So a bunch of stuff has happend in life. I have yet another kid, whose is a girl. Luckily for me my work gives me maternity leave, so I'm taking off two weeks, yay.

Now to the subject, I going to continue working on Shield Breaker.

I've enlisted the help of my friend Fox and his brother to create a new sound track and possible some enhanced audio for the game.

Additionally I've begone reconstructing some of the visuals to the game. Some extra flair and some simple overlay effects for now, as well as some more contrasty colors in general.

Other things currently being added are boxes that unlease random things that will either help or hender you. Each box is partnered with a counter part that will destroy it or whatever has been released from it. That would be the grey M box.

In the screenshot above the crazy looking thing on the right side is a magnet. One type of magnet to be exact. This was just one idea I had for the boxes to unlease. The magnets will have different ranges and strength. They draw a ball to it with a sort of gravitational force, destroying it. However differing ranges and strength of these magnets can be used to your advantage.

Right now theres no actual relation to the image on screen and the magnets actual range, but I will implement that.

In gaming news I've actually played two games that were actually made in the last two years. I feel old just saying that.

First was Penny Arcade's too long to type rpg. First episode of what I think will be a four part series? But I haven't read up on it too much.

Its fun I have to say, but I've liked their comics so the style of the game and the cutscenes have a nice apeal. Its combat resembles a hybrid of final fantasy and mario rpg, with fun and creative opponents. I won't say much more but you should check it out if your into rpgs and strong language.

Also picked up Penumbra(I believe thats the name) Black Plague, its takes obilivion's idea of physics and interactive objects to where it should have. That and the game is a weaponless surival horror and puzzled based, so far its pretty good. Definatly worth the 10 dollars I paid for it. It freaks my wife out even though I've only see a single monster so far. The one issue is that the physic system can jam peoples heads into walls, or more specificly a decaying(very nicely detailed) dog that you had to lift up onto an alter. I drop it by accident and next thing I know its glued by the neck to the wall. It was painful to correct, but still enjoyable to watch the jiggling corpse physics taunt me.

For the burned out on FPS horrors I would recommend you check this out. Its not like its a 50 dollar game. The Penny Arcade one is about 14 dollars, which I think I'd wait to see if they do a season set like Sam & Max did. I felt the episodes S&M were too short to have been bought individually.

*New*

Added as of today, a Zapper that targets any ball that comes within range. Once zapped, the ball(depending on the zapper type) will either be destroyed, explode on impact with a block or other special abilities that affect the ball.