Ultimate Gloom (1998, Alpha Software – Commodore Amiga)
Back in 1997 I had grand dreams of becoming a game designer. I had already made a lot of small freeware titles and decided to it was time to try and get one published! I was 15 when I started working on this game and I remember I could barely sleep at night for the excitement of potentially getting a game on the shelves. Of course I also had to do my GCSEs at the same time, which turned out great, 8 As and 3 Bs. Despite being knee deep in zombie code the whole time I actually got some of the highest results in the country for that year, even making it into the local newspaper. It was clearly my year!
I worked for over 2 years on “Ultimate Gloom” (aka Gloom3) for the Amiga computer, and eventually I lived my dream, after contacting around 10 publishers one of them took the bait. Ultimate Gloom was published on CD-ROM by Guildhall Leisure Services in 1997 and was soon on sale in the high street! Electronics Boutique, Game, HMV etc all stocked my Amiga title, it was a dream come true! The magazines all had adverts for the game, and I was over the moon, I even managed to shift a few thousand copies.
With so much gratification from the whole process I decided to spend all of the earnings on a sequel, something bigger, better and more bad-ass, a truly inspiring title. I bought myself a CD writer so that I didn’t have to submit the game to the publisher on 14 floppy disks, and so that I could include CD audio tracks. I began working on Zombie Massacre, the sequel that would blow Ultimate Gloom out of the water! (see above, yep more italics, can’t help myself)
This game means a lot to me, it was my first commercial game, and I designed it all myself, got it published, and even on the shelves. An absolute dream come true, so forgive me for over indulging in the pictures of this one.
I would also like to note this game was made possible by many others who helped me out – it would not have been possible without them, and certainly not possible without the awesome Gloom engine which I licensed from Black Magic. You can see credits for this game here.
And here is the official review from CU Amiga magazine, the world’s biggest Amiga magazine.
Android/iPhone/Unity Freelancer Portfolio (1995-2020) 