My second project, Beak-it has been complete for some time now, but I decided to publish it only a few days ago. You can find it on Game Projects, a very nice independent project release site.
Break-it is a breakout clone with all the basic elements: a bouncing ball, bricks and a paddle that has a few tricks. I kept the features to the bare minimum, but the sound effects and graphics provides a good playing experience.
This game was coded in C#, using XNA. A big downside of XNA is that you need the .NET framework 2.0 and the Microsoft XNA runtime on your machine. The upside is that XNA provides a well designed game framework for developers to work in; especially for 2D game development (I have not delved into the 3D aspects). I recommend XNA for anyone that wants to learn how to write games.
I also used OpenSVN as a code repository. It allows you to manage your code without committing to specific licensing constraints.
After some amount of introspection I decided to do my next project in C++ and Ogre. The reasons revolve around my unwillingness to drop the C++ language, the possibility of having XNA runtime distribution issues and the availability of (yet unexplored) game libraries and utilities for C++ developers.
