TIGSource

Captain Successor

Derek Yu — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:36:00 +0000

If you’re a registered supporter of Captain Forever you no doubt just received an email informing you that the next installment of the series, Captain Successor, has been released. The basic game mechanics are the same, but Successor puts you in control of a new ship, Eris, that is piloted by Captain Lan, and the game features a variety of new ship parts, like torpedoes, homing missiles, ramming spikes, and auto-repair systems. The ramming spikes are fun, I’ll tell you that much.

Not only that, but Forever is now free to play, so give it a go. If you enjoy it you might consider paying $20 to support the project. Supporters can play Captain Successor as well as any further games in the series.

Space Spy

Guest Reviewer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:43:00 +0000

[This is a guest review and interview by Fuzz.]

“I don’t remember my line…
Snow snowball dreams ghosts white ele (elegy) stripes…
Talk with eyeball in the bed…
Mental station…
I passionately like how helicopter flies under the eye nerve…
Undercarriage of the airplane, which looks like the blood vessels…
Am I not healthy?
On the aviation field planes fly away one by one…
This story of the broken equilibrium is about a guy, who was in the psychward, but once flew away…
My art does not suck…”

Space Spy is a puzzle game by Vasily Zotov, the creator of Quite Soulless. It is a series of 5 vignettes set in and around the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. What starts off with a seemingly innocuous shot of keys dropping into the sewers escalates into an adventure of epic scale featuring the hypnotization of police officers, 8-sided eyeballs in psychiatric wards, a romance between an actress and a yeti, and the destruction of a courtroom by a fascist with a rocket launcher. And all the while the crazy director Canavati is watching you…

The graphics can hardly be considered “good” by any stretch of the imagination, but they are fascinating in an eerie, surreal sort of way. An IGF judge described Zotov’s art style as “so amazingly complex and interesting that it’s almost ‘folk art’”. The models and backgrounds are obviously very amateur, but they have a certain charm and atmosphere to them which would just not be quite the same if they were more polished.

The gameplay primarily consists of puzzles involving various objects being pushed to certain coordinates on a grid. The solutions are often quite obscure, but the developer includes a walkthrough for each level within the game so there’s no need to fret about how to complete a particular section. The lack of sound and extremely slow movement were the only real barriers to my enjoyment of this wonderfully insane creation, but neither of those are major problems. Those who must consistently be absorbing sounds can just listen to their own music, and slow movement, while annoying, didn’t particularly bother me.

Vasily Zotov released his magnum opus, Quite Soulless, about a year ago as shareware, but this game is free. You can view the trailer here and play the game online or offline here.

Hit the jump for an interview with the creator, Vasily Zotov:

Interview with Vasily Zotov

[Some names and dates have been censored. -Ed.]

TIGSource: How did you decide to make your own independent games?

Vasily Zotov: I did not decide. Usually I had the unemployment issues (russian police and medical community is doing a good job to deliver your medical history to absolutely anybody who showed any interest to it), then, you know, you have no idea what you should do and can’t quite find a job and have a lot of time, and sometimes just to help myself psychologically I painted (so I painted a lot), and then created the collections of paintings and then that was quite similar already to the quest games, such a kind of evolution of the series of pictures.

TIGS: Both of your games have a very distinctive art style, is this intentional or is this just the way that was easiest for you?

VZ: I would not quite agree. My art is pretty much RETRO styled, and it’s difficult to recognize those old styles, you know like in the game ‘Lighthouse’ (1994, Sierra), ‘wise to the old ways’ (It is being said there by the character of Lyril).

For example I thought pretty much if the picture ‘DOJ / cross’ which overall compares the methods Department of Justice plays with people with the ideas of Adolf Hitler would suit the art style of ‘Myst – 1’ and I wanted it to be not only lookalike the picture from Myst-1, but it should also have some sense of Berlin-1943, which is never happening in Myst-1.

It creates this atmosphere of closed society (which the United States of America turned to be) and the feelings of unexperienced refugee, who does not quite know yet that the whole system of Department of Justice will be turned against him and Homeland Security agents will try to find any way, even not legal to escort person out of the country so it would look like it is legal, the judges for real never listen to such testimonies and the whole idea of the system of justice is to make something up against the refugee because he is usually socially disfunctional and pulls the economy of the United States back.

I was suffering pretty much of infection on the left hand, which was the theatrical trauma (and which the ridiculous american psycho doctors seem to try to use now against me like those were the suicidal hesitation cuts, word ‘suicide’ is mention in the Chapter 3 of Space Spy
www.quitesoulless.com/p31.htm
www.quitesoulless.com/p32.htm
www.quitesoulless.com/p33.htm
, so I want you not to judge that much the quality of my picture, but I would say overall I enjoyed the result.

Kodak Theater Picture is also Myst graphics styled

And the lunatic asylum picture is dedicated to the arcade games of the early nineties.

TIGS: The imagery in your games is quite surreal and unnerving. Is this intentional?

VZ: Horror / thriller is a lucrative field, in my opinion this way you will have more audience than with documentary. If your life on the scales, audience matters. And if not, too.

TIGS: How did you decide on the titles for your games? They don’t seem to have very much connection to the actual content.

VZ: Title Quite Soulless was created like that: I had the list of possible titles (something about 50, I wrote it occasionally during the process the game was created, I picked this, because I felt it would also reflect the identity of the author). I mean if you would look on the cover art of DVD (back cover), there is an inscription ‘I am not insane’, and one of the patrons on the indiegamer forum said – Ha, look, this shows the the author mentally sick or had mental problems. I mean I did not publish the documents at the time(they may be found now at www.quitesoulless.com/spacespy.htm now, the buttons on the left upper corner) and wrote that the game is fictious, anyway he could see.

TIGS: You seem to hold the view that walkthroughs are essential to properly play an adventure game; would it not make sense to make the puzzles more simple rather than forcing the player to use a walkthrough? Did you spend a great deal of time planning out the story for either of your games, or did you just create it as you went along?

VZ: This is a good one, a good question. That is why I have a lot of complaints, what I am doing is trying to justify the set of pictures, I have in my head, and this has nothing to do with gameplay, for example. My games are suffering so far from that, you see I don’t plan and don’t develop specially, all of sudden I realize that I have this created and that created and this screenplay was written, but very often I don’t quite remember myself writing this, if you would ask me when I started to create this, when I finished, I would have nothing to tell you, usually I have no idea, this is not because I am a schizophrenic, and not because my game is casual, but because my creative process is casual, I write only because I have some words in my head, and I paint because I see the picture, I do not invent or develop, there is no such process.

I think this is usual, a lot of people create just like that, it is like some advanced improv theatrical technique.

TIGS: Are there any games that you’re particularly fond of, and that may have influenced the development of your own creations?

VZ: Myst, Broken Sword, LightHouse, Gabriel Knight, Beneath the Steel Sky, Dreamweb – I hope I have now some better feeling of composition because of them, I am not sure myself.

TIGS: What made you decide to switch from your own game engine to Unity?

VZ: I collected a lot of negative opinions about my engine and was low on funds, and I thought to drop the games, however I still had this timing issue (a lot of time and no money and I still wanted to get myself busy with something) and I downloaded the free tutorials for Unity (quite a reading, more than 200 pages of technical documentation), when I finished the reading, I decided that it would be sad not to use that to some advantage and I bought the cheapest license.

TIGS: Why did you make space spy available for free rather than shareware like your previous game?

VZ: Nobody wanted the previous game, so I thought may be somebody will play this one free.

And also… This one was first published as ‘in-browser’ game with possible iPhone and other OS extensions, so I did not know how I would collect the money from browser, that is why this one was delivered free.

TIGS: Have their been any events from your own life that have influenced your games?

VZ: Space Spy is the autobiographical issue (however it is still a fictious art, because everything (names, events) is usually slightly shifted literally and in time).

I am working now on the 6th chapter of Space Spy which takes place in the Los Angeles Disrict Court on the cross road of the 6th and Olive, ##th floor, court room U, the ddth of February 2010, XX:XXpm, this is the real time of my court session, I thought also to give the fictious judge the name of my real judge B., the character will be the juridical bitch, who does not show any respect to the court sessions, who professionally buries people, who’s decisions are predictable and out of any deviation and court statistics (she decides everything in the interests of the government, such a government helper, no matter what is the case about) and I thought may be why not to remove judge B. from this court room and not to spend crazy government payrolls on her and to put there some automated system which would solve all the cases in the interest of the Federal Government no matter what the law is.

If somebody directly asked B. if the court session is really necessary or it’s better just to kick the refugee asses out, and if more importantly we would be able to make B. answer the truth, I would think the answer would be ‘No’ for the court sessions, ‘Yes’ to kick asses.

I would say I have to allege that the Department of Justice humiliates the justice, when it places people like B. in the court room, this is what fictious art of Chapter 6 would be about.

By the way returning to the art styles question I am thinking like could I create the picture in the ‘Broken sword-1’ (Revolution – 1994) style. Time will show.

TIGS: Do you have any plans for future games, apart from new levels for Space Spy?

VZ: I see here 2 screenplays – one for ‘Refugee’ title – I supposed to completely switch from some mystery to the detective genre with a line of the fictious romance, I would pick the story from Space Spy – Episode 2 and will start from there to go to the opposite direction. (however it is the initial plan, if I would follow it I might change everything at some point half way there)

Another screenplay – is for ‘Space Spy-2’, it will start from the point Space Spy-1 is finished, some more mystery Los Angeles sketches, more about the life of actors and homeless, something I am familiar with, dirty laundries, infection, hills, Amtrak trains, what is going wrong on the sets, and some fictious element (let say 30%) – as the way to some mystery, skipping on reality (I would think some parallel world / parallel Los Angeles issue ).

There is a good chance, I will be detained before I would start the third project, so if it happened, I would ask somebody to proceed following this my directions, in my opinion you may receive a good game, following this.

TIGS: What do you make of the newly popular trend of treating games as an art form?

VZ: I am the different bee, I mean my literacy sucks, anyway I wanted is to create story, and I hate to be an artist (but I am capable of that), the games are my only window to literacy. I wanted to be a writer and was not capable of, may I say my games are not an art but this BRIDGE.

Space Spy was supposed to be happening in the space in the parallel world, but all of sudden I immigrated to the US and the storyline moves to the US, and now look…

the title still fits. There are a couple of casual contacts among the actors who told me that I may be the KGB spy because I have some accent and I’m spooky/creepy.

TIGS: I understand that you’ve recently moved to Hollywood from Russia, how has this transition been for you?

VZ: I had the incident in the local russian police, which turned to the fact that ddth of December and ddth of December I spent in the mental hospital and on the ddth of December, 2008 I appeared to be in the US embassy, and on the ddth of December I was in Los Angeles International airport, I would say I felt lucky at the moment because those 3 days were in the row and if somebody else told me this I would never believe myself, and I also a couple of times had this bright memory of the chief doctor of Psych-##, Moscow, who is absolutely lookalike the general Crantz from the ‘Prison break’.

I was very poor, and it is the negative side of the memories, I would say I did not spend enough time to prepare myself to break, it was casually, I would make a lot differently now, though I am 10 years the mental hospitals patient (with diagnosis of schizophrenia) and I had an idea to escape to another country I would say since an year of 2005.

TIGS: On the Indiegamer forums you mentioned that you were held in custody and tortured by the Russian authorities, how did this happen?

VZ: Yes, I would say I was held somewhat about 20 times in custody, because of ‘unappropriate behavior’, in fact if you are claimed as a mental hospital patient in Russia, you appear from that moment on in all the electronical systems, and human rights can not be applied to you anymore, for last ten years I did not have the right to manage the property, to initiate the hearings in the russian court, to drive the car, I would say I had less rights than a dog.

I am quite popular among the local police, one episode of torture was performed by the colonel N. (who is the chief of the fraud department), the issue was about the experimental video equipment, I installed. They wanted to get my signature under the document I did not want to sign. When it turned out that they can’t make me sign by violence, they made the fraud of my signature, I tried to complain later to the General Attorney Office, but I was not eligible for the complaints.

Also I loved to try to initiate the criminal processes against the medical doctors who under the threat of violence drugged me, caused the physiological pain and made me sign that I will stay in the isolation ward because of my own will, but of course my complaints were always ignored like the lunatic writings should be.

One time I found the ally in the Ministry of Culture of Russia, there was a person (leutenant – colonel of police S., he tried to send me back behind the walls of the isolation ward, this ally helped me to stop and even reverse the process, that was the only time the police representative seem to be suffering because of his own juridical activities).

Funny that I showed once in October 2009 in the US the very unappropriate hand job (figurine from fingers) to one actress, because she took away the prop from my scene and made fun out of me, and I was fired because of that, but that what I did was in my opinion reasonable (come on, that’s only the figurine from fingers), I was fired for that, I don’t blame the casting directors, it was just some… well, situation.

In Russia, I would do some time in custody considering my history, under the described circumstances, definitely.

TIGS: How do you make money apart from sales of Quite Soulless?

VZ: I know some rare eastern languages, I may do translations, also I do a lot of background and other work for films and live events.

TIGS: You’ve expressed an interest in acting, and you’ve posted two videos of yourself rehearsing (here and here); have you been able to find much work in this field?

VZ: Yes, I managed to remember those 2 – theatrical angle of camera ( something like CSI Miami Season 1 a little bit, but without colors ) I am doing a lot of background work, however, if you don’t have social security number you will never get for example into Central Casting, as I can understand I am not eligible for the most unions of actors. On different occasions they admitted my voice.

Definitely casting directors will not admit to commercials, where the money are.

What was the most interesting?

The prize of the best clown for the character of the choreographical clown with the ball – they helped me to develop a couple of dance moves, I recently received it from one (I would not name it, I feel like they may not call back if I would) of the most popular national amusement parks (this was the contest).

Yes, this was also the great job, I booked the role of terrorist-bomber, they auditioned me and liked, I mean, I am jumpy, and a good runner (they did not even know I am a refugee ), what it was about I delivered the bomb to the hotel lobby in Irvine and it went off, I was standing there in the grass and mud… Perfect!

There are a lot of student movies, those are usually NO PAY

Usually I put on the resume only something where I feel they spend camera time on me.

I am registered with LA casting.

For a day in background you may make up to $60, for 4 hours $40 / cash, everything is illegal, prizes are big, this is a lot of money if your daily expenses (including housing) are less than $17, I am doing overall good considering more work from translations.

I want to work more (I mean, in this field).

TIGS: Is there anything else that you would like to share with the world at large?

VZ: Yes, I mean I wanted to say that look at me. I was miserable, all property I had the crappy scratchy laptop, outlook of which scared a lot of people, tooth brush, mug and a couple of changes of clothes – such a BAG. I was sitting, crying on the streets, and I thought if I would drop this bag to the trash bin may be I would be even happier, and now… look…

Yesterday I did not bring my laptop to the set (I was a church goer in the movie). This was because I was afraid that somebody may steal it. I got some valuable things while I was making Space Spy. Games bring me IDENTITY. I mean I don’t have now to discuss this only question ‘Can I go home?’ while I am tied to the mental hospital bed. Judge B., Director M., XXX representative J. S., officer ### (who did not provide with his name), this guard in Anaheim Immigration and Naturalization… I mean they took away my right of employment and they took their chances, taking 9 months of my life away, and I suffered from infection and I lost almost all my equipment while I was homeless, but now… You see… the 6th last chapter of Space Spy is almost done and I did not die. And it will give them some exposure. I mean anybody may type in the google let say M. or B.. I mean juridical and medical criminals finally will be binded to their crimes. And where they supposed to go from that. And somebody with power may simply take them away, because it is ridiculous that such people could represent justice. And I may be the illusional paranoid, but that is what they tell, and I am very believable and they have stolen some documents in April, 2009, but I still have some more documents they did not manage to steal.

IGF Student Competition Entries Announced

Derek Yu — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:54:00 +0000

A record number (306) of entries to the Main Competition is, not surprisingly, followed by a record number of entries to the student competition. This year there were 193 games submitted by students to the IGF! I haven’t heard of many of the entries before, but they sound interesting – I’m seeing a lot of ideas and themes that are very rarely touched upon in gaming.

The IGF front page reminds us that previous student winners include Narbacular Drop (which became Portal), The Misadventures Of P.B. Winterbottom, The Blob, and Jenova Chen’s Cloud. Fine company to be with, indeed. Congratulations to all the student entrants!

Gratuitous Space Battles

Derek Yu — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:05:00 +0000

In Positech’s Gratuitous Space Battles you design ships, place them, give them vague orders, and then… watch. At that point, the battle is out of your control – as the big man with the plan, you merely watch your cruisers, frigates, and fighters duke it out to the last crew member. If you lose, you go back and redesign either your ships or your placement of them. If you win, you gain honor that can be used to buy new ships, components, and even alien races to play.

Watching the battles can be quite enjoyable – the graphics are gorgeous and do a great job of capturing the look and sound of any epic space melee I’ve ever seen on television or the movies. Giant cruisers crawl slowly across the screen but are armed with powerful weapons and shields, while tiny fighters dart around them going pew pew! By the end of each battle space is littered with the burning wreckage of destroyed ships.

But even though they look and sound good, the battles in GSB are really lacking the impetus of the ones in the movies. Mostly because there’s no context to the fighting, not even the thinnest story or briefest of mission briefings before each battle. Comm-chatter displayed at the top of the screen is funny but very repetitive – and besides, it’s just text. Where’s the heated exchange on the viewscreen before the battle begins? Or the cadet in uniform nervously awaiting your orders? These are neat space battles, but it’s hardly a space opera, and as such, I didn’t have a lot of incentive to see the next level.

The other problem I had was that the strategy felt shallow to me. Most of my battles ended up in a giant ball of ships in the middle of the screen – pretty, but uninteresting. Also, even though there are dozens of ship types, weapons, shields, engines, and other components, many of them are simply upgrades of each other, or have barely noticeable differences. Ultimately, it’s easy to find a winning strategy through trial-and-error. “Oh, their fighters nailed me that time – I’ll add some of my own fighters, or I’ll add anti-fighter guns.” “Their shields are strong, I’ll go for strong shield penetration.” Find the antidote, and win. Harder difficulty? Add more ships. It worked for me.

I very much enjoy the idea behind Gratuitous Space Battles – that you spend a lot of time setting up and then just watching a marvelous space battle unfold. And I liked tinkering with ship designs. The fact that it’s so easily moddable is awesome, too. But in my opinion the game is suffering from what a lot of casual games suffer from – it lacks depth.

TIGdb: Entry for Gratuitous Space Battles

Dungeon

Paul Eres — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:17:00 +0000

Dungeon is a game by a powerful tag-team: Mr. Podunkian (of The Underside fame) and cactus (of dozens of games per year fame). To quote Zarathustra in the forums: “a horribly hard platformer with bad graphics? This is indie people”

My favorite part of the game was the room titles, which I think were a great way of adding an interesting background story to a game without dialogue. It’s a short game, took me about 10 minutes to get to the end, while playing in a window and having a conversation with two people at once (one of them Podunkian). A good indie game snack.

“Dungeon is a tragic platformer about what can happen in a castle, and how it affects people like you and me.” -cactus

EDIT: cactus has an update for us!

Sorry about the radio silence, we felt it was necessary to let this experiment live its own life for a while.

Anyway, this should pretty much make everything clear

And here’s a bugfree version of the game

Overgrowth Tools Video

Derek Yu — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:48:00 +0000

Be forewarned, listening to John Graham’s voice has been known to cause wombs to spontaneously fill up with babies. Wolfire’s Overgrowth is a physics-based ninja rabbit fighting game that’s currently in development.

Harmony

Derek Yu — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:33:00 +0000

Thomas “T.V.” van der Velden’s Harmony is a new FPS made with the ZDoom game engine. It is 8 years in the making. 8 years… wow, that is some dedication!

The game features original graphics and music. The monsters in the game were modeled from clay figures that the author rigged with wires so that they could be animated. Overall, Harmony looks fairly drab, but the character designs certainly lend it a unique and creepy look. The music is pretty good, too – I especially like the track that’s all drums.

It’s a challenging FPS that hearkens to the early days of shareware – there’s no jumping or swimming here (there is mouse-aiming, though)! Unfortunately, the weapon selection is not as interesting as the monsters, and you’ll mostly be playing with variants of the standard Doom line-up. But the level design is good – 11 large (and I do mean large) maps make you backtrack a lot, but are intuitive and have lots of shortcuts and secrets. The item placement feels right to me, too – ammo is valuable but not too scarce.

An original and complete game based on the Doom engine doesn’t come around that often, and Harmony is an impressive effort, if somewhat rough around the edges. It’s definitely worth a look for fans of old FPS’s. Thanks, jute, for the tip.

TIGdb: Entry for Harmony

Ah

Guest Reviewer — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:29:00 +0000

[This is a guest review by Guert.]

What if you could jump off a skyscraper, plummet down toward the ground at incredible speed, caress the buildings, and live to tell the tale? What if, while diving, you could give thumbs up to fans and flip off protestors? AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, the latest title from Dejobaan, is a skydiving stunt game staged in a futuristic universe. You step off the ledge of a skyscraper and, as you plunge through the floating buildings, you try to earn points by falling close to the structures, earning “kiss” and “hugs” bonuses. For extra points, you can crash through bonus plates, give thumbs up to your fans watching you jump and flip off those who don’t like the show.

The experience is fun and it’s quite satisfying to avoid the buildings and occasionally crash head first into them for a nice excruciating death. The game controls are difficult to get into but once you do, you can start performing some high-paying stunts. The game has a good dose of humor and doesn’t take itself too seriously. For example, the “grab” screen, where you can purchase the full version, has a funny narration that explains the role of pixies in the development of the game. However, some jokes seem funnier on paper. For instance, the game features a meditation video that allows you to meditate in front of your screen. It sounds funny when it’s said out loud but when you experience it in game, it just feels out of place. The visuals are good but sometimes feel amateurish, mostly because it features generic fonts and a few simple “photoshopped” pictures. The audio is also good and fits the game very well. The ergonomics, most notably the menu flow, could have been a bit more polished, but it’s not troublesome.

Aaaaa!!! is a fun game that would benefit of an extra layer of polish. The concept is fun and the experience is entertaining. You can grab the demo, as well as the full game, on Dejobaan’s official website. The demo features 9 levels, the meditation video, and a bunch of hint boxes that tell you fun facts about the game and skydiving. And for those wondering where they may have seen this game before, it’s one of this year’s IGF contestants.

TIGdb: Entry for Aaaaa!!!

Au Sable

Paul Eres — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:21:00 +0000

Au Sable is a game by the maker of All of Our Friends Are Dead, Amon26, and appears to be at least a spiritual sequel to that game. Fans of the previous game might enjoy the new one. For those who didn’t play that one, they are both platformers which focus on delivering dark and creepy feelings.

There’s more variety than the first game, and the controls feel tighter, and the art is just as nice. My only complaint is that the mouse cursor is off by default and the only way to learn how to turn it on is in the ReadMe file (which I missed and played through the game with that difficulty).

Again, you can get a taste of the game from Ortoslon’s playthrough if you’re sleepy or unconvinced by this review.

Unreal Development Kit

Derek Yu — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:27:00 +0000

Wow. Shit. Epic Games just launched Unreal Development Kit, putting their extremely expensive Unreal Engine 3 in the hands of the masses – the kit is free to download for non-commercial use! Otherwise, there are two licensing options available (coming soon):

1. If you use the kit internally at your own company, it costs $2,500 per developer seat per year.

2. If you sell a game or application made with the engine, the first $5,000 you make is royalty-free. After that, Epic Games gets 25%.

With Unity Indie going free last week and now this… dang, the level of tools available for independent developers just rose dramatically. Good times!