Feature: 'Indie Postmortem: Armadillo Run'

In today's exclusive Gamasutra feature, author Peter Stock provides a detailed postmortem of Armadillo Run, the physics-based puzzle game he independently designed, programmed, produced and published in a nine month span. The following extract serves as Stock's introduction to the full postmortem: "I decided to try my hand at making a game in July 2005. I thought that since I had a very low budget, the best strategy would be to make something small, interesting and different. I briefly thought about the target market (downloadable PC games) and thought that a slower-paced game with a mouse interface was more suitable than a joypad-based action game (which would be more suitable for a console). I wanted to work on something that interested me, and thought physics would fit the bill. I started off making a 2D spring simulation. Springs are great because they are simple to simulate individually, but what's interesting is that you can put them together and get a lot of interesting behaviour 'for free'. After spending a couple of weeks exploring the simulation of springs, I decided on the idea for my game - constructing structures from springs to transport a ball across each level of 'obstacles'. There was just one more thing I needed to make it a game - an animal that bore no resemblance to its physical counterpart (I've never seen a blue hedgehog). An armadillo seemed appropriate because one species of armadillo can roll itself into a ball. After my best artistic efforts, I had my mascot." You can read the full Gamasutra feature, including a number of lessons learned by this first-time game developer (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).