I'm back to working on Bulldozer. It's rendering the screens now in the browser and on the main screen. I'll probably get it working very simply (no animation) so that I can send it off to any music/sound/animation people. Then I can futz and tune the thing on a live working copy.

That was a design tactic I went with for my Klear project. I described it to the guys as "Do a minimum of design, then get something working by Friday, so you can then work out the rest of your design choices on a working game". Thus far it's worked quite well, although I don't have any heavy design decisions for Full Metal UberBulldozer Platinum Plus Edition (still a working title). It's based on an existing game that's sold about a million copies with no usability complaints, so I'm not gonna do much to it other than add a Duck Tiles-style level-browser to it.

I am, however, eliminating the progression aspect of the game, which will likely cheese off a few Dozer purists. In the olden days, you couldn't play level six of Bulldozer until you defeated level five. While that does make the game more challenging, it means that probably 98% of people who play the game get too frustrated on one level to finish. In the new Bulldozer (and Duck Tiles for that matter), you can play levels in any order you want. If you don't beat a level, you get a "?" indicator in the browser to show that you tried the level but didn't succeed. My thinking is that the "?" is gonna bug Type-A personalities so much that they're gonna return to the level again and again until they beat the level and clear the indicator. But if you're more of a type-B personality who wants to play a bunch of fun levels, you won't be punished for it.