Part 1
My household's content of quivering lips and sad eyes finally reached critical mass recently and prompted the purchase of a pet. Since mom is deathly allergic to anything with fur (and the kids are too, but they'd never admit to it), we had limited choices. Fish are fine but they don't seem to to enjoy cuddling very much, and birds are too damn noisy. We finally settled on a Bearded Dragon - silent, sedate and requires little or no parental intervention. Bearded Dragons are native to Australia, and as that I have it on good

that everyone from Australia is named either Bruce or Sheila, we named the pet Bruce.

Part 2
I hate platform games. Mostly (entirely) because I really suck at them. I had a planned a platform game for a long time but had not really given it much effort since I really didn't feel a connection. After watching Bruce chase after crickets a few times, I began to rethink the platformer idea. I envisioned Bruce climbing the walls in search of either lunch or escape (yes, I know Bearded Dragons cannot climb walls, they leave that sort of nonsense to gekkos, but please allow me to indulge in a little artistic license). Since the pinpoint jumping part of platformers is what really bugs me, I thought I could try something a little different. In this game, you control Bruce (who else), in his quest for dinner. The walls consist of various surfaces - some slippery, some not, some completely different. Bruce will have to navigate each room while avoiding falling to the floor. Path-finding, timing, puzzle solving and patience will be key - not impossibly accurate jumps.

Basic control and movement are in place, I still need to do a lot more work on animation, different surfaces and map layouts. The playfield will be an 8 way scrolling map consisting of 8x6 tiles - 16 wide by 12 high. Bruce is animated with three players. In the linked video, Bruce slides down the purple bar and gets pushed up the textured tiles.

More to come...