I couldn’t have hoped for someone better or more dedicated to make games with. Neon Sphee, the game we just finished, we did more for practice of the development cycle, but it’s a fun little piece and Stan’s art and Jesse’s music are fantastic and you should check it out!

Our next game, we’re already head over heels in love with.

We promise to leave a forwarding address!

This day is somber for Marie and I. Just Play a Game Studios started way back in the Summer of 2010 with Marie. An avid member of the Joystiq Podcast Appreciation Group (JPAG) community, she reached out to that community trying to find others that might be interested in making video games. She had a number of people approach her, and together they began batting around ideas for what they would make. I joined in August of 2010, just as the initial ideas for what would become Spy Babies was beginning to form. We began work on Spy Babies in Fall of 2010, inexperienced and clueless about how to actually make a game. In Spring of 2011 Marie and I formally founded Just Play a Game Studios as a LLC. As time went, other commitments forced people to drop out of the project, until just Marie, Robert, and I remained. We ended up spending just over two years working on Spy Babies, retitled Spy Babies Episode 1 as it represented just the first part of the overall story that we had originally envisioned. The game we ended up releasing in October 2012 was buggy, almost unplayable even, but we were proud to have something even remotely like a final product finished. Rob ended up stepping back to focus on school after Spy Babies was complete.

After that we came up with Neon Sphee. We envisioned it as a small game, with a small development cycle. Something just to give us some practice. Over the course of these past holidays, it became clear that real life commitments were going to force us to bring Just Play a Game Studios to an end. With Neon Sphee’s release last week, we’re at that moment.

This day is also weird for Marie and I. Because it doesn’t feel like much of an ending for us. See the thing is, we’re not done working together. We have too much fun making stuff together. Even if as just a hobby sort of thing, or in a different medium from video games, Marie and I still plan on making stuff together. So for those who have followed us, and supported us, thank you. And I assure you, we’re not finished, not by a longshot.

Goodnight Just Play a Game Studios. Thank you for everything.

Today we’re pleased to announce the free PC release of Neon Sphee. You can visit the Download Page now to grab your copy!

Neon Sphee is a fun little romp of a game in the style of classic Mega-Manesque side scrolling shooters. It only takes about 20 – 25 minutes to play the game to competition. We started development on the game just before the holidays 2012. Minus the holiday interruptions, the game took less than 3 months to develop. Its short play time, and short development cycle are the primary reasons we’re comfortable with giving the game away for free. In reality, Neon Sphee was ever only meant to be a short practice game for us. Something to cleanse our palettes from the long process that was Spy Babies. So enjoy!

And I know, we did before talk about having a XBox Live Indie Games version of the game as well. To be honest, with the small scope of the project, as well as Marie’s other commitments, getting the XBLIG version up and running was just going to be more trouble than it’s worth. Sorry XBox gamers! But your laptop or desktop PC should be able to handle the game.

You could say I saved the best for last. This was the last piece of art I needed to make for Neon Sphee. Pretty happy with how it turned out!

Professional circumstances beyond our control is going to require dissolving the studio. So in terms of being a professional studio, that will be coming to an end, for now. Marie and I still fully intend to continue collaborating together, be it on comics, podcasts, or other forms of entertainment. We’ll even probably still toss around game ideas together, as we really enjoy doing that. I’ll continue working on making games, in whatever limited regards I can. And if the stars ever align again perhaps Marie and I will reform as a game studio.

There’ll be time to reflect on this later though, right now we have Neon Sphee to finish, like I said last week, the game is very close to completion. Another good push on level design and we should be ready to wrap this thing up. Fingers crossed!

Hello everyone! Very sorry about the silence over the holiday season. Marie and I got swept up in all the festivities of the season, along with other commitments. Fear not though, work on Neon Sphee has continued.

With all the holiday business we’ve obviously pushed the release of the game back, from its original “Holiday 2012″ window to a more generic “Winter 2013″ window. All the planned features are working in the game, and its virtually bug free, the main wait now is for us to churn out enough levels for the game. We’re hoping that process can be finished very soon.

We’re also focusing on the XBox Live Indie version of the game first. The PC version works well, we’re just really excited to have a game get published on XBLIG. I’ll have another update for you soon. Definitely don’t plan on another almost two months of silence.

As you can see, not very smooth. So I was very cognizant about trying to make Sphee’s animations smoother. So today I want to show off Sphee’s walking and jumping animations:

I’m pretty proud of the little guy’s jumping animation. Overall I’m much happier with the quality of sprites for Neon Sphee than I was with SBE1. I’ll have even more to show off as we get closer to Neon Sphee being completed, but until then I hope you enjoyed a little sneak peak at how the little guy’s going to look in game!

For those that don’t already know, Main Finger provided most of the sounds and songs for Spy Babies Episode 1, and they were exceptional. You can download that soundtrack here. SBE1 required a few different styles of music, and he pulled them off great. I’m really excited to hear what Sphee and his sci-fi adventure inspires Main Finger to do.

It’s been one week since launching Spy Babies Episode 1. So obviously its time to jump into our next project! And no, its not Spy Babies Episode 2 (the reason for which I explain here). We’re excited to announce Neon Sphee, our next game! Neon Sphee is a side scrolling shooter with light platforming about a robot named Sphee as he defends his home from hordes of invading aliens.

In a way, Neon Sphee is everything Spy Babies isn’t. Its focused primarily on action and fast gameplay. It has a simple, tight premise which allows us to highlight shooting mechanics while being able to deliver its narrative organically through the aesthetic and tone of the game. Oh, and its also going to be a lot faster process. Right now we’re aiming for a mid-December (say around the 15th) 2012 release for the XBox Live Indie Games version of of the game. We’re also hoping to have a free version that’s playable from your web browser our by the end of 2012. That’s right, we’re planning on having Neon Sphee ready to go on both platforms in the next two months.

Neon Sphee has a game page hosted right here on our main site. You can check it out for more info about the game as well as screenshots and other media. Well, there’s only a scant few details there now, but in the coming weeks we’ll be updating it quite a bit!

Smaller, more bite sized gaming experiences with tighter, 1 – 4 month development cycles. That’s a trend we want to continue for the near future, possibly most of 2013. The two years on Spy Babies was great, but as a tiny, fledgling game studio that’s still as focused on learning the craft as we are churning out commercial products, we’re thinking that smaller games that focus on one or two core mechanics will be a good learning experience for us. But they still have to be entertaining of course! And we think Neon Sphee is. We can’t wait to start showing more of it off!