with testing we have been showing off the game at social events around the city and most everyone is reacting positively about it. Some just didn’t care, which is expected, so we didn’t take it personally, but the majority of people loved it and wanted to know when it was coming out.

We’ve even received comments such as “The only thing wrong with the game is that there isn’t more levels to play!” and “I would definitely buy this game when it comes out” and even just simply “Addicting”. These are the kind of comments that we strive for in the game development industry and when we finally hear them we know that everything we’ve sacrificed, and all of the hard work we have put into making our games, is all worth it.

Our programmer Tim Raveling has been amazing over the entire project and especially in these last few weeks. He unfortunately is going to be traveling the world for a few years and won’t be able to continue working on long term contracts with Vortex Games. We hope to get him some smaller contracts and games during his rest periods in his travels and we wish him all the best in his journey. We have a few programmers waiting in the works but none of them are in the United States. If any of you who read this know a good (reasonably priced) iPhone programmer who lives in the US then please send them our way!

Don’t worry Daniel if you are reading this we will still be using your talents!

So next weekend will be the final phase of beta testing for Disoriented. This will only include about 10 active testers because they will be testing our full game with all of the levels we plan on releasing with. We want to keep this to a low number of testers so that we do make some kind of profit!

We plan on submitting to Apple on or around February 1st. The reason for this is so that we can hit the market around the time that Verizon releases their iPhone. Hopefully with the 20 million or so more iPhone users we will make a big hit!

That said, if you or anyone you know works at an Apple store, a Verizon store, or an AT&T store then please send an email to Support@VortexGamesInc.com. We will reward you for every demo that we manage to get our game on. Yes, cash reward.

Thank you for all of your support and look forward to Disoriented in the next few weeks!

~Richard

This is the teaser site for Disoriented! We are getting closer every day to release. It is only a few weeks away!

For an update we took a demo level of Disoriented to CES with us this week and everyone who played it found the controls easy to understand after just a few seconds and also thought it was very addictive! One guy in fact stated “addictive” after finishing the demo level. The greatest part is that the demo is a very rough demo and there is 10x more stuff going into the game before release!

Keep watching http://www.conquergravity.com/ for updates, screenshots, and the trailer video!

That is why we are asking for your help and your insight. We are coming up on the release of Disoriented and we could use our fans to tell us how fun the game is and if there is anything that we can improve upon. What we need is people with iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad (any generation) who has some time to play and test a build of Disoriented that we will send you. If you think you can help us then please sign up at http://vortexgamesinc.com/beta-signup.aspx.

Unfortunately not everyone will be selected to test, but if you have the time and the passion then we want you to apply! We will also stick your name in the credits under the Special Thanks section for helping us improve and fine tune Disoriented.

Thanks again for believing in us during the hard times, now it’s time for fun!

We have made some amazing strides in the last month with Disoriented and I’m happy to say that the level designer (which will be the biggest draw point I believe) is 95% completed. That means that we will get the gameplay done in a week or two and then be ready to test and launch a week or two after that. So only another month or so for Disoriented! In retrospect I think I might have under estimated the workload of Disoriented when first trying to estimate a release date. Though we weren’t going to have the level designer in the initial release and we are now so that definitely added a lot of time. Also having an unreliable programmer working on the game until a month and a half ago caused a big delay also. I personally want to thank Tim Raveling for his stepping up to the plate late minute and coming through with such amazing programming skills.

Another thing that slowed down the game a little was that the first programmer really didn’t know what he was doing with images and the iPhone so we had to change and even redo some of the images for Tim when he came on board to program. Overall this has been a good learning experience for us and we know what to do and what not to do, and also what kind of time it takes to program iPhone games. We will be starting on a new iPhone project soon, it’s a smaller project with a new programmer so it shouldn’t take as much time. I’m hoping that Disoriented makes up the money spent on it and more so that we can start working on bigger projects but that is up to you guys and the marketing we’ll be doing after the release.

The cool thing is that we are having a trailer created for Disoriented that will go on the marketing website and be used as an intro for the game itself. We also have a splash page for the marketing website and intro screen that will be revealed soon! Also a cool URL for the marketing website (I’m surprised it wasn’t taken already).

It’s the holidays so while I am pushing some of my guys to work on things this week and next I’m also very understanding if they aren’t able to get things done. Darek has been local for the last week and went back home so he’s not been able to dedicate much time, but he did tell me the last time we talked that he had the lobby system 95% done. The lobby system is used for our Flash games on and off of Facebook that allows people to connect with each other and to play our multiplayer Flash games together. The lobby will be like what Battle.Net was to Blizzard. We’ll have to give it a fancy name like Battle.Net.

Once he finishes the lobby he’ll move onto the multiplayer for the Flash game we are working on with the UK guys. Once we get the multiplayer in we can start working on the micro-transactions, Facebook social functions, and all of the other good stuff a Facebook game needs. This will be a good step into learning how to do multiplayer on Facebook so that we can get everything right for when we work on Adventurers Wanted again.

Speaking of Adventurers Wanted I am currently seeking funding from an Angel investor and have made a few posts on some investment sites and received some interest, so there may be some big news in 2011. With the proper funding and Molehill we could make Adventurers Wanted the biggest game on Facebook. So if you know any Angel investors who are looking to be involved in the game industry and looking for a solid company and a great friendship then be sure to mention us!

I think that about wraps things up for the end of 2010. There were a lot of challenges and a lot of learning experiences and now it’s full steam ahead into 2011. We aren’t letting our foot completely off the brakes just yet, but I’m hoping we will at some point in 2011.

I’ll try to keep you guys better informed in the future on this blog so you can follow the growth of our company.

Thank you all for reading and have a great holiday season!

What was this issue? The fact that no emails were being sent out to all registered bloggers with their passwords! DOH! Also when you tried to recover it would not send out an email either, double doh!

So the problem has been fixed!

If you cannot login to WordPress to post comments then use the forgot password function and it will send you your password! Watch your spam/junk folder because it may end up in there, but hopefully it won’t.

If you have any other issues you can email us at support@vortexgamesinc.com and we’ll get on them!