Gem Jam Adventure, a game I worked on with Endo Earth Game Studio, is now out and available to the public for free! More about the game and where to play below.

About the Game
Gem Jam Adventure is the result of “Mid-Month Mayhem” Game Jam 3 which I hosted back in August 2011 in the Flash Game License community (I worked on another game during this jam that I’ll discuss at a later time). The game underwent a plethora of changes and adjustments over the last several months before it became what it is today. In this section I’ll talk more about how it got started and where we took it from there. If you are just looking to try the game, feel free to skip to the bottom of this post where I’ve provided play links.

Since the theme of the game jam was “Money/Coins/Gold/Gems/Treasure” naturally we decided to go with the addictive simplicity of a match-3 puzzle game. We looked to several popular casual games for inspiration, including the beloved Bejeweled franchise by PopCap Games. Our hope was to at least capture a small part of what makes these games such a huge part of so many players’ gaming lives – even those who don’t even consider themselves gamers.

I didn’t play as active a role in this game as I usually do with my projects – this time I only served as director and supplementary artist. The bulk of the game was designed and programmed by my good friend, Daniel Munoz, owner of Endo Earth Game Studio. He had been having trouble getting his game, Disruptor, released, so I decided to help him out by collaborating on this match-3.

We made a lot of headway into the game during the game jam, but shortly afterwards, the project fell by the way side. We worked on the game here and there over the course of a few months but it was by no means a high priority. To be honest, I wasn’t sure the game would even be released at all, having been shelved for so long.

Much to my surprise, after disappearing for a good while, Daniel resurfaced with a finished game, ready to go up for sale on Flash Game License. We put the game up for bid, and there it stayed for about a month or so until we finally ended up accepting an offer from Mindjolt. The game didn’t end up getting as much as we had hoped, but we still have the potential for non-exclusive sales to help drive the revenue up.

Where to Play
Due to the nature of our agreement with Mindjolt, this particular game will not see a viral distribution launch. Instead, it is available to play directly on Mindjolt’s website as well as via their Facebook application. I’ve also listed it here in my Products page and on my experimental AV Arcade portal, Ninja Dart. Have your pick:

Play on Mindjolt
Play on Facebook
Play on this Blog
Play on Ninja Dart

Other Thoughts
As I promised in my previous post, the new Melee/Range Man website is now live. If you have time, I’d really appreciate it if you would check it out and let me know what you think. Thanks!