I did a fun thing recently. It’s only sort of related to game development. There is, however, information below on how to win fabulous prizes, so read on because you wouldn’t want to miss that.

Back in the day, I made a game called Colour Bind. I thought it was pretty cool – it’s a physics platformer where you drive a car through various levels, but also there are puzzles and a rather nifty gravity-is-based-on-colour mechanic too. Alas, not that many people played it, but so it goes. The game was/is very challenging, and has lots of achievements (proper ones, for achieving things, not for pressing the jump button a hundred times or whatever) and lots of scope for mastery. Accordingly, I made the bold claim that a couple of the things you could achieve were so challenging that the first people to do it would be given a trophy. A real trophy that you can put on a mantelpiece, not a virtual trophy. Furthermore, I would actually make these trophies myself, and they would be awesome.

So the game came out, and a couple of people really got into it. Before long – although with some pride I will say that it did take a couple of weeks after launch – the trophies were won. I was/am impressed with these guys – I’m pretty good at Colour Bind, but I’ve been playing it for years, and these guys are already as good as me or better on lots of the leaderboards. One fellow, an American by the name of Nathan, won the first three trophies (getting all the gold medals, getting fifteen platinum medals, and finishing all the cooperative levels with his brother), and a Spaniard by the name of Asier won the last one, for finishing all the secret levels (also no small feat, believe me).

I’m generally not very good at being active on the internet, but I thought it was worth documenting this adventure into the world of making actual physical things. It took ages, and lots of mistakes were made, but the end result is something I’m pretty proud of.

Booya! I made a thing.

Don’t you just want to read a long description of how they were made? Well, you would be in luck, because I have written just such a blog entry, in four parts:

Part 1 – 3D printing

Part 2 – Dying the prints and making the supports

Part 3 – Painting and assembling

Part 4 – Tricky painting and bring it all together

The Fifth Trophy

Okay, this is the bit about fabulous prizes. The trophies were originally claimed to be for:

• Getting all the gold medals
• Finishing all the cooperative levels
• Finishing all the secret levels  (real hard)
• Getting 15 platinum medals (I didn’t even know if this was possible at release)
• Making the coolest level in the game’s level editor

Now the purists will notice that the photo of trophies above features four trophies, and the list of trophies just there includes five. The disparity is the last one. The first four are very easily defined – when people achieved them, I crossed them off the list – but the last one, about making something in the game’s level editor, had no predefined cut off date. I kind of wanted to leave it open, because the game was only out on Windows. Then the MacOS version took ages due to various bureaucratic annoyances (don’t ask – suffice to say, it wasn’t the fault of the awesome person who did the actual port work), and the whole thing kind of dragged out. However, I haven’t forgotten. I will be posting back here with precise details (want to see if it’s reasonable to include the Linux release in this before I say any dates), but if you want the fifth trophy, you should get the game and start making some cool stuff. There’ll be a Mac version real soon, the Windows version can be had right now either via Steam or DRM-free via Desura. I’ll look through the Steam Workshop for levels, and they will be automatically in the running. If you make stuff in the DRM-free version, you’ll have to email the level to me or something like that for me to notice – I’ll put some details up for that when I do an official post on the subject.

So I hope you’ll give it a shot! There’s some documentation for Colour Bind’s level editor that can help you get started. Feel free to get in touch with me if you want to know how to do something in the editor or want to know if something’s possible. Or of course, if you happen to be attending PAX Australia, come ask me in person at my booth at the indie pavilion!