This is a 20+ year old dream that has finally come to fruition. It all started back in 1983. I was writing software for a division of Atari called Atarisoft. The company I was working for was taking standup arcade games and moving them to the personal PC's of that day - the IBM PC, Apple II and the Commodore 64. I was personally involved with Joust, Ms. Pac Man, Donkey Kong and Moon Patrol. While doing this, one of the artists we were working with had an idea of creating a new game where a little blue creature jumped through his levels, similar to Q*bert. We worked and planned, had a few meetings, but we had no money to pay for the development so nothing ever came of it. Now 27 years later I shared this idea with my two sons. Both boys love video games and they love to create new ways to play existing games. You should see some of the chess matches we have.
My oldest son Austin, is a fantastic artist, but he doesn't like drawing on the computer. He would rather draw on paper. I begged and pleaded with him and he decided to give me what I was asking for. He created his first version of the Moorland creature. He was great. I started brain storming with both of my sons on what type of game we could create. We had a lot of fun ideas, but, most of them were based off of games that they had been playing. I had a lot of conversations with them about copyright issues and finding something unique. After about a year of ideas with many many long breaks of time, I convinced them that it was time to start working on this. We chose the iPhone because it is a great platform, and all 3 of us carried one.
Austin went back to the computer and created a new version of Moorland that we all loved. I took that initial drawing and created our first screen. I made Moorland jump and move on that screen. I added some bricks that started dropping and my boys got a sense of what we could create. Austin got to see his artwork, his creation, come alive. That's when everything starting really moving. This all happened in June of 2011.
Together we started dreaming about what Moorland could do. What could we put in his way? Who were his enemies? What was the Goal? Between the three of us, we filled in all of the blanks. Austin did all of the drawing. Ryan was our master tester, and I was going to write the software. We added things all along the way. We each created 33 levels of the final 99 that we included in the game. We finished the game and published it on iTunes in November of 2011.
So let me see if I can explain the game of Moorland. Moorland is a arcade type of game. Similar to the games from the 1980's. Your job is to move Moorland through the mazes of bricks. More bricks are coming all the time. You need to move up and down, left and right, gather items in order to help you get through this level. Watch out for the enemies, jump to the golden bricks. Do you have what it takes to master all 99 levels?
