Here’s a quick look on what’s going on in the world of rapid game development.

First of all my friend Juuso, (the author of the excellent GameProducer.net) has published his first rapidly developed game: Highpiled. It’s a physics game where your object is to build a very high tower from a bunch of boxes. Juuso cranked the game in 21 hours, which is pretty amazing. I’m glad that he has decided to publish the game. And while we are on the topic of GameProducer.net I also recommend you check out Juuso’s post about How To Create Games Incredibly Fast.

As an interesting side note, the game’s setup has the following phrase in it:

Highpiled is “blogware” which means in this context that if you like the game, it would be nice if you could write a few lines about it in your blog and link to www.highpiled.com from there. This is optional, but I’d appreciate your effort.

This was the first time I’ve bumped into the term “blogware” (used in this context), but I have to say that I think it’s a great idea. Up to this point I have just used the term “freeware” for my games, but maybe from now on I should use the term “blogware” 🙂

Another friend of mine Martin (of Grapefrukt.com) has released a new (flash) game called Flashpiper. It’s an addictive pipe twisting puzzle game, with an online high score. I hope to see more games from him during the spring.

The mother of rapid game development ExperimentalGameplay.com has a new competition coming up. It’s due to start at 5th of February and is guaranteed to bring a horde of cool new games. Who knows maybe I’ll take a stab at the competition (if I come up with a decent idea for a game that fits the theme).

Another cool experiment was conducted by the good folks of the Finnish game forum SuomiPelit.com. They created a game (in a day) for every day of November. The result was 30 small innovative done-in-a-day games. The almost complete result of their work can be viewed here. Unfortunately it’s in Finnish, but luckily the combination of screen shots and download urls is a universal language that every gamer understands.

I’d also keep an eye out for these blogs: Bonsai, Skooma Games and the2bears.com. Because the authors of these blogs have promised us rapid game development and I intend to make sure that they keep their promise. Even if it means that I have to personally track down where they live and start harassing them until they give up and create some more games 🙂