Well, this caught me off-guard… When we submitted the game last Sunday, I was hoping the game would get through certification sooner, but apparently it decided to come out just as I was starting my long trip towards Seattle. I’m proud to say that Chickens Can Dream just went live on the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace on Friday.

Go ahead and download it (it’s free) if you haven’t already and let me know what you think

While Chickens Can Dream is just a milestone in the wonderful adventure that is the Chickens Can’t Fly project, it’s also a great achievement for me. While this is certainly not my first game, or not even the first game I’ve worked on that got published, I can certainly say it is the game I’ve put most of myself into, am most proud of and most excited about sharing with you (all 6 of you that still read my blog ).
It’s definitely not perfect yet, and we’re working on the next update for it as we speak (at least my team is, I’m on a plane flying over Canada), but our goal with Chickens Can Dream was to get it out there and get feedback on it.

Besides letting you know about the game and giving you the download link, I also wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate and thank my team and people that made this possible, so here goes:

• Razvan and Razvan - for all the brainstorming sessions where they helped refine my design and especially for all the code they wrote.

• Hashu - for the great art he created for the game and for suffering through our feedback on the art drafts

• Gabi and Flaviu - for the last few weeks helping us get highscores and online services in the game.

• Lidia - for helping me see errors in my designs every time she played whatever build I had on my phone (and for coming up to our floor to make us take breaks from time to time). Even though she’s a gamer, she was invaluable in ensuring the game is suited for a large non-gamer audience.

• Robert, Gabi and Claudiu- for trusting us and giving us the opportunity and resources to create this game.

• All people who played various builds of the game – for being test subjects.

Thank you all!

Download the game now because we want to know how to make Chickens Can’t Fly better!

Download for Windows Phone 7

Packing for honeymoon!

Wonderful times!

I still have some small hope for a miraculous recovery after I let it rest until tomorrow… but I realize chances are slim.

But that’s not all. One of the things that sets Ziggyware apart from others is that about two or three times each year, it holds a “XNA Articles Competition”. The result of this competition usually takes form in lots of top-quality tutorials and articles about stuff you can do with XNA. Ziggyware wants to repay the talented people that make these tutorials, so he gives them prizes. Because of this, from time to time, there’s a call for donations, and now is such a time.

If you like to use the articles on Ziggyware, and if you want to help the site grow, prosper and continue to provide a constant stream of good XNA articles, you now have the chance to do so, by going on Ziggy’s site, and seeing how you can help.

However, I’m currently busy with finishing my Bachelor’s Degree Project for my university, so until that is done, there probably won’t be any more updates. After that, I’ll get back to XNA, and hopefully I’ll release more content and samples.

Until then, have fun with your programming!

Here’s the link. Have fun watching it!

I won’t start to enumerate all the reasons, because lots of other people are already doing it, but there’s one thing I have to mention.

I am a fan of Microsoft Connect, and I’m happy to see how well Connect is integrated in Windows 7. I can report bugs, problems, and suggestions without even going to the Connect website. It is all accessible through a “Send Feedback” icon reachable in several places.

I recommend people to try the beta if possible, and report any issues or suggestions they have using this feature. I’m sure any feedback is valuable for the Windows team at Microsoft.

This post is intentionally vague

It seems like this is how the Community Games marketplace will look like. Besides it looking awesome, we can see that we will have a “New Arrivals” page, a “Most popular” page, and will be able to list all games.

I’m still curious about the few games appearing behind these pages. Is this how games will be “featured” by Microsoft, in exchange for a lower revenue? If this is it, it looks great to me, and I sure wouldn’t mind my game being featured like that.

P.S. can anyone tell me what the second game is ? (between Word Soup and Collosseum)

Now go ahead and install it!