Have you ever worked late at night in an office? Have you worked alone? Have you ever found yourself pursued by demonic forces with an unknown, malevolent agenda? Whether you can identify with one, two, or three of those questions, One Late Night is a short indie horror game that aims to capture a banal scenario that most people can identify with, and turn it into a nightmare.

You are an unnamed graphic designer working overtime in your office when strange things begin to happen, and it’s up to you to find the clues that will reveal the true nature of the haunting and help you escape. The developer Black Curtain Studio explains that, “The basic idea is that players who have been in similar situations, and worked with similar office jobs, will relate themselves to the game setting and scenario and become immersed.”

In the latest free update there have been a lot of bug fixes, including bug fixes in the ghost AI, hiding mechanics, candle mechanics, text dialogues, a fullscreen fix, as well as several additions including a sprint function, saving and loading, highlighting around objects you can interact with, and a simplified linux terminal in-game. If you missed out on trying One Late Night in its last build, you can experience the terror in the new and improved build.

]]> http://www.diygamer.com/2013/01/free-short-horror-one-late-night-receives-an-update/feed/ 0 http://www.diygamer.com/2012/04/make-it-evergreen-banished-prototype-footage/ http://www.diygamer.com/2012/04/make-it-evergreen-banished-prototype-footage/#comments Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:34:21 +0000 Chris Priestman http://www.diygamer.com/2012/04/make-it-evergreen-banished-prototype-footage/

City (or rather, village) building games have to be fairly unique to be bothered about these days but catching our eye today is Banished. Why? Well, as far as art assets are concerned, Banished is looking rather luscious with its picturesque portrayal of simple village life.

The trees sway in the breeze (right before they get cut down), the grazing animals soak in the sun and the wooden houses lay before a patch of leafy crops. It’s idyllic and lovely to see, but this is just a prototype of things to come in Banished. You’ll probably realise that as soon as the cuboid villagers start rustling around and doing their chores.

This gameplay below is from a couple of months ago though and since then the developers have put even more work into the art assets – the latest being the houses which come in a whole variety of different appearances, with a Herbalist’s Hut, a Town Hall and a Physicians Office being flaunted about. These join the already present farms, orchards, fields, hunters lair, warehouses, blacksmiths, fishing docks and pastures that are already available to build. Of course, being the type of game that it is, to erect such buildings you’re going to have to collect resources, manage them and then distribute them with a little bit of thought.

As said, Banished is still under heavy development but we thought it was worth sharing just so you could escape the dull greys that no doubt outline the view out of your window.

More information on Banished can be found on the developer’s official website.

Thanks Gamin.ru!

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The talking’s over and the gloves are off. It’s time for battle.

That’s because the Indie Buskers, whose 48-hour campaign to produce five unique indie games, have launched into gear. Today marks the start of two long, hard days of toil in the quest for gaming nirvana, or at least the closest one can come to nirvana without a monumental budget, a lengthy development phase or an annual subscription to Metal Hammer magazine.

Coming from Sophie Houlden is a time-travelling stealth game in which you’re apparently supposed to evade alternative versions of yourself caught in the time vortex/space continuum/whatever else the Star Trek fraternity decides is Kosher right now. It’s called Rose and Time, which just goes to show that there aren’t enough herbal puns in the gaming industry today.

Next is a virtual sunlight-blocking escapade that might just involve a vampire or two. It’s the brainchild of Rat King Entertainment.

Coming from Sos Sosowski is a conventional old being that the age old pursuit of corporate dominance. A roguelike game pitting you as an office employee on your first day of work, it’s your goal to reach the top of the ladder and become the CEO, presumably taking advantage of all the job insurance, sick pay and business miles along the way. Sosowski calls it Super Office Stress - a pretty killer bit of acronymous word play.

Ever fancied being a pirate? How about a pirate who wants to be an astronaut? Pekka Kujansuu obviously thinks so.

Finally, we’ve got a tower defense game in the style of Pac-Man, courtesy of Ido Yehieli. Well, there’s a thing. Pakkuman’s Defense is its name, and you’d better believe it’s some serious business for the little yellow nipper.

With the pressure cooker now in full blast, you can follow the progress of the Indie Buskers on their official site.

Don’t forget that the success of the project could very well depend on the all-important wildcard of public funding. Donations can be made through the official site, with all proceeds going towards the ongoing production of each component of what will ultimately be distributed as a fully-fledged bundle. As of this writing, the Buskers have raised over $1,250, with around $300 coming in the last hour alone.

Take a look at our official Indie Buskers reveal for more information on this exciting new game jam.

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Capybara’s Super T.I.M.E Force rocked my world. I had seen the trailer and was intrigued but since I’m not a huge shooter or a Contra fan, I wasn’t particularly excited about the game. Man, how that has changed. Super T.I.M.E Force, even in this early stage, is one of the best indie games that I have played so far this year.

At its core, Super T.I.M.E Force is a platform shooter similar to Metal Slug or Contra. At the start of a level, you select a character and are immediately dropped into the action.  For the PAX Demo, you started with 3 characters: a soldier wielding a gatling gun, a sniper with a laser that can shoot through walls and a melee dude with a riot shield. After selecting your character, you’re thrown right into the action but the beauty of Super T.I.M.E Force is that you are not penalized for dying. 

In fact dying is fun because it means that the game will rewind to the start and allow you to select another character. Your previous character’s ghost recording will fight alongside you and you can even save previous versions of yourself and then go back and add on to that recording. It’s hard to explain but exceptionally fun. Hopefully the video below that I captured off screen will help people understand the flow of the game.

The levels are short and the objective is to simply get one character to the finish alive. Each death reduces your life count and the developers told me that it is possible to beat a level with just one life – it’s just not as much fun.

The second level of the demo introduced a pixilated Rambo character with a Bazooka that you could select after you saved him. The demo culminated in a very difficult boss battle, leaving me to immediately ask Capy what their plans were regarding multiplayer, the XBLA release and the number of character classes. Capy answered that they have some ideas around multiplayer, but that this game has always been a fun side-project around the office and that they would like to keep it that way for a while and have no dedicated team or timeframe for getting the title out on XBLA. My response is the same as the conclusion of their first teaser trailer, “NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

More information on on Super T.I.M.E Force can be found over on the game’s official website.

Frozenbyte say they are huge supporters of Linux and as such have released the Linux version of Trine 2 for purchase though it’s still a beta version.

At last, those of you out there who use Linux for their gaming needs can get hold of Trine 2 right now for the asking price of $14.99. If you’re looking to be rid of some more money though, for $24.99 you could pick up the Collector’s Edition which comes with a digital artbook and the game’s soundtrack.

While still in its beta phase, the Linux version of Frozenbyte’s co-op platformer and graphical wonder contains all of the features the other versions do, including online co-op. The only difference is that when the game is fully realised on the platform, Linux users will be able to play online with Mac users too.

A variety of recent distributions are supported, including Ubuntu 10.10/11.04/11.10, Fedora 16, OpenSUSE 12.1 and Linux Mint 12. Frozenbyte say that other distributions could work as well but may require additional library installations manually. The Linux version of Trine 2 will also come to other distribution channels later in the year, including Desura and Gameolith.

The port to Linux was of big importance for Frozenbyte, whose CEO Lauri Hyvärinen, said:

“Our biggest motivation for the native Linux version was really more of a “because we can”, and also to prove a point that it’s not that difficult to release a great modern game on Linux. We have a few guys here at the office who are already using Linux as their primary operating system at home, so we see a bright future ahead for Linux. Linux users have also been a huge part of the Humble Bundle initiative and clearly there’s a big market for games and other software on Linux, and it’s up to us and other developers to make gaming on Linux worthwhile.

But we have to be realistic about it because we don’t have any advertising or other marketing going on, so financially our expectations are modest. We will be happy if we sell a thousand units or thereabout during the first few weeks.”

Frozenbyte’s Senior Programmer, Jukka Kokkonen, also revealed that the port to Linux ended up being a lot easier than expected:

“Linux porting of Trine 2 turned out to be easier than expected as we already had a working Mac OS X version, which also used an OpenGL renderer. The initial OpenGL rendering port took less than 2 days, after which the renderer was mostly functional, with only some bugs to iron out.

On the other hand, though it was easier than expected to port Trine 2 on Linux, testing and fixing issues caused by differing distributions and release versions turned out to be a bit tedious. These issues and the various system configurations will keep the support people here at Frozenbyte busy after the game is released, but hopefully we will also get some help from the Linux community as well. Overall I think that Trine 2 shows that Linux can provide a proper gaming experience and we are very excited to see how Linux users react to the game.”

More information on Trine 2 can be found on the game’s official website.

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