Intro

I'd like to start by saying that this project is really important to me personally. I've spent my entire life playing video games, and the past few years helping other companies make video games, and now I'd like to make my own games, starting with Jordan Loves Space. 

My inspiration for the game is my actual friend, Jordan, who actually does love space. He's not an astronaut, he's not a scientist, or a billionaire, he's just a guy who has always wanted to go to space. After listening to him talk about space for enough years, it occurred to me that while I can't actually send Jordan to space, I could draw pictures of Jordan in space, and from those pictures came the idea for an iOS game. 

It is now, here in my third paragraph, that I'd like to formally clarify that I am working on this project alone - and it is hard. I knew making games was hard work, but it's infinitely harder when you're doing it alone. So, to reiterate, unless I find help somewhere, I am doing this alone. 

That means I am responsible for all of the following and more:

• Art. 
• Sound. 
• Production. 
• Design.
• Kickstarter.
• Promotion.
• ETC

So what can you do to help make it easier for me? Support me via Kickstarter. What I have right now may or may not seem impressive or inspired to you, but I'm working on it, everyday. The Kickstarter campaign will allow me to dedicate more time to the project, it'll give me access to software and hardware I need, and possibly even allow me to get help in the form of another human being, which would improve the overall quality of the whole project.

About the project

The project is a puzzle game in the same sense that Tetris is a puzzle game. The protagonist of the game is Jordan, a little stick figure who's sole focus is space, and the joy it brings him. Jordan walks and climbs as far as he's physically able to, always looking upward, contented by the mysteries of his final frontier. 

Like Tetris, the player is presented with pieces to build with. These pieces are platforms of varying sizes, ladders, stairs, shelves, scaffolding, etc, that the player drags onto the screen to precariously stack to form an infinitely expanding tower. Jordan will climb this tower as far as he is physically able, so the player must build faster than Jordan climbs. If Jordan climbs too fast for the player, Jordan will climb off the tower and fall to his doom. If the tower is tall enough, Jordan climbing too fast will result in him floating off into space. This is fine for Jordan, but the end of the game for the player.

The first of two modes of the game is a story based mode with story scenes and progressing levels, beginning the game on Earth, and concluding when Jordan reaches the Moon. The second mode is a score based mode, as described above, in which Jordan climbs without limits, only stopping when the player fails to build fast enough. 

The concept and world art is being done by hand on iPad using two applications currently. The first is Sketchbook Pro, which has some great textured brushes that help me get nice looking space and star atmosphere, while the other is called procreate. Procreate is much more straightforward art application with support for much higher resolutions, and overall a more responsive, professional feel. Procreate is newer to me, while I've been using Sketchbook for a while, but as I spend more time with procreate, I may end up doing all art in that app.

I'm using Garageband on both my iMac and my iPad to build music tracks and SFX. I'm using Pixen on iMac to do finer artwork that isn't possible to do on the iPad, such as the character of Jordan, and the animations. I'm using Gamesalad to do most of the actual work on building the game, and while this isn't ideal, it's what I have right now. I also have access to Xcode as an Apple developer, but I'm not very familiar. 

Currently, I'm targeting the iPad as lead platform, with a strong probability that it'll also become available for iPhone after that. I don't have any plans for Android.

As I work, I foresee learning new things and finding new applications that make the game better. If I had to estimate, at my current pace, the game could be complete in about 8 months or so, it's difficult to determine at this early stage of development. I have registered the domain fourthgentleman.com for the use of my further games development, though I haven't yet built a website. Jordan Loves Space will be released as a Fourth Gentleman game.

So bear with me, I love this project and I hope you will too. Please ask as many questions as you can think of.

(Note regarding the video. I edited the video around a song by Jonsi without considering that I shouldn't use copyrighted music. The music was then replaced at the last minute with a piece I made using loops in Garageband.)