Jonathon Stevens and Patrick Glanville did not take what you'd call the traditional path into game development. After 12 or 13 years software tools for business, the pair decided it was time for a change. Luckily, the community at Garage Games helped them transfer their skills from business development to game development. When Microsoft tapped the pair to compete in the XNA Challenge, there was no question in their minds. "A trip to San Francisco and Microsoft's covering the bill? I'm there," Glanville said.

Glanville said it wasn't that hard transferring his skills in business programming to the game development environment in XNA. "In the past you had to be a hardcore, C++ techie to be a game programmer. Now that's not so true anymore," he said. Still, he admitted there are limits to what XNA can do. "This won't let you replicate everything you see on the Xbox 360. It's not there yet -- you can't build Gears of War -- but Microsoft wants to get there, so maybe in the future..."

Glanville describes his game, Simian Escape, as a standard escape-predators-and-a-meteor-that's-threatening-to-destroy-the-earth platformer. There was a lot of work still to be done on the early build I saw on Tuesday, but with some support form their friends at Garage Games, Glanville seemed confident they'd have a functional prototype when the contest ended on Thursday. Click through for some rough footage after the break.

See also: Other XNA Challenge games