The 15th Ludum Dare “48 hour solo game development competition” has ended. The theme this time around was “Caverns,” and there were over 143 (i.e., 144) games submitted—all of which you can find here. (With screen shots!)
The top honors this time went to ChevyRay’s Beacon (shown above) and YMM’s Broken Cave Robot, which are both excellent. But there are many other gems! I advise scrolling through the voting results and trying everything.
Ludum Dare 16 will begin in December. Prepare thyself!
BOH (an Italian phrase roughly translating to “I have no idea”) is a new top-down shooter by Simone Bevilacqua that was originally released for the Amiga but has since been ported to the PC and Mac. The goal of the game is to progress through missions made up of a number of smaller levels, or phases. At the end of each phase is an Evil Master that must be summoned and destroyed to open the exit.
BOH employs real-time lighting, line of sight, and tight passageways to create a claustrophobic atmosphere and monsters appear constantly from off-screen, forcing you to keep moving – oftentimes the best course of action is to simply run away from monsters or run into them and take some damage to destroy them with your shield. It’s a challenging game, too. The demo includes a mission called “Tougher and Tougher” that reveals instant-kill sinkholes and traps that can get you stuck, forcing you to quit the mission and start over from phase 1 (there’s no saving in the middle of a mission). It also took me a while to realize that keys can be used between phases – make sure you fully explore each phase before you move on to the next, because there’s no turning back. The full game has 30 missions, but more missions can be created using a text editor.
This is definitely a polished product all the way around, and very faithful to its old school roots. The ability to create your own levels and skin the game (right down to the menus) is also welcome. The full game is 10 euros ($14) for a downloadable ISO or 12.50 euros ($17) for a boxed CD that includes the ISO, the game on all three platforms (it apparently also runs fine under WINE), plus an instruction manual.
DUX, a new homebrew Dreamcast R-Type-based horizontal shoot ‘em up, is drawing the ire of hardcore shmup players on the Shmups.com forum, in a back-and-forth with the developer that I rubbernecked last night. The main problem, I gather, is that not only were many promised features left out of the final release (like multiple game modes and loops), but the game’s scoring system and continue system are also broken due to a few simple oversights and bad decisions. The creator, one of the members of NG:DEV.TEAM (Last Hope), tries to play down the bugs rather than accept them straightforwardly, drawing further criticism (okay, intense hatred), but also admirably offers up a free patch to people who purchased the game.
Why does this interest me? Well, there is, as Bill of the2bears puts it (source), the obvious “train wreck” factor of watching a developer go head-to-head with the most intense type of video game fans. It’s also not every day that a full-blown Dreamcast production comes out. But what I really found fascinating about all of this was 1. the relationship between the developer and the fans, and 2. the ideas and history behind the shoot ‘em up genre that make its fans enjoy it so intensely in a way that most players don’t understand.
To summarize the points of conflict, scoring is of the utmost importance for a hardcore shoot ‘em up player, and in DUX there is currently a bug which allows the player to “counter-stop,” or max out his or her score, in the first level. Also, by committing suicide, one can abuse the game’s checkpoints and extends to max out their lives and score. The final shmup sin that DUX’s creator committed is forcing the player to continue, which makes it difficult for players who consider continuing to be cheating and are aiming to “1cc” or one-credit the game.
For many people, the whole thing no doubt sounds like a bunch of loser assholes whining about technicalities that 99% of the population wouldn’t give two shits about, and indeed, perhaps given some of the ravings and crude insults hurled at the developer (e.g. “Don’t ever make games again”), there is some truth to that remark. But I think there’s also something fascinating about hardcore shoot ‘em up players, the purity of the genre, and how the improvements made with each generation of games seem incremental and yet appear to make a world of difference to the players who play them. It also brings in to question more generally why people play different types of games – is it for entertainment, challenge, art, completion, or what? For shoot ‘em up players it’s obviously about the challenge as well as the eye and ear-candy.
And finally, yes, the relationship of the developer to the player, of which, like any relationship, the creator is at the ultimate mercy of the consumer, who generally has no interest in the hardship of creation or the feeling of having a work analyzed and criticized. On one hand, this is the way it is and will probably always be, and perhaps this kind of artistic Darwinism is necessary to further the growth of games and art, and the creators, too… on the other hand, I think one of the great things about independent game development is that it blurs the line between creator and player in a way that I believe moves the medium forward (and backward, and side-to-side) in a more positive and proactive way.
As for DUX, the game certainly looks pretty, and if the scoring bug and continues don’t bother you, and you have a Dreamcast, it’s probably worth the $20 for you. Future versions of the game will also hopefully have this bug cleared up.
Posted by Brandon "BMcC" McCartin
Wed, 13 May 2009 18:26:00 GMT
Oh. My. Goodness.
Blaster Master meets Bionic Commando, with sexier physics and disturbing visuals? Yes, please. Not only is this the best XNA Community game I think I’ve ever seen (though, I’ll admit, my experience with XNA games is limited), it may be the best game ever? (Sure, I’m exaggerating here. But only slightly.)
My very first thought when I saw this was, “Hey, that looks like one of Arne’s concepts!” Could this be the dream game he’s been waiting for? I mean, supposedly it “features dynamic decision branching, and multiple, story-driven endings.” Does that mean free-roaming exploration? I sure hope so.
Find more at creator Nathan Fouts’ website, Mommy’s Best Games.
Also, his dev log can be found here, and is now added to the DevRoll, natch.
The Uzebox, the open-source homebrew retro game console we covered last year, is now available for purchase as a fully-assembled unit for $95! You can also buy the $70 Fuzebox, an unassembled kit that comes with a printed circuit board. The above video shows off some of the games and demos that have been put together since the project was first announced. Thanks, Uze!
Posted by Brandon "BMcC" McCartin
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:46:00 GMT
Jonatan “Cactus” Söderström’s lecture for the 2009 Independent Games Summit, The Four-Hour Game Design, opened up his bizarre creative process, revealing some of the design guidelines and key tricks that have allowed him to make more (awesome) games per day than the rest of the industry combined manages to put out in a year.
It may have been the greatest presentation ever.
Starting from his Desktop, Cactus skipped over a few folders called things like “Weird Porn” and “Nude Pictures of Me” to one simply named “GDC.” Within, bearing the icon of a pixelated heart, was his presentation… made in Game Maker.
After registering Windows Media Player live on stage to test the audio, and eventually realizing he had to un-mute his laptop, Cactus started it up. A Brain-Damaged Toon Underworld style animation began with a character only he could have drawn declaring, “I AM INTERNET.”
I ripped some (TIGSOURCE EXCLUSIVE) screens from Cactus’ laptop while he was asleep, but there will eventually be a video of all the “slides,” or perhaps even a download of the presentation/game itself, so I won’t spoil too much of it now. Here’s a brief summary, in the extended:
Let me preface this by saying that I realize that this slightly off-tangent post isn’t going to appeal to everyone!
It’s just that the past couple of months I’ve really gotten into watching nostalgic game reviews while I’m working. Stuff like The Angry Video Game Nerd and The Spoony Experiment (Spoony’s Phantasmagoria 2 playthrough is all kinds of brilliant). Benzaie is another reviewer I enjoy, although he’s admittedly even more of an acquired taste. But I love his absurdist sense of humor, his thick, sexy French accent, his unbridled, and often misplaced, enthusiasm for things (just like me!), and his unmistakable catch phrase… “But wait!”
Sadly, I’ve now seen every one of these videos on the internet that’s worth watching, and my only recourse now is to torture you all by posting about them on TIGSource, thus lowering my journalistic integrity from rock bottom to Earth’s mantle. Thank goodness this particular video is about two homebrew Dreamcast games (Last Hope and Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles). Sure, they’re both about two years old, but hey! It’s still INDIE! Cue screaming and weeping.
Super Fighter Team, which was responsible for the the worldwide release of Beggar Prince, has produced yet another classic-style, 16-bit Sega Genesis/Megadrive game, Legend of Wukong. Like Beggar Prince, this cartridge-based, Taiwanese RPG comes in a very authentic-looking black clamshell case (with a full-color instruction manual) and you can purchase it online for $48. This is pretty serious homebrew!
The graphics in this one look a little more rough than Beggar Prince (although still charming), but it’s cool to see a Taiwanese game in English. And the main characters are based on Journey to the West, which is one of THE classic stories from China, which is sadly under-heard of in the Western world. It’s ridiculously cool and weird.
You can see a short video of Legend of Wukong here.
I recently had the pleasure of conducting an interview with Matthias Nagler. For those of you unaware, Matthias recently earned himself the distinction of being the first person to produce an 8 simultanous player SNES game. The game in question is N-Warp Daisakusen, and can be handily downloaded at his website.
Matthias was kind enough to agree to an interview, and during the course of this interview I began to realize exactly how devoted Matthias is to his craft.
