Ooh, i love a little challenge i do… and since today was extremely quiet and i had nothing better to do, when one presented itself i took it up.

First a little background; i set up a Gamejolt profile a while back but let it idle a little after adding Quantizer. When Abrogator was completed, i had a burst of what passes for activity around these ‘ere parts and added both it and Happy Ball Is Happy before spending a couple of hours mooching around to see what other shoot ‘em ups there were to play. ‘Cos i like a good shoot ‘em up.

One of the games i found was Invaders from Space, which i duly downloaded and played through. i thought it was utter rubbish to be honest, but since it didn’t crash my PC or barf back an error like a couple of games i’d downloaded before it, i gave it a 1 vote on Gamejolt, then wandered onwards and didn’t think any more about it – until this delightful missive appeared in the shoutbox on my profile from Callan S. himself:

Okay, here’s your challenge: Make a game that emulates a genre and adds a bit of a funny twist to the genre. It has to be a really short game. Make it in 1 hour and 49 minutes. And then I’ll one star it anyway, because that’s what you did to me. Get some perspective on what a games shooting for, instead of thinking all game designers have to do the same thing as you or they’ve failed.

And, in the same spirit as that comment i’ve taken up the issued challenge and would now like to roundly resent proudly present you all to The Art of Stellar War – a vertical shoot ‘em up with something of a deeper meaning behind it. It was developed from the ground upwards (including all of the graphics and sound effects) within the specified one hour and forty nine minute deadline, “emulates” a genre and adds a “funny” twist in the same way as Callan’s work, but unlike him i’ll be expecting one votes right the way across the board (knock yourself out, matey). Happy New Year, everybody. =-)