Dropping us a line from Cape Town in South Africa, Henk Roux didn’t want to just say here’s my game, Stingray Incursion, check it out. Oh no – Henk decided to give us a lot more detail and most of it is pretty interesting stuff. Having worked for 12 years in the business systems development industry, Henk grew tired (who wouldn’t?) of the work and decided to try his hand at making games. Luckily, he has some experience with 3D modelling and has always wanted to create a game that people would want to play, not necessarily become a full time developer though – just that one title would be enough.
Thus was born helloserve Productions which has been Henk’s part time escape for the last year. The game he has been working on is still very much in pre-alpha but has just been submitted to IndieCade 2012 so Henk is keen to share it.
“I love military hardware”, began Henk on his quest to inform. “But I don’t want to spend my time on the very complicated simulator titles like Lock-On. There are very few titles that manages to bridge that gap of absolute realism to fun game play in my experience (the HAWX series comes to mind), and that is from what Stingray was born. So my challenge to myself was to bring realistic elements to an experience that is uncomplicated and intuitive, but without dumbing it down.”
“The second part of the vision stems from the old-school games, the (mostly) top-down or isometric, tiled world view point where shoot-em’ups and dodge-em’ups reign. I wanted to bring that into 3D (I love 3D!), make it perceptibly more immersive and get away from stupid 2D HUDs and interfaces so prevalent in other 3D titles, and mix the shoot-em’up skill set with the flight mechanics skill set.”
Henk is hoping to have a randomly generated world each time the game is started up. Balancing has been a big issue for Henk as the 3D nature of the game means the player can be shot at from all directions and is limited to only one view at any one time. This was solved by making the bullets less damaging and steadily increasing an enemies accuracy the longer the player is in their vicinity – so they’re not absolutely devastating. This mechanic also ensures the player is quick to get in and out of certain areas as fast as possible, so things don’t become overwhelming.
You can actually download the demo of Stingray Incursion submitted to IndieCade by following this link, otherwise you may as well watch the gameplay video below:
More information on Stingray Incursion can be found on the game’s official website.
We previewed a lot, dare I say a butt-load, of games at IndieCade last month. Playing fantastically weird indies wasn’t the only thing to do though, there was also a lot of discussion going on. We were able to stop by a couple of the panels going on throughout the festival with camera in tow, and are please to be able to pass them along here.
Below are a trio of videos that make up this year’s Well-Played Session II Panel, which included Phil Fish and Hye Yeon Nam going over various development aspects of their respective titles Fez and Kiss Controller. (Special Thanks to the IndieCade folks for allowing us to record!)
You think I would have been satisfied after we scored a solid hands-on session and brief chat with March Ten Bosch regarding his in-development puzzle platformer Miegakure, but I wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, the game looks, sounds, and feels great. Marc’s a pleasure to talk with too of course, but Miegakure is as mysterious as indie games come.
Subscribing to Jonathan Blow’s design philosophy (create a unique mechanic, and then fully explore it), it isn’t surprising that his title has been in development for over two years, and still is just a vague riddle thousands of gamers can’t wait to unwrap. While we’ll have to remain patient for a PC/console release, Marc was nice enough to enlighten us on all the aforementioned. Divulging a bit on a content creation system in mind for the game as well.
[Correspondent Ken Ellis continues his IndieCade 2011 previews with his hands-on impressions of Facepalm's The Swapper.]
The youthful duo of Facepalm Games came to IndieCade this year with their finalist (and award winner) The Swapper in tow, giving us an opportunity to check out their in-development puzzle platformer’s unique cloning mechanic at work firsthand. Set in space you, as the fearless spaceman, must journey through a god forsaken abandoned rock. Doors, switches, and eerie music try to block you in every way possible. Thankfully, you have your handy-dandy cloning gun. With it you can create up to four clones of yourself and switch your consciousnesses from one to the other if you would have the notion to do so.
The Swapper may be reminiscent of a certain Misadventures P.B. Winterbottom. Right off the bat, yeah they are a bit the same. Both are puzzle-based, and rely on a cloning mechanic to get through. However, The Swapper has a much darker tone than P.B. Winterbottom, and the puzzles are of a different breed as well.
For one, there is no time manipulation undertone to The Swapper. Everything is in real time including the clones. The puzzles in The Swapper sometimes uses a mechanic of lights that can interfere with the working of your swapper gun. Red Lights completely block the ability to swap between your clones, and blue lights make it impossible to clone anything in them. This can make some puzzles in the game very complicated and mind bending to figure out.
This game is for anyone who likes their puzzle games with a bit more gloomy/adult feel to them. The overwhelming eerie despair of the game lends an interesting feel to the game that some of you may take a liking to. The release date and platforms have not been determined yet, so keep an eye out. Here’s some gameplay footage provided by our camera, and my thumbs:
[Correspondent Ken Ellis sits down for a meal with Fuzago's Bistro Boulevard, as our extensive IndieCade 2011 coverage presses on.]
Fuzago Games came to IndieCade this year to show off their time management game and finalist Bistro Boulevard. The title focuses on the fine-dining side of the restaurant industry.
What’s nice about Bistro, that I don’t particularly enjoy in other games in the genre, is that the game doesn’t require you to actually make the food and serve it. You hire cooks and waiters to do that stuff, while you attend to the important matters. Instead of micromanaging every aspect of the game, you as the manager, deal with the macro side of things. You pick the daily menu based on what the customers are currently looking to eat, hire and upgrade your staff, and update the aesthetics of your establishment.
At first you start off with only a small hole-in-the-wall eatery, but as time goes by you can earn stars for your restaurant which unlock other, larger, and/or better venues for you to manage. (Including specialty restaurants such as Chinese and Italian places.) Sounds easy enough, but keeping a long line of customers happy, fed, and making a profit while handling those tasks is no easy feat!
The game is fun, but may get a bit thin for anyone who isn’t into the time-management simulation stuff. If you like the Tycoon games or titles like them, definitely check this game out. If you are unsure, they have a demo for anyone to look at. The game costs $10 full, so a pretty good buy all together. Here’s a gameplay video we put together from footage of the game we grabbed earlier this month in Culver City:
[Correspondent Ken Ellis passes on impressions from his hands-on with Deepak Fights Robots, winner of Best Gameplay Design at IndieCade 2011.]
If you read the title of this article and thought Deepak Fights Robots is about anything other than a dude fighting robots, you’re living in a dream world! A dream world where Deepak fights ROBOTS!
Deepak Fights Robots is a 2-D side-scrolling game where you take control of Deepak, a mild mannered man who went to work one day and got sent to another world that happened to be filled with robots. In this crayon art style world, Deepak must collect each orb in the room he is in while avoiding all robots. This is in an effort to make the super orb appear, which turns Deepak into SUPER Deepak. Super Deepak can kill all the robots in one hit, and once this is done the game moves Deepak onto the next level to clear out more robots.
While that may sound rather simple in regards to gameplay, there is a lot to DFR that make it stand out. Each level plays like Pac-Man, in that exits on one side of the room send you to the other side. This can get you out of some tight jams. The game has multiple routes, as well, to take as you progress. These routes are not obvious, but changes the way upcoming levels are laid out. Which way you go depends on how you play each level. Going only for the power obs may send you one way, and getting everything on a level such as the power orbs and the vegetarian only style food items might send you somewhere else.
The robot types are wide and varied. The game has the classic run toward you robots, but there are some neat variations. Some move around wildly and unpredictably , some follow only when you are near, and some that even precisely counter your movements. There’s even a cool cameo enemy of a solid color robot man who can change his gravity.
The game is out now for only $5 on PC, MAC, Linux, and has some custom levels on the way. Any robot hating, adventure loving, platformer gamers should check it out here. Have a look at the gameplay footage we were able to nab earlier this month at the event:
Haunted Temple Studios Skulls of the Shogun was shown as a finalist this year at IndieCade, and it did not disappoint!
Set in the afterlife after a powerful shogun warlord dies in battle, the Shogun is told that he must stand in line to get into heaven. Not to be one to wait or be told what to do, the Shogun does what he does best. He declares war on the afterlife! Starting small, you attract more and more powerful soldiers to his side as they won’t gain access to heaven unless they are accompanied by their shogun. These include foot soldiers, cavalry, and cleric foxes who heal you and your group.
The game plays really well as a strategy experience. Each unit in your battalion get a turn to position itself, attack if possible, then get a second shorter range movement to re-position itself after a move. At first this makes it seem that battles take a long time to get through, but usually each attack made is countered by another attack from the enemy so many times creatures get hit twice in a round to speed thing up a bit.
Each unit varies on its strengths and ranges so creating your favorite kind of army is very easy to do. Be warned that if your unit dies, it is dead and gone forever–and if your Shogun dies you lose! (I guess they go to the after-after-life with an even longer line.) Clerics can help heal you troops, however, so they can be saved but do so sparingly as spells cost rice to cast and rice isn’t cheap in the wastelands of the dead. There is a really fun multiplayer mode, but that’s another tale…
Skulls of the Shogun is a light-hearted, fast moving strategy title for anyone who enjoys the intense and fun side of the genre. It’s set for both PC and XBLA, but not until spring 2012. To hold you over until then, here’s some footage we grabbed during our demo session:
[Correspondent Ken Ellis continues his IndieCade previews with Micahel Molianri's BasketBelle.]
There are a wide variety of games at IndieCade every year. Most are fun, some are strange, and a few are metaphors of human emotion. BasketBelle, by Michael Molinari, is all of these. The game is the story of a young boy, gifted with the skill of basketball, who is on a quest to find something (I don’t want to particularly say what yet) important to him. The opponents you face are not so much actual people, but obstacles he must overcome in his life. A rare sports based game that makes you reflect on life.
The game game plays well and looks fantastic. It has a cardboard/chalk/paint style artwork that works fluidly with the game mechanics. The controls are simple, just standard directions and two action buttons along with a couple trick/techniques. These play great on the basketball court, and on the few adventure style levels that are sprinkled throughout the game.
The game isn’t too terribly difficult–I was able to beat my opponent blob quite handily, but this was only the first enemy, so I’d assume it gets more difficult as the game continues. I should also mention the music in the game, specifically the bass being connected to the basketball. This is interesting in that whenever the ball hits the ground a deep hard bass sound occurs. It connects you to the game in a unique way, I found.
BasketBelle has no official release date yet, but from what I saw it looks like it will come out on a console of some sort. Sports game fans and artsy game fans should find a nice middle ground with this one. Check it out when it’s available, and for now check out some gameplay footage we captured last weekend:
[Correspondent Ken Ellis shares his thoughts on physics-puzzler The Bridge, which was on display as a finalist at IndieCade 2011 in Culver City, CA this past weekend.]
Presented at IndieCade this year was Hypercube Games game The Bridge. It is a gravitation rotation game, in which the world can be turned left or right to allow your character access to otherwise impossible areas. While the idea behind the game is not very new (the concept has been done with many browser games) the direction The Bridge takes it is both deep and engaging. The game is what would happen if Braid met M.C. Escher.
You control a philosopher of sorts who goes on a mental journey through impossible worlds of perspective. As you move through levels walls can become platforms, and pillars can become floors. Most levels are focused on you getting to a key and opening a door with it. While relatively easy at first, it gets much harder as levels become more insane, and crazy smiling balls appear that must be controlled while you rotate the world lest they hit and kill you. Vortexes also appear to trap you in place while you travel. Thankfully, if you die you have an option to “Backtrack” and rewind time a few seconds before your death to prevent it from happening, or you can simply restart the level entirely.
This is a very artsy game with a complete slant toward puzzle solving. If that’s your thing then pick it up when it comes out (release date TBD) on XBLA and PC. Here’s a bit of gameplay footage we captured:
[Correspondent Ken Ellis is back on the scene to provide a slew of IndieCade hands-on previews. He leads off with none other than the highly decorated psychological exploration title Antichamber.]
Featured at IndieCade this year (and about every other gaming convention in this hemisphere) was Alexander Bruce’s Antichamber, a game of exploration and non-linear thinking. You as a player start off in a large room with a large map on one side and a clock on the other. At first the map is empty, but as you explore more of the area you can come back to this room and teleport to anywhere you have previously been. Thankfully, you can always come back to the starting room with the “ESC” key, becuase this game will grind your mind to dust!
Antichamber plays heavily with impossible looking puzzles, perspective, and out-of-the-box-thinking. Puzzles start off rather simple, but ramp up quick in intensity and confusion. The mainly monochromatic surroundings lacking almost completely in shading may seem like poor art style, but in reality this puts the player in a constant state of discovery since everything appears the same (but isn’t) and many puzzles require you to go back or send you in endless loops.
By the good grace of god each puzzle starts with a small panel on the wall that gives you a hint as to figure out the problem at hand. These panels, however, are often cryptic themselves! Eventually you are given a gun reminiscent of the Portal gun, but instead of shooting portals it can shoot and adsorb small blocks that are used in a multitude of ways such as stepping stones, platform holders, and keys.
This game is trippy as hell, and will bend your perception of the world into impossible angles. I would recommend Antichamber to anyone who likes puzzle games, or likes being tricked. No announced release date yet, but should be a clear pick up for all the single player-minded game fans out there. Here’s some footage of yours truly expanding cerebral horizons:
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