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The Making of Gerbil Physics
 
For those more technically minded, and with an interest in how these sorts of games are made, read on.  This is a (very!) high level overview, but it gives you an idea of what websites and tools you could consider looking at if you are interested in making games yourself.
Goal
The goal of Gerbil Physics was to produce a game that had extremely simple play mechanics (blow stuff up!), had decent characterisation (gerbils!) and had enough challenge that it would be a viable purchase for 1 dollar.
 
Implementation
Gerbil Physics is essentially a physics engine that uses animated gerbils instead of the usual blank blocks.  The game took around 6 months of development effort.
 
Recipe for Creating Gerbil Physics
  2. The XNA creators site is your one-stop shop for all the support and tutorials you need to get started.  They have very active forums, whenever you are stuck these will prove invaluable.
     
  3. Start with the Network Gamestate Management sample from the XNA creators site.  Although Gerbil Physics doesn't use networking, this sample is a good starting point because it already includes code to support multiple controllers.
     
  4. Add integration with the Farseer Physics Engine.
     
  5. At this point we're ready to build a prototype.  Take a look at the tutorials that come with the Farseer Physics Engine for help getting started.  Once a proptype is stable and the game is proved to be fun, we know its worth continuing to finish the game.  If the prototype wasn't fun, we can tweak it or bin it, and haven't wasted too much time.
     
  6. We're now ready to start incorporating the proper art.  Art assets are included from here on as an interative process. So the artist works on some area (eg backgrounds) and the assets are incorporated into the game and tested and tweaked.  For Gerbil Physics we worked with the maker of Tzardz to do all the artwork.
      
  7. Add integration with the Gleed2D Level Editor.  The maker of Gleed2D has prepared some good video tutorials that are available on their website.
     
  8. Add integration with the Mercury Particle Engine.
     
  9. Add audio.  The freesound.org site has good samples, plus the Audacity tool is good for doing simple editing.
     
  10.   Do lots and lots of testing and polishing.
     
  11.   Prepare version for playtest review on the XNA creators site.
     
  12.   Prepare final version and submit for peer review on the XNA creators site.