Replanting Florence

A post mortem

When I started writing the post mortem for the original Face-Plant Adventures, it really was just about getting something done that had been long overdue. Some time after release, my brother (2D artist on the project) had started preparing a draft of an article on the art style of the game but for some reason never finished it. I took that draft as a basis for my post mortem but neither did I intend for it to get that extensive nor did I have any intention of working on the game itself again. But the more I thought about it, the more it saddened me that our game was gone for good after Microsoft had decided to close down the Xbox LIVE Indie Games channel on the Xbox 360 marketplace in 2017. We had never released the game to other platforms so it would be lost beyond recall.

While I'm dreaming of a PC port, Florence's dream in the new intro sequence is dominated by golden leaves.

I decided that this was not a worthy fate for Florence Face-Plant and tried to figure out how much effort it would take to create a PC build of the game. Being a level and audio designer on the project but not a coder, I knew that some of the required adjustments would be tricky for me, and crash, the game's original coder, had long moved on and was not available anymore. But I knew that I would have to rectify at least some of the original game's flaws or else I wouldn't be happy with a PC release.

The Art of Face-Plant Adventures

A post mortem

Eight years ago we released Face-Plant Adventures to the now defunct Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) channel on Xbox 360. The game was a Dream Build Play 2012 finalist that made it to the top 20 of the challenge (of ca. 200 submissions) and hit the marketplace in September that year. It was generally well received in playtest and peer review on the App Hub as well as in reviews on gaming websites/blogs and in Let's Play videos after release. Overall, it received mixed ratings on indie gaming blogs and polarized players, who either really loved or strongly disliked it, mostly divided by the title's difficulty. A classic 2D platformer, it featured hand drawn graphics, an original soundtrack, an adventure mode with 11 action packed levels to explore, unlockable medals and awardments, three difficulty settings and online rankings for speed runners to compare their best times.

Among 3311 titles released on XBLIG in Germany, Face-Plant Adventures ranked on place 119 in the top rated list before the service was closed for good in September 2017. While it sold only slightly more than 200 copies, we still consider it quite an accomplishment to have finished this project to at least some acclaim and to have had a game out on a game console, if only for a limited time.