So as many of you know, my team and I have been working on making a game for a long time now. It officially took form as a side scrolling platformer, and was intended for release on Android, and possibly PC and at some point (if it was successful) PS Vita, PS3, and PS4. Again, the handheld and console ports would be very iffy due to high publishing costs and legal stuff that has to be arranged first, so the game would need to net a lot of profit to make that possible, but we would love to do it. Many of you have been there supporting us for a long time, and some even as far back as when the team was first formed and we expected our first project to be a different genre entirely, and those of you that have been there a while have seen as the project changed forms several times until it finally began to take shape and become something we are very proud of. However I've left most people in the dark for a while now, and I would like to make this thread to let you guys know what's going on.

But let's start at the beginning.


As some of you may know (but probably most do not) we worked on our game tirelessly for a good while and ended up with a working, albeit slightly buggy test build of it, and I feel that it perfectly captures the feeling of joy and excitement that you felt back when you were a kid, and you would wake up on a Saturday morning, grab your breakfast, run to the front room, sit down, and fire up your NES/SMS/Whatever eight bit console you owned, and set out to save a princess, or fight a dragon (or sorta both if you were a plumber), or whatever you did in your favorite platformer. In fact, my six year old nephew's first reaction when he saw the game in action was to shout "It's Kirby!...no, it's Mario! Mario!". lol I'll take both of those as a huge compliment, and probably one that wasn't quite deserved (no way would I dare to try comparing to those retro platforming giants!), but this again was based on what the game looked like and the music, which again, I won't claim could come close to rivaling Super Mario or Kirby tunes, but my point is, the game did exude that certain kid-in-a-video-game-store vibe, and hearing his excitement let me know that it wasn't just me getting that feeling because this game was my baby.

But again, the game has changed forms since then. We are no longer shooting for a retro game, though it may still look like one, we are simply making a modern 2D sidescroller using the graphics that we currently have the abilities to make, so those tunes have been scrapped (though admittedly I do have a copy of them still for myself to listen to). And the level designs have changed to no longer be simple "get from one side of the screen to the other" style gameplay, but require exploration and at times traversing the same area two or three times to find what you need to exit each level, and we've added boss fights (still in development) and various other styles of gameplay in some levels, such as runners, racing, flying, and more.

Now this is all well and good, but we've hit a small snag or two.


Our team is made up of people who are willing and able to devote their free time to making this game without pay. You see, we've been operating on a budget of precisely squat (or $0, £0, ¥0, etc. for those who wish to convert into different currencies ) for roughly three years now. All any of us has had to work for were our dreams of making games for a living, and the promise of divvying up the profits earned from the game. So in short, we could all spend years making this game and get $5 each or thousands of dollars each. It could be a huge hit or a massive flop that earned us nothing, and we were all willing to take that risk because we love what we do. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my friends who made this sacrifice for our team, and all while acknowledging me as the leader and respecting each decision I made for no reason other than pure respect between us.
mrfe :
yoshirulez! :
GenesisJunkie :
Thank you so much guys.

There have been other members who put in what they could while they were with us, but these are the three that have been there since the start and managed to be able to remain. All who contributed are appreciated and I thank them as well.

But the snag we hit was called real life. Dreams are great, but they can't pay the bills, and bills are something that we all have plenty of. As such, half of the team had to stop working on the game and focus on their jobs. Well yoshi and I pressed on because we still managed to scrape some spare time together (yay for unemployment!) and we actually made a good amount of progress during this time, but we have once again hit a snag. Our game is experiencing issues that I currently cannot figure out a work around for. These problems are fairly simple and could be handled with some more study and practice, but in the meantime bills are getting higher and higher for me, and as such I can no longer afford to spend more time studying and searching for solutions each step of the way. And this brings me to my sad announcement.

Our platformer has been postponed.

It will still be released at some point, but for now we need to work on something that we can do with our current abilities in order to make some money and pay some bills before resuming work on the platformer. But no way will we walk away from this game we've been working so hard on for so long, we're just putting it on hold until we can get some bills paid and maybe pay for some help if needed.


Which brings me to the new game. It's something yoshirulez! And I are making ourselves. It's a bit of a mix between the old wooden labyrinth games and the old Monkeyball mini games. The game will feature 3D graphics, simple gyroscopic or touch controls (yes, mobile game), and a bunch of really weird stuff that yoshi is throwing into the pot in his random fashion. But what to expect when you get someone as weird as him and someone as weird as me working together on a game alone...well that's anybody's guess. Lol


That's all the update I have for you folks for now. I hope you take an interest in our little project as well as our big project (the platformer). Please, feel free to leave any questions, comments, or suggestions.

Oh and if any of you have any ideas for games that you want to be made, but need a developer, let me know via PM and we'll work it out if we can. Shameless plugs ftw!

Eirinn : Do you still want me to publish thee game? I remember you talking to me about this a while back. If you still want me to be a part of this, and the right things happen, I could get this and the other game a Steam license as early as April.

Do you still want that song I made long time ago as well?

Also what's up with my idea for a game?

zanderlex : Depends on what happens between now and then, but quite possibly, yes. We would have to talk percentages via PM or email though. And that would be for the games not made by the ImagineUnderdog team of course. The team plans to be fully independent when we start publishing games finally, but I'll still be making games and programs on the side as well.

As for your game, I don't think I ever heard back from you after that last set of questions I had before beginning development. I would still love to make it though, since I love all of the checks and balances required in making games like that one. If you want, I could take a day or two to fix up a full list of everything I need to know and send it to you all at once so we could get it started. Just let me know in a PM and I'll do that.

EDIT: Also yes, I would love to have that song still.

All right, a list would be awesome, and so for the IU games, you're going yo try to take care of the greenlight stuff yourself?

zanderlex : Yeah, we're wanting to cover all of the costs ourselves with games released as a team (ImagineUnderdog). It's a bit more work, but we're wanting to have 100% liberty with everything we do and to be entirely self supported. The games I make myself or for other people I'll need a publisher for.

I forgot about this! I'm so glad you guys are still working on it, I would never be able to do that. That's real dedication right there. Good luck with everything, can't wait to play the game(s) when it/they finally come out!

Eirinn : "It's a bit of a mix between the old wooden labyrinth games and the old Monkeyball mini games."

tgags123 : Thanks, man! Yeah the platformer (which was originally intended to be a multigame app as you may recall) was starting to come together nicely, so once we get some funding it should be a fairly straightforward process finishing it up. I'm really looking forward to that one.
As for the other one, it was coming together so easily and quickly it was almost disturbing (lol) until I had to stop to catch up on some other stuff before going any farther with it's development. As of today or tomorrow I should be able to get back into it and hopefully have it running well by mid to late April, but I'm not afraid to delay that if it isn't up to par with what we're wanting it to be. Better late than unfinished.


supernerd117 : It'll lean more towards Monkeyball (specifically the puzzle mini games found in the adventure mode of Super Monkeyball Adventure), but there will be the labrynth influences and even outright labrynth levels. I hope it does appeal to people and manage to be something that hasn't been done to death already, which isn't the easiest thing to accomplish in the Android market since it's so flooded with games. If memory serves it was once reported that the iPhone market got 500 games a day, and Android at the time got only slightly less (that may have changed since then), so it's all too easy to get lost in the mix. I'm sure a lot of deserving games already have been. All we can do is try to release a quality product and hope it catches on.

I know we talked a little about this a little bit in the PMs the other night, but how about another update here man? I'm sure a lot of people would like to know how things are going, and how far you've come in the last few months. 

Also, maybe you'd like to share some of the ideas we discussed as well? I'm not all that great with feedback or creativity, so I would imagine many of the other users here could give you much better feedback and responses to them than I ever could

I hope you make all these dreams come true man. I'm really rooting for you ^^

Mynamescox44 : I'll probably make a thread for the mobile game I'm working on for now, but as ImagineUnderdog goes, we haven't done anything since I started this game. No one can afford to, and half of the members kind of dropped off the radar entirely. It's just three of us now, but we'll get that game out as soon as some we get some income from the first game or two that I'm making myself hopefully.

The mobile game is almost finished. I just have some scripting hurdles to clear and then a test run or two before releasing a closed beta for some people on Vizzed to help test if they want maybe. Don't want any bugs hanging on when it's released after all. Plus with mobile it's hard to know which phones will run a game and which won't, so a closed beta would really help with that.