I love innovative games.  Looking at the modern game industry, I see innovation withering.  Unimaginative, flashy, block-buster games are rewarded with fame and fortune, while amazing works of gaming art are ignored and eventually pulled from the shelves completely.  Looking back at the true birth of the industry, in the 1980s, I see a wealth of innovation.  Because graphical capabilities were limited, programmers had to focus on novel game play mechanics to enthrall players.  With modern machines capable of "recreating reality," novel play mechanics have been replaced with the painstaking details needed to mimic the real world.  Of course, such tedious work requires huge development teams and gigantic budgets, putting mainstream game development out-of-reach for the solo creator.  Compare this to the 1980s, when most games were created by small, close-knit teams, and many best-selling games were crafted entirely by single programmers.  

I do not have a huge team at my disposal, nor do I have a large budget.  How, as a solo programmer and artist, can I possibly have an impact in the modern gaming world?  The only option, really, is to invent a novel style of game play that does not involve the painstaking recreation of reality.   

When I started developing Transcend, my focus was on making a game that was as unique and innovative as possible.  I thought a lot about what has already been done and tried to imagine game play elements that had not already been explored.  I feel that I have come up with play mechanics that are both novel and enthralling, though I will admit that my creation is neither as pure nor as elegant as the classic games of the early 1980s.  Transcend takes the spirit of the simple shooter and re-molds it with a modern, multimedia flavor.

The rewards of the creative and artistic process were my main motivation, and I am very pleased with what I have produced, especially as my first game.