In today’s Developer Links, the developer of Sir, You Are Being Hunted discusses animation; the developer of Cthulhu Saves the World discusses repetition; the developer of Octodad discusses publicity; and the developer of Cthulhu Saves the World discusses repetition. (You see what we did there?)

Heileen 3 Postmortem (Computer Gaming)
“The Heileen series ends with this third chapter, and I’m overall satisfied by it. Without doubts it’s the best game of the series under several aspects: the longest, the most funny, the one with more variety of romances, the one with more artwork, the first one with a custom soundtrack and theme song, and the list goes on.”

Sir, Unity, Mecanim and the Trials of Small Studio In-Game Animation (Big Robot)
“We thought it might be insightful for you guys to be able to read a bit more about the challenges we’ve faced in completely overhauling our animation system since the success of our Kickstarter. As we mentioned in that pitch, animation is one of the key challenges for the game, and we feel we need high quality character animation to really make the experience work. So that’s what we’ve been doing. However, it was not without complications.”

On Repetition and Different Perspectives (Zeboyd Games)
“…This got me thinking about our own games. In one of our games, we have a dungeon that is split up into two parts – past and present. Your party gets split up between the two time periods & you have to go through the dungeon as each group. Your active party, the visuals, and the boss are different for each time period, but otherwise you’re going through the same stuff. Many people complained that they felt it was repetitive and I can’t really blame them. If I was to do it again, I would add more unique gameplay features to each time zone and otherwise reduce the amount of time you spent repeating content (there should have been fewer enemies for one thing).”

Purification Ritual for Computers (Auntie Pixelante)
“luna designed a game / ritual to purify your computer. she did the art, i did the technical stuff, with leon on call for consultation. downloads for windows or mac. purify your computer today.”

The Crowdfunding Experience (AltDevBlogADay)
“So, just recently, I was asked to give a 90 min lecture in my home city regarding crowdfunding after managing to run a successful campaign myself in mid 2012. The lecture is pretty long, but I’ll include the video at the end in case anyone’s interested in sitting through the whole thing. If not, I was also asked to write a shortened version of it for people to read, so I thought I’d share it here.”

Mew-Genics Teaser Week 14, THE MAIL! (Team Meat Blog)
“The mail in Mew-genics is an exciting thing.. you never know what you might get! maybe it will be an invitation to the next Cat Fight? maybe your children sent you a dollar bill… could be a notice of violation from the county about the smell, or more importantly your next SSI check!”

Mavis Minecraft Teaches Coding – Part 4 (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“What’s left? Well, I’ll wrap up a few loose ends by introducing you to some nifty coding shortcuts called functions, tell you how to wirelessly communicate between computers using rednet modems, and explain how bundled cables work so you can make complex creations.”

Octodad’s Path to Popularity (Octodad Blog)
“It’s probably not a stretch to say that the first Octodad became popular for two major reasons: it was quirky and it was free.  But aside from that, it’s interesting to take a look at what has really helped push us into the spotlight over the past couple of years since our release on October 31, 2010.  (As a disclaimer, I tried not to accidentally leave out key people who have helped us, but I apologize if I did!)”

Criminals are such toerags. There’s nothing worse that returning home after a gruelling day at work during which you’ve been verbally sparring with abrasive customers, only to find that some juvenile delinquent tosspot has broken into your house and stolen your Golden Grahams.

That’s nothing compared to the traumatic horrors DOT, a plucky astronaut with a perturbingly large head, has been through. Some cheeky little alien monster twerps have stolen the stardust from his home planet, and it’s now his job to get it back. On the other hand, he’s blessed with incredible agility and an upgradeable gun, so I’m hesitant to feel sorry for him.

Clearly, though, wielding an automatic firearm is a fat lot of good if you’re not going to use it, and use it DOT shall because DOT, an upcoming game from Spanish development studio 1coin, is a bona fide shoot-em-up with a welcome dose of run-and-jump elements. Taking place across ten different planets, the game pits noble Mr. DOT Esq. against ever-growing waves of extra-terrestrial baddies, culminating in three tense and frenetic boss battles to take one’s reflexes and manual dexterity to task. Further sprucing up proceedings are a dynamic attribute system and a capital range of secret items to quench the thirst of would-be intergalactic collectors.

This might be one of the biggest things happening in the indie game scene for the surrounding months. Because We May is set up by Ron Carmel of 2D Boy and its principle and upcoming action will make quite the splash.

The belief behind Because We May is that developers should set their own prices for games and not decided by anyone else. Due to the rise of many digital stores, indie developers have been fortunate to live out this dream. On the official site it reads:

“We rely on the ability to promote our games for our livelihood and control over pricing is an important tool for this purpose.”

We’re living in good times for developer freedom but now is the time to acknowledge that. So, from May 24th to June 1st, Because We May is celebrating the online stores that allow indie game developers to set their own prices by providing huge discounts on many, many indie games across PC and and mobile. If you’re a developer you can opt for your game to be a part of this by registering your game on this page before May 22nd.

What games are already participating? Well, some of the titles include World of Goo (of course), Braid, Avadon: The Black Fortress, Swift*Stitch, Frozen Synapse, Vessel, Sword & Sworcery EP, Spirits, EDGE, Canabalt…seriously, we’re barely scratching the surface here.

You can see full lists of the game for each platform by clicking on their respective links:

• Direct From Developer
• iOS App Store
• Mac App Store
• Google Play
• Steam
• Other Stores

This is really a rather exciting week full of discounted, high quality games so you should most definitely be excited. You can get games for a discounted price and you’ll be supporting indie game development too. Everyone’s a winner!

You can find out more information on Because We May over on the official website.

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Zaxis Games has released version 0.0.2 of 99 Levels To Hell which is very playable even in this early state – dungeon crawler fans, this is worth a try.

Dungeon crawlers may not be the most obscure type of game, in fact there’s quite a few of them around nowadays, but 99 Levels To Hell certainly garnered our attention and is continuing to do so. With top hat and giant moustache ready, the main character in the game awaits you to take control of him to shoot and dig his way out of the decrepit buried mansion he finds himself trapped. Why go down? Well, unfortunately for this gentleman the only way out is through hell – that’s got to suck.

Luckily, the game itself doesn’t stuck and after having a quick playthrough of this 10 level build, I found myself quite fond of the game’s quirky nature. With a mouse controlled sidescrolling shooter outset, combined with a dungeon crawler with roguelike elements – I could certainly see myself putting some decent hours into the game over its development. Bats, rats and more obscure creatures appear as you travel on down, shooting through the dirt like many a Minecraft venture and using bombs sparingly to grab the key vital to proceed to the next level. Your gun can also be used to shoot barrels and chests to collect gold which you can spend on items in the store.

One thing that stands out in the game is the atmosphere which still needs some work but definitely has the footholds established. This is achieved through the game’s lighting which keeps you in the dark about what’s up ahead but still highlights parts of the level for visual splendour. On top of that, the music and various sounds are not too creepy but certainly weird enough to throw you off at times with the odd “am I hearing things” thought going through my mind.

Well anyway, I implore you to try it out yourself, it’s a free download of course and can be grabbed with this link.

More information on 99 Levels To Hell can be found on the game’s official website.

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The developer behind Cobalt Runner for the PSP – your portable Mirror’s Edge fix – is now remaking the game for the PS Vita with lots of level creation and sharing ambition.

Cobalt Runner was an anticipated Quake mod amongst the PSP community for its capturing of freerunning on the portable device. Not much came of it in the end though and people were disappointed that it promised so much but came to nothing. However, the developer has suddenly appeared again and has decided to work on the game for the PS Vita.

A couple of years have passed so their plans for the game have changed a little, as you can read below:

“The new premise is that of a social game, more or less. You create levels by placing objects ala Trackmania or Modnation Racers, and then can race against people online for global high scores or just chill out and play game modes as the map cycle rotates through user generated maps.”

If this does manage to make it out of the developer’s hands and into players then this should be a popular game, presuming everything comes together. At the moment the development process is still very early as the game is being built from scratch in the PS Vita SDK. After just a few days, the developer has released a bit of gameplay which has unfortunately been recorded with an iPhone, but you can still make it out.

Hopefully some better quality media assets will be on the way soon. For now, you can have a look at what the game looked like as intended for the PSP back in 2009 right here – it looks to be pretty much the same kind of thing.

More information on Cobalt Runner can be found on its official IndieDB page.

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No related posts were found, so here's a consolation prize: More ‘Journey’! Why Not? “Accolades” Trailer.

Fallen City, an educational puzzle-meets-real-time-strategy game for Windows PC and Mac, is now available to play for free, developers Big Robot have revealed.

Commissioned by Channel 4, a UK-based television network, Fallen City was created with the intention of highlighting the underlying implications and issues related to modern city life. As such, the inhabitants of the titular Fallen City, having endured years of oppression and neglect, are, to put it mildly, a little ticked off. In fact, a small pocket of them are taking it upon themselves to vandalise and destroy large sections of the urban dwelling, threatening to disintegrate the moral fabric of society in one fell swoop. Problematic.

As the solitary voice of reason sent in to bring balance to proceedings, it’s the player’s job to make sure the local population may once again live in a blissful state of harmonic cohesion. By constructing the correct buildings from the rubble laid out in the vandals’ wake, one must think carefully about what the Fallen City residents require in order to return to a normal way of life. Of course, that means that certain city designs and architectural arrangements will prove more effective in combating the prevalent civil unrest, which is where the game’s emphasis on player judgement is made paramount to ultimate success.

Fallen City can be downloaded through E4, one of Channel 4′s subsidiary services.

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Would-be handheld developers have received a boost today with the news that Sony’s Playstation Suite has now entered its Open Beta phase.

In essence, what that means is that anyone looking to experiment with the development tools for the Playstation Vita and the Sony Experia Play can do so for free through the PS Suite Development Assistant application, now available to all developers for a limited period of time. Once the Developer Program for Playstation Suite is granted its full release, currently slated to be at some point during 2012, a $99 per year payment will be required for the continued use of the service, along with the mandatory signature of a contract to validate any future developed content.

Although Sony is still ironing out some of the finer details of the programme, it’s been revealed that validated content will be restricted to paid content, meaning that free-to-play games without the support of micro-transactions are a no-go. In-game purchasing, however, appears to be permitted, but developers wanting to implement such a system must wait for it to be integrated into a scheduled update at some stage during the Open Beta stage.

Undecided too are the exact price structures we can expect to see once independently-developed content see the light of day, and it’s also unclear what percentage of sales profits will go to the developers. Sony has, however, stated that pricing will be determined at a rate “based on current market conditions,” for whatever that might be worth.

What this means for indie game development remains unclear as this new venture breaks into its infancy, but it’s difficult not to arouse at least a modicum of curiosity. Could this mark the beginning of a new dawn for independent development beyond the predominantly PC-centric market? Is such an idea wrought with naivete? One thing’s for sure; we’d be interested in reading what the IGM community has to say.

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Been trying to make maps in Oxeye’s latest title, Cobalt? Well forget everything you know as it’s all been changed around but fear not – there is a guide to help you get started.

You may be thinking, “what else can Oxeye add to Cobalt to make it even more awesome?” Well, the answer to that is making it more user-friendly it would seem. As it is, the game already comes with multiplayer, 2D platforming, bullet-time action. We are of course talking about Cobalt‘s v103 update which eliminates more bugs, adds more maps and tweaks plenty of other features.

The biggest update, like we’ve been shouting about, is to the map editor. Unfortunately, there seem to be so many changes that Oxeye have not listed them, but those familiar with the editor will no doubt spot them soon enough. If you find yourself stuck upon using editor, then there’s plenty of guides written up by the community to help you out.

For the basics though, you may consider consulting the Alpha update post itself where the developers have had a go at providing the basics of the editor themselves. You can also find the changelog written up over there too. If you haven’t purchased Cobalt yet, then there’s no time like the present – if you order now you’ll get a discount off the final price too!

More information on Cobalt can be found on the game’s official website.

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