Self Destruct 2

Terry Nov 14, 2010 8 Comments

Way back at the start of the year, I made a blog post about some of the ideas I had for new games to work on this year. Originally I wanted to try releasing a game a month, but that didn’t really work out. The main thing I wanted to work on, though, the first thing I listed, was to make a more ambitious shooter:

There’s something about constructing a set of shooter mechanics that I really enjoy – it’s very different from the way I usually approach level design. I don’t feel like I’ve really explored this interest of mine very much at all, so this year I’ll probably make several shooters.

I love making shooters, but I’ve yet to spend more than a weekend or so making one. So, with Nexus City ramping up into a big serious project, I decided to take a week out and make something else first.

I don’t have an actual title yet, but since I’m sorta thinking of it as a spiritual successor to Self Destruct, I’ve been calling it Self Destruct 2.

(There’s also a bit of Bullet Time in there too)

What I’m trying to do with this, basically, is to take the ultra-fast, short-round thing I’ve done in the past and extend it over multiple levels. I’ve been working on it sporadically all week, so already I’ve put more work into it than any other shooter I’ve made, but it’s still far from done. My plan for further development is to make it my weekend project, with Nexus City being a Monday-Friday thing.

Saint’s Yarn

Terry Nov 9, 2010 83 Comments

Check out these socks!

Cool, huh? They were knitted by TIGSource poster Saint – he’s also knitted Aquaria socks, Fez socks, Hero Core socks, a Star Guard beanie – and he’s auctioning the whole lot off for the charity Child’s Play on ebay.

I think this is incredibly cool and generous, so I wanted to make some small contribution towards it. I’m offering a free, giftable copy of VVVVVV on steam to everyone who bids on the VVVVVV socks! Spread the word 🙂 (Here’s the VVVVVV sock auction.)

[21st Nov, Edit] The auction has ended, but unfortunately the winner bidder retracted his bid. The auction holder, Saint, is currently going through the list making eBay second chance offers. However, because they take an awful lot of time and effort to deal with, we’re only allowing so many before we rerun the auction.

I’m seeing a couple of comments here along the lines of “Oh, I made a bid and I would have totally paid!“. Needless to say I’m a bit sceptical, but if that’s true, feel free to contact Saint at the email address here, and tell him what your eBay username and bid amount was! If none of the top ten bidders pay up, then the socks will be offered to the person who makes the highest legitimate bid by email to Saint. Every bidder below the paying bidder will get a free copy of VVVVVV.

(if Saint doesn’t hear from anyone, then he’ll rerun the auction instead.)

Minigame Roundup

Terry Nov 4, 2010 8 Comments

Sorry I haven’t posted much lately! It’s been a busy month. Very soon I hope to post about how my main project Nexus City is progressing, and also about a small side thing I’ve been working on lately, but first I wanna catch up on a few minigames I made recently that I never got around to posting. (They’re all Klik of the Month games!)

First up: I’ve remade my June KOTM game “Going Forward” in flash. Check it out here.

I think this might be my favourite Klik of the Month game from this year so far. However, I think the original version was quite rough around the edges, having just been thrown together in two hours with a default Ren’Py script. So, I decided to take the basic choose-your-own-adventure framework I wrote last month and redo it in that. I’m much happier with this new version.

Next up; for the recent Halloween KOTM, I made a spooky game about phobias! You can play that one here. I guess it’s pretty flawed, but I’m happy with how it turned out.

Finally, in September I mashed up Tale of Tale’s The Graveyard with Dance Dance Revolution to create Graveyard Graveyard Revolution. (It’s largely inspired by this crazy video which was doing the rounds on a couple of Irish blogs a few months ago.)

The Trophy

Terry Oct 10, 2010 20 Comments

Sorry for the lack of context in the last post! I’m currently out in LA attending Indiecade. I was so exhausted when I got back to the hotel last night that I couldn’t think of anything else to post 🙂 Actually, I still don’t have the words. But here’s a picture of what I was so excited about:

yay

Terry Oct 9, 2010 12 Comments

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

News from Nexus City

Terry Oct 3, 2010 7 Comments

I ended up being really busy in September with non-game making stuff, but I’m still working on Nexus City!

Next week I’m taking a few days off to attend Indiecade! When I get back, though, this project is going to be my main focus until it’s finished. My other projects (the Ludum Dare RPG and TIGSource compo game), I’m putting on hold for a while.

Jonas and I only meant to spend about a week on this, but I guess we weren’t really taking the whole “it’s an RPG” thing into account. It is a relatively small project, though. Hopefully it won’t take too long before we can share it with you.

Positive Force

Terry Sep 8, 2010 27 Comments

Been a while since I’ve made a VVVVVV post! Well, I’ve got two big pieces of news about it…

First up: VVVVVV is a finalist at the 2010 IndieCade Festival!

IndieCade is a festival for independent games held in Culver City, California (just outside Los Angeles), and VVVVVV is one of 32 finalists this year. It’s a real honour to be included, especially since previous finalists include games I admire hugely, like Train, Tuning and Machinarium. I’m hoping to make a special version of the game for exhibition at the event!

Secondly!

VVVVVV is now available on Steam. For less than $5.

Like they do with a lot of games, Steam are offering the game with a 10% discount for its first week, but as I’m sure visitors to this site are aware, this actually represents a far more dramatic price cut than that! That was a tough decision to make, especially since VVVVVV is my only source of income, but I know that the original price of $15 was off putting for a lot of people and I hope this means that more people will now be able to check it out 🙂

I’ve also updated the price from my fastspring store and the online version on Kongregate, and the price should also be updated on the other other Digital Distributors soon (GamersGate, Impulse, Direct2Drive, GetGames and GreenManGaming).

One last reminder: for new players looking for the soundtrack, it’s being sold separately by Souleye! You can get it on his website here: https://www.souleye.se/

Randomly generated tales of lies and betrayal

Terry Aug 24, 2010 12 Comments

Yey! Another unfinished project! I’m considering “Randomly generated tales of lies and betrayal” as a title, mostly to tease Perrin. Probably won’t stick.

So this is what I was working on for Ludum Dare 18. I was happy enough to just mess about with technical stuff this time, and decided to try doing some procedurally generated content. I like where it’s going, though; I’ll going to try and quickly finish it up before returning to Nexus City.

You can see my posts about it and play some early builds on the Ludum Dare blog, but be warned that it slightly spoils a few things.

Take me down to Nexus City

Terry Aug 19, 2010 9 Comments

Here’s a few screenshots of the current game I’m working on. For the moment, we’re calling it Nexus City. The game’s an RPG set in an alternate Arizona, and I’ve been working on it for the last 10 days or so with Jonas Kyratzes for RPGDX’s just finished Alternate History Challenge. (Jonas is the creator of Phenomenon 32, an amazing exploration platformer that far more people should play.)

We didn’t finish it for the deadline, being an RPG and all, but we have made some pretty amazing progress on it. We’re hoping to have it finished in a couple of weeks!

Before that, though, I’m taking this weekend off to make something for Ludum Dare 18! If you’re within travelling distance of Cambridge, why don’t you join us? You can find out more in this TIGSource thread.

Myosotis

Terry Aug 11, 2010 11 Comments

TIGSource’s Game by it’s cover contest has come to an end! I’ve nothing finished myself for the deadline. I took a screenshot of how the game currently looks, though! I’m really quite excited about the direction it’s going in, so I’ll probably keep working on it for a while.

I’m just back from Berlin Indie Game JAM – this year I decided to take it a bit easier than last year, and mostly worked on developing my RPG engine for this week’s RPGDX challenge. I did finish one little jam game, though, a silly 3-hour collaboration with Chrisjan called Wamlevraw. For the theme Warvelmaw.

Current focus: my RPGDX game! Should have something to post about that before the end of the week.