BIR Experience

I had two major issues during my struggle with BIR.

• My RDO code was 028, which pertained to my residential address as compared to my employer's address.
• My TIN's taxpayer type was listed under E.O. 98. Because I applied for a TIN to acquire a driver's license, I was listed as unemployed. When I began working 3 years after that, I was not able to update it with my company (and since I already had a TIN, we didn't think it needed any updating). 

This is what roughly happened during my FOUR trips to BIR offices just to file my Income Tax Return (ITR) or Form 1700 on time.

Trip 1 to RDO 028, West Avenue

During my trip to RDO 028, I filled out Form 1905 so I could do the following:

• Transfer my RDO from 028 to 047
• Change my taxpayer type

I explained the situation to the counter lady, and she just asked me to fill out the form so they could process it. Among the choices was "Change Tax Type". THIS IS NOT THE SAME.

Filling out a 1905 takes at least 5 working days for it to be processed.

Of course, I didn't learn this until our company HR attempted to submit it along with the other employees to RDO 047 a week after, but came back with the explanation that my TIN wasn't under any employer, so that had me attempting to call someone at RDO 047.

Among their many listed numbers, only 1-2 worked, and the rest was scarcely picked up or were telefaxes and were seldom answered. When someone answered, they told me to call a particular number. But upon mentioning to them that the number was always leading me nowhere, she decided to answer my query. She confirmed that my TIN was successfully transferred to RDO 047.

Trip 2 to RDO 047, Gil Puyat Ave

Now the problem was the taxpayer type. She told me to fill out a Form 1905 and submit it to Counter 4 (Tin Issuance). I filled 3 copies out and went to BIR the following morning (April 14) where I talked with the Officer of the Day (O.D.), who then explained to me that it was a Form 1902 that I needed to fill out.

I returned to my office and requested for one. Because BIR had downloadable forms available, we decided to grab those and I took a second jab back at BIR.

Trip 3 to RDO 047

When it was finally my turn at Counter 4, I was expressly told that it was an old copy and they wouldn't be accepting those anymore (the downloadable copies were circa 2008 as opposed to the 2014 physical forms handed out).

Now, the 1902 has a particular requirement -- an NSO-certified birth certificate. I went through the trouble of seeing if my mother already had one of mine, which she did but from 14 years ago. But after a call to the NSOHotline, I was assured that those had no expiration date, which lifted my spirits as well as the shave off some of the stress levels I had been feeling with all these issues.

So I was forced to take some 1902 forms back to the office, have it signed and return the next day, April 15 (deadline of filing taxes) one last time.

Trip 4 to RDO 047

While I was informed that I just needed to show my number from my prior visit, I decided to get new queue numbers to be fair to the others in line. When my number was called for Counter 4 once again, the same man who didn't accept my outdated 1902 accommodated me.

What I was grateful for at this point was that he knew my situation as I mentioned it to him yesterday and he personally updated my taxpayer type on another counter's computer after some debate that I still needed to fill out a Form 2305 (which tied me to a company basically). Nothing became of the xeroxed copy of the birth certificate I scavenged for, but with the 1902's stamped, I was prepped for submitting my ITR!

As was a tactic, I arrived at the RDO and requested for queue numbers for Tin Issuance and Collection, so by the time I finished with Counter 4, I waited for about another half hour to an hour for my number to be called before I successfully submitted my ITR.

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Hopefully this helps anyone who may have gotten themselves in the same situation as me to make sure that you have the right taxpayer type. It's more hassle than it's worth to update, but government offices here seem to be keen on making things difficult for the masses.

Regular Status + APE

Talking about something semi-work related now, I had two things I wanted to talk about for this post.

1. JM's Regularization

JM first took internship with Anino Games back in May 2014. I vividly remember him being the only applicant to date who actually created a Test Plan for one of our games Manila Rush. While I was impressed with the gesture, I similarly questioned who would go through the trouble. A simple thought of 'He must really want this opportunity' crossed my mind, so I reviewed it after I confirmed that he had passed the Skills Test and set him up for Interview.

To me, everything felt awkward - he was older than me though he was taking an internship (a long story about his educational background that need not be said here), and this was the first time I was screening interns since I was already the lead of the department at the time. Nevertheless, I saw that he had potential so I gave him the go signal to work for our company.

After his internship finished, I was impressed with his work and urged him to come apply again when he was done with school. Come August, just at the time of the Playlab merge, he applied and entered the company. It was a hard 6 months from there, but I was glad to see him grow and tease him in-between. While he showed signs of emotional scarring due to the teasing (all in good nature of course), I encouraged him to push onward, and I'm happy he did. Now he's officially been regularized, and I look back and pat myself on the back a little for setting him on the same path as I once took 4 years ago.

2. 2015 Annual Physical Examination

Shifting topics, we always have this annual examination. What company doesn't right? I dread it for the reason that I get pricked with a needle, and I have a history of not taking that too well unless I eat something beforehand. Thankfully this didn't require fasting, and I didn't want to think about it all too much. Luckily, the person who took my blood this year had excellent light hands that left me with no bruise like I've experienced the past 2 years. The only odd thing though was since I had blood taken from me from my right arm, my blood pressure was similarly taken on the same arm. You could imagine my confusion and slight panic, but nothing bad happened anyway, so I guess that was a good sign.

Trello

I don't normally blog about anything work related, but this project management tool we've been using ever since we became PlayLab has been so intriguing and intuitive I decided to make a personal one for myself. Primarily I needed to keep track of several stuff I needed to do - whether it was remember what books I had yet to read, bills I needed to pay or movies I wanted to watch with my girlfriend - so Trello turned out to be a great tool to help me do all that!

I went crazy and made a number of boards for myself and my girlfriend Kai since we're busy little bees with all our little projects (ah writers and their free-flowing imaginations). Up until now I'm still the one who makes more use of it than she does, but it's coming to a point where I'm sure she's starting to see the usefulness that it has.

What it is basically is a board that allows you to create an infinite amount of lanes and cards. Each card you can assign to a particular lane that may refer to that general status of that card. Say for example we want to track a bill payment -- we create a card under a "To Do" lane, then move it to "In Progress" when we're doing that task, then to the "Done" lane when we're through. It's that simple! You can add due dates, checklists and attach files and pictures for your convenience as well, and change the background and add labels to make things easier. If you hate clutter you can always archive finished/unneeded cards and lanes to keep things tidy.

If that piqued your interest, try out Trello today!

Anino Playlab

I haven't really talked about work much, but if you've even been following me on my Instagram, you'd know that quite a few things have changed since the last time back in May. Well, I had to wait until August before I could freely mention it, and then the month just swept under the rug quite quickly.

Anyway, Anino Games was acquired by Pocket Playlab when July hit, and since then, our studio has been able to now focus on making something close to our own games. It was a good time for the company, mostly because it was a lot of new beginnings, and steering in a direction where a lot of change was expected. One of the biggest happy changes I personally felt was the expansion of the QA team, and my reinstatement as a lead QA rather than having to worry about the company's products and analytics as Product Manager.

While up until now this is still being worked on, I'm seeing potential for growth finally coming to fruition. I'm looking forward to the rest of 2014 career-wise! :)

Ambidexterity Progress

5/22/14

Time for another quick writing exercise! I did say I wanted to be able to become ambidextrous, and I found out earlier today that I have better aim gripping a gun with my right hand. I tried it for kicks with one of the Nerf guns at the office. We drew a target on one of the whiteboards. I rarely hit the bullseye with my left, but after switching to my right, it was a bullseye off the bat! A few shots later I found myself getting into the swing of things. This will be something I can improve on!

QA Three 2.0

Back in December 2012, I blogged about "version 1" of the QA Three (found here). Just over a year and a half later, I would be bidding farewell to yet another formed triumvirate that filled the void since the start of 2013.

When Jamie left, Tristan and I didn't stay a duo for long, since Boom had joined (or rather re-joined) our ranks. While the feeling wasn't quite the same, it helped filled the void. But we took another blow when Tristan had left, so that left Boom and I shorthanded again. Towards the middle of the year I made updates to the QA skills test and accommodated Maxine, an intern who stayed with us through the course of May.

The following month, I had made perhaps the best decision of endorsing Jed for initial interview even after failing the skills test. Why did I do that? He impressed me, plain and simple. And to everyone's surprise, he passed! And so another triumvirate was established. We kept it tight throughout the rest of the year. In the final quarter of 2013, I assumed the leadership position after JD transitioned to business development status.

Come 2014, we opened our doors to interested interns and since I was handling the recruitment of them and doing the interviews, we took in two so far - Issa and JM. And they've been doing the best of jobs in helping out our little portable bunch.

As they say though, these things don't last forever. Earlier during the year, Boom had said that he had plans of resigning to look for better opportunities. His last day was yesterday, so that meant our trio would be trimmed down yet again. I've been grateful to him and Jed for the hard work they put in, and I'm going to miss him. But I know that the memories we've shared together will always be with us. So here's a cheers to Boom on his new adventure, and I'm looking forward to seeing how my team develops this time around!

2 Years in Retrospect

May 2, 2012.

This was the pivotal date in which I had begun working for the local game developer Anino Games. I returned after enjoying my internship period a year before (April-June 2011), and I must say that it's been a hell of a ride since then.

I spent the first year and a half of my stint doing the same thing I did back in the days of my internship - test games and test them well. I'm grateful that the hardwork I expended resulted in positive results, which began my long overdue ascent up the career ladder. The climb came at a faster pace approaching the 2nd year mark. I had been promoted thrice to get to the peak of my department, and had gained more responsibility that stretched above and beyond what was expected.

This challenge gave me a sense of thrill to delve into the unknown, but it was a very welcome opportunity to grow and learn. The industry itself has always fascinated me, and I am forever grateful for being able to be part of it and have met such awesome people.

And considering my salary doubled since I first started... I guess I'm doing a hell of a good job to get this recognition. Here's to hopefully more years helping to steer the company in the right direction!

Devices and Job Promotions

Last Valentine's Day, my Dad surprised my Mom with a nifty new gadget - a new iPad Mini. He gave her an iPad 2 a couple of years back, and she was hinting at wanting something smaller. That being said, it left the iPad 2 in some neglect, when I nonchalantly quipped what she would do with it.

Of course I didn't expect much. After all, I never hinted at wanting one, though it has been on my wishlist to get myself my own device. But one Sunday morning when I was feeling ill they asked if I wanted to have it. Despite my illness I nodded a yes. Of course, that meant having to transfer out my Mom's amassed photo gallery before I could reformat it but I'm grateful to have a little tablet to play with.

Nowadays I'm finding it to be a nifty companion to help me play games FOR RESEARCH. I never thought I'd see the day really. Our focus on games gears towards mobile devices, particularly iOS and Android devices. Since my iPod Touch got snatched, I never had a personal device to take home and destroy play the build with when it came to the iOS platform. So this was ultimately a pleasant surprise. That and playing other games to find trends and monetization models that work - yes that's part of my job description now too.

Just last month, I (officially) took on a new role as Quality and Community Manager, which included much of the responsibilities I mentioned in this post two months back. Sometime soon I'll be getting more work and possibly a new title too, meaning better compensation! Just as long as I don't royally screw things up, I'm good.

Caught up with Work

The past few weeks have been hectic, or maybe even then it would be a crude understatement. As of late, I haven't had the opportunity to sit down and come up with a decent blog entry. So now that a weekend has come, I thought I'd take some time to come up with something, at least to get things back in order.

So much of the reason why things have been hectic lately has much to do with work. It's only been two months into the new year, and I find myself swamped with quite a number of responsibilities. Nothing new, but a bit of a comforting feeling to know that they find me a valuable asset to the company.

At present, I'm juggling quite a bit on my plate, having to take on multiple roles, sometimes all at once that I'm not sure if I'll burn myself out. I still do QA for a small project or two, have director tasks, internally produce/manage an ongoing project (go play it! just search Manila Rush on the Play Store and App Store)  and manage a beta community forum to boot (hence me reviving a bit of forum moderation experience I racked up back in 2004-2008). It'll be a miracle to find time to squeeze all the things I need to do for each role in 8 hours a day for a week. Not to mention all the other things I have to attend to aside from all that.

When I started out in the company, I always wonders what people in the managerial level do. Now that I'm so immersed in it, I sometimes wished it was a bit easier. To balance everything out, I just tell myself: "Hey, you're the youngest director around here. They wouldn't give you these tasks if they didn't think you could handle it. Your performance has been great, so keep at it! Yudan sezu ni ikou (Let's go and not get careless)!" A mouthful and not exactly verbatim every single time, but it helps keep me motivated. :)

These succeeding weeks will be a challenge, but a welcome one (I think). It'll be an uphill battle, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things will be for the better.

Planning Session

Last Thursday and Friday, I attended my first management planning with the top guns of the company (letting it settle in quite nicely that I'm very much in the director role) as we collaboratively discussed what the best plan of actions would be moving forward for 2014.

Not that I'm allowed to divulge anything from that session, so I'll just talk about the vague details of that trip. Our destination was in Rosario, Batangas, the location of a farm owned by the family of our CEO. It was a massive space and was a 3-hour drive from Makati. Upon our arrival, the place was gorgeous. The air was clean, there were dogs, chickens and some deer or two, and not to mention a big spacious living area where we held our round-table discussions.

All in all as we identified the issues, attempted to find their root causes and come up with solutions, we did indeed have some fun here and there. Sadly though, we weren't able to play Star Trek Catan since we were behind schedule. Maybe next time.

In any case, having been part of that made me appreciate that the group was firm in the goals we wanted to reach, and everyone was imparting suggestions to help each and every department grow, which I think is a great takeaway from all this.

Looking forward to the year ahead for our company.

Christmas

It's a few days past Christmas, and find myself inkling to do a quick post on some of the stuff I got and put them in a better light.

Let's start with this one! At the office, we still managed to have ourselves a simpler celebration of the season, and that included the Christmas Exchange Gift which was done through Elfster. So it was a simple matter of making our wishlists.

The one who drew my name (Lee), anonymously told me through the site that he couldn't find it, so I had to point him in the right direction to get the book I wanted. Happy to see that he found the 9th Doctor Who book, and even threw in a Lego figure of Loki. :) Thanks Lee! That was a little Christmas celebration well spent.

Next we have a little room improvement with my parents' gifts for both my birthday and Christmas. This actually started out when my mom and I cleaned out my closets together the day before my birthday. I voiced out that it was time to find another shelf to accommodate the books that I had in my room, and it was high time to replace the bedside table I had been using for the longest time.

So we sought out a nice compact shelf (the one on the left), with a plastic shoe rack shelf (not seen in the photo) and a new table lamp too. What followed sometime later was the garment stand for all my stray jackets and hats. Funnily enough, every time I come into the room, I jump thinking that its someone hiding in the shadows. I got to get used to that.

Finally we come our family Christmas Eve celebrations! Let's start things off from the top right and work our way around clockwise.

• Power Bank from my parents. It's funny how they can think up of the most opportune time to get us one of these! Since we often need to charge our phones while we're out, this will easily come in handy when there isn't an outlet in sight.
• Bench Socks from my Auntie Shiony. Quite the irony how I'm slowly shifting my undergarments in the direction of this brand. It's a definite sign!
• Boxes from my mom. I actually picked these out from Saizen when we were doing some last minute shopping earlier that day to help keep my stuff more organized. 
• Books!
• Warp by Eoin Colfer and Seriously...I'm Kidding by Ellen DeGeneres were from my aunt.
• Festival of Death, Fear of the Dark and Players (books 4-6) of the Doctor Who series from the exchange gift from Uncle Cesar. Adding that to my current collection below, here's where we stand! 

Just 3 more to go before I have all 11 books. Then I can start reading this properly. :)

November 26

Again, for those who may not decipher my handwriting.

11/26/13
5 more days. Today I started looking into a bit of javascript for work- related issues. Coding has been a rusty topic for me lately, if you exclude HTML at least. A little something for Google Docs I guess. This is the problem when you restrict CONDITIONAL FORMATTING!

...

In other news, we meet again Google Forms! It's been ages since I made one. If you end up forgetting some of its finger features (like I did), chances are you'd end giving yourself a facepalm when you finally rediscover it. In my case,  it was the summary of responses. Silly me.

Anyway,  I still haven't been able to find the best grip for my pen writing with my right hand. Hopefully time and practice will make it better.

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.10

November Updates

I always seem to find a need to psyche myself up to making blog entries, but whenever I end up staring at the blank space I just buzz out. But November has come, and it's brought along a few topics that are screaming to be talked about, at least in passing.

Tragedy
Disaster struck the Philippines when Typhoon Haiyan touched down with all its monstrous power in Tacloban, Leyte last Friday, November 8. Up until now, the news is still booming with updates on the aftermath. Thousands of families have been displaced and a large death toll count hasn't even capped yet, so it's normal feel remorse for them.

In this time of need, we all need to band together to help out in whatever way we can, but more news of groups looting the relief goods intended for the victims is just despicable. I just abhor hearing that these type of people exist and not have the decency to do the right thing and let what's intended for others actually get there. It's great to see the efforts people are taking to do what they can, and the international assistance we've received from other countries is very much appreciated. I tip my hat to everyone pitching in, doing and giving what they can.

Love
My girlfriend and I celebrated our 5th anniversary together as a couple last Saturday, November 9. We didn't plan anything extravagant, but decided to go someplace nostalgic and dine at a restaurant we frequented in college - the newly renovated Teriyaki Boy along Katipunan. The rest of the day, funnily enough, was spent playing Pokemon X / Y.

Success
Lots of activity in the office. Since my last update work-related, there have been some transitions and I find myself climbing up the career ladder a few more rungs. At present I'm carrying two positions, both as a Lead QA Analyst (QA3), as well as an OIC QA Director. The load is definitely larger, but I'm prepared to plow into it and make things work. Hopefully, I'll be able to get that coveted designation as director of the department (scratching off the officer-in-charge) with a bit more people to handle. Fingers crossed.

November sure has been eventful, and we haven't even reached the halfway mark. I've got a few more topics in mind, but that'll have to wait until next time. For now, we work.

Personality Types

I really need to start jotting down topics for my blog, else I'll only end up making posts when I'm in the mood or when the gap has widened considerably to feel like I've been inactive to start back up again. For the month's topic (since I doubt I'd be getting any more posts out in the next two days), I wanted to talk about personality types.

Last Monday, the entire office was scheduled to attend this Whole Brain Seminar which touched on finding your personality type. The whole Typology Text if you will. Of course, I'm not here to talk about that since... well, I didn't exactly get to attend it to begin with. The weather was dreary, and while I was already in the office rearing to go, one of our projects needed to do some overtime work and get it done that day, so I stayed with the team to help out.

After a few days, our CEO sent us a link, telling us to just take the full test (since apparently they had some exercise of determining their personality but never got around to doing the full thing) and email the results to our HR for profiling. Out of curiosity, I clicked on the link and took it. And what did I get?

ISFJ

Intuitive, Sensing, Feeling, Judging

I scavenged the internet for a profile on this particular personality, and to my surprise, it was quite spot on. Here's a link to one of my favorite descriptions, but feel free to browse the site further to find your own (and take the test there while you're at it): ISFJ Personality

Promotion!

It's been a while since I've talked about work here in my blog, hasn't it? I guess now would be the best time to actually sit down and give you a little update. We had our mid-year evaluations last June-July, and as I was sitting down with JD our QA Director, he handed me a copy of my evaluation. As I was reading through it, he told me (verbatim): "QA2 ka na. (for my foreign readers: You're now a QA2.) Yay pizza! *applause*"

QA2 is a job code, the title of which is equivalent to Senior Quality Assurance Analyst.

In some ways, I had already anticipated it. Coming into the company for my internship, I sorta took it upon myself to step into those shoes early on, especially when Nikka wasn't around who assumed that position. And JD solemnly agreed with me and told me to "just keep doing what you're doing". Gives you the notion that I'm being more than proactive in my job don't you think? Well, with that said, this sort of gives me a little more authority within the department of oh-so-little (currently there are two more QA's under me), with an official title status to back me up.

JD told me to wait for the official memo, so I just carried on doing what I was doing. August came and still nada, so I didn't really feel any different until I got my payslip last August 15. To my surprise, my gross income increased, and our HR, Miss Jane, congratulated me on the promotion as well. This just had me wearing a goofy smile as I stared at it. It took 8 days before our Operations Manager Sir Mac invited me to his office where we had a long discussion about this and that until handing me the memo regarding my promotion. Apparently it was in effect at the start of the month, so that's pretty awesome. :)

I know it'll take a while before we get our company going in the direction we want to go to, but I sure wanna be around to be one of the catalysts who instigate that movement. To do that, I'll make like a Sanada (Tenipuri/Prince of Tennis reference) and play the "vice-captain" of the QA Department and get the train moving.

Zachary Quinto and Character Study

I apologize for the lack of activity lately. I've been at work doing work and work causes a stress I find to be a little bit more difficult to control these weeks. Of course, that's mostly because juggling a few number of projects in one go with a small number of QAs in a game development company of around 50 people really will become stressful. But to get back on track, here's a little entry I wanted to pen regarding an actor I've neglected to appreciate until recently, when Kai and I went to see Star Trek Into Darkness together.

Who is this actor?

ZACHARY QUINTO

Yup, he was the talented actor who played Mr. Spock in the 2009 and 2013 Star Trek films by J.J. Abrams. Because of his stellar performance, I found it imperative, like what I usually do with most actors I admire, to dig into their filmography and see where he's been. Most often than not, I always find one or two titles that I've already seen before but just never knew it was him, and called for a second look to confirm.

Such a title was What's Your Number?, a romantic comedy starring Chris Evans that I primarily watched it for. Having recognized Martin Freeman as well there, I never remembered Zach until I watched back. And there he was!

Other titles that caught my interest was that he was in the American Horror Story franchise. While he played a recurring role in season one, he played a main character in season two, Asylum. 

Dr. Oliver Thredson / Bloody Face

Maroon 5's lead singer Adam Levine is a budding actor and makes his debut in this TV series, recounting the horrors of Briarcliff in present day 2012, while most of the story takes place 50 years ago in 1964, where Zach's character appears. Thredson is a psychiatrist who comes into the madhouse to help with therapy of one inmate: a man by the name of Kit Walker, who was accused of the crimes of Thredson's "alter ego", Bloody Face. 

Now why do I talk about this? Kai and I often spend our time throwing scenarios at each other as opposed to the stories we type up in tandem. Whenever I find a character I enjoy watching, I begin a little process of understanding them better; a character study if you will to get into their head and grasp their train of thoughts and actions in order to adjust to scenarios. 

A strange little hobby, but I find that doing it gives me a better sense of embodying a character like most actors do. Sounds like I'm interested in acting if I go through all this, right? People can dream. :P

Counting to 12

Somehow I wonder a year is really about to pass. The frequent hours I spend in my job testing games (the misconception is still thrust in there somewhere) has accumulated to 11 months and counting. Before I know it, May 2 arrives and I'm back at square one, with a year of experience under my belt. Around this time, I start looking back on the months that were, and wonder if I did everything I set out to do before I reached the 1 year mark.

My first job at Anino Games is turning out to be well worth the decision. I have a blast coming to work everyday, despite having to wake up super early than I would prefer. I get to chat up with old and new friends, at times working alongside them on the projects I get assigned to. I learn new things as more days fly by, and in turn I teach what I know to those who need to know. I work my "Excel magic" where applicable and help out in the processes wherever applicable, which is always a great feeling.

I guess I can give myself a pat on the back for the great evaluations that made me a regular last November, but I also have to thank the people around me for inspiring me to always be at my best to keep my neck over water. Here's to a few more years testing games and (hopefully) climbing the career ladder in time!

That Same Old Testing Thing

I actually typed up a quick entry about this some time ago but I decided to take it down. But since it's gone online (this was a different article altogether), guess now would be the best time to promote it!

So Sir Mac (our Operations Manager) invited us developers to submit any blog entries to post to the website whenever we wanted. Since a tester-themed entry was long overdue (and that was about the only topic I could deliver anyway), I decided to give it a shot.

And it got approved! If you guys wanna have a read (and see my smug picture to boot):

That Same Old Testing Thing

Grave Mania: Pandemic Pandemonium

I would be lying if I mentioned the fact that this entry is just an addition to the raving reviews of this game already out on the web. Of course it would not be as simple as that. Not when I'm part of the development team that brought this game to fruition.

So to salvage what sanity I still have after divulging that fact, let's move on to the (hopefully) impartial review of the game!

Grave Mania: Pandemic Pandemonium is the second game in the series following Grave Mania: Undead Fever. This time around the resident Locas (that's actually their last name!) Bonnie and Johnny expand their zombie-subduing and whacking-to-unconsciousness expertise to a global scale as the zombie pandemic spreads overseas. This time management game is fast-paced, catering to both novices and expert players where difficulty is concerned. The zombie theme is depicted in a less-than-gruesome tone, right up to the finger puppet cutscenes that move the story along.

This second installment tackles the search for the source of what started it all: the cake that turned people into zombies! While it maintains much of the first game in terms of gameplay, it attempts to bring some subtle, welcome changes that is sure to keep you coming back for more.

On a technical note, succeeding porting is under way, so expect the game to come out on the Mac, iOS and Android devices, as well as localized into several languages. Towards the end of PC development, I found myself taking over where Jamie had left off. That included cinematics (where I had close to little knowledge about but managed to survive thanks to her workshop and my badgering while she was working her stuff) as well as QA lead for the project, but it wasn't a job I couldn't handle. Now with the game finally released (and managing to remain on the Top 10 Time Management Games and Top 100 Games (#2 and #25 respectively as of 2/12) on Big Fish Games!), it's all about looking ahead, finishing strong and pave the way for a hopeful trilogy or third in the series! Team Loca fight!

Try it out/Download it here!

New Tricks

Work has always been a place of learning beyond the classroom. Not everything you take in with you from the scholastic walls of your university are necessary or essential tools, after all. Coming from an Interactive Multimedia specialization of the Computer Science degree, I wondered idly what I took away from it. Let's consider my electives:

• Object Oriented Programming for Mobile
• Graphics Programming with XNA
• Game Design I
• Game Design II
• Human-Computer Interaction

When it comes to programming, I don't often retain any lasting methods or practices for the lack of doing so. My efforts coming away from these were more on the conceptualization processes of things, so there was little to no exposure of taking away with me any real skill to apply.

Luckily, I was given the opportunity by one of my (former) officemates to learn the ways of creating cutscenes (cinematics or animation). I'm happy to report that I'm putting the training to good use and learning more along the way. Hopefully when all things are said and done, I've done Jamie proud.