Archive for the ‘ games ’ Category

GDC, and a bit of the old ultracrunch…

(I’m sure this is a fairly common combination.)

Just a quick note to say, I’ll be in San Francisco from tomorrow, until the 4th of next month.  I’ll be at GDC, hanging about, eating tasty foods, showing NG+ around (contact me if you’d like to play, as I’m going to try and arrange a 4p session, even if it’s in the hotel lobby!  Also there to meet virtual friends ‘IRL’, some of whom for the first time, and cheer on Terry and Cactus and other friends at the IGF awards (best of luck to all nominees, of course!)

Be sure to leave me a message via email or twitter if you want to link up, due to the crunch I’ve not been able to make any plans except my flight and hotel so far.

Talking of crunch, I’ve barely slept this month while adding even more new things to Lone Survivor for the PlayStation consoles (and have even seen it running in a early state, yay!)  As well as the stuff I mentioned before, there’s now another new piece of music, more new items (taking us up to 22 new ones, for bullet-point fans), new sound effects, another new ending (there are now five instead of the original three), another large and complex location, a new enemy type, lots more new dialogue, new lighting effects, even a new portrait of You (hopefully it’s not too much of a spoiler, I’m trying to keep all this stuff nice a surprising for you guys, but…):

 (See if you can find out how to unlock it!)

Also note that Lone Survivor is currently 50% off in the spring sales on Steam!  Go, tell your friends etc!  (It would be much appreciated.) 

Lone Survivor for PS3 + PSVita

Where is this, huh?
 
Hi everyone.  It’s my great pleasure to be here today to announce the details of the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita ports of Lone Survivor. I’ve been so exited to tell you guys about it for the last few weeks, but I had to hold it in until it was finalised! Anyone who knows me or follows my twitter feed will be aware that I’m a massive Sony fan and literally play 95% of the games I play on my PS3.  It’s the console that fits me the best, and it’s the controller I imagine when I’m designing my games: so this really is a dream come true!
 
Where is this, huh?
 
But for those who missed it the first time round, and what with it having been out almost a year now (my goodness!) … what is Lone Survivor?  It’s a game very personal to me that took almost seven years to get right.  I guess you could call it a blend of ‘Lynchian’ psychological horror, point’n’click adventure mechanics and a virtual pet-like ‘physical and mental survival simulation’ – the idea being that how you choose to survive is up to you. It’s the last record of a nameless, masked protagonist, holed-up in a city full of diseased monsters, starving and exhausted. When we join him on his quest, he has already begun to question whether all of what he sees is even real.
 
My hope is that you can play through the game in the style that suits you best – I wanted to try and make a role-playing game with meaningful choices. It’s an experiment in making every insignificant fact in the game having an invisible, or murkily visible effect on your outcome, however small. And also to try and get away from showing statistics so that people ‘feel’ their way around… perhaps people are more inclined to role-play when that’s the case?  There’s no longer a need to ‘min-max’ everything? And I think it sort of came together? It’s certainly an area I’m interested in exploring in my future games.
 
To my amazement, Lone Survivor has turned into something of a phenomenon over the last year. Since its release, it’s been nominated for a Golden Joystick, picked by many blogs and magazines as Horror Game Of The Year, and has received many glowing reviews. Sales have been beyond anything I could have imagined: I only wanted to be able to fund the next game, and that bas been done several times over, probably. Its story seems to provoke heated debate amongst fans and critics – I never get tired of reading people’s different interpretations, that has definitely been the highlight of sharing it with so many people. People seem to love the music, the weird mechanics, fans write to me about the ‘depth’, ‘realistic treatment of adult themes’ and ‘warm humour’ in the writing etc.
 
As a brief personal aside… my late papa, Johnny Byrne, who the game is dedicated to, was a writer. And Lone Survivor actually contains at least a brief novel’s worth of text. I found this out when I hacked it out of the game ready for translation! It’s the first large piece of writing I’ve ever released into the world, and it did take far longer than I imagined, and it didn’t click with everybody… And to get a bit deep for a second, a large theme was his own illness, and me dealing with that… But, basically, what I’m trying to say is, for people to get what I’m trying to go for, and maybe even to take something away from it… Well, I’m completely floored and humbled. I really could never have expected or hoped for this to happen. I just needed to make this game, even though I had no idea if it would connect with anyone else. More than anything, I wanted Lone Survivor to be a game that approaches issues rarely touched on in games – the effects of grief, mental health issues, the examination of drug use and abuse. And, somehow, the stars aligned and the good news is I’m able to keep making games for the foreseeable future, because I really do love it!
 
I have the utmost confidence in London studio, Curve, who are handling the conversion duties, to produce the ultimate version of the game. They are moving into publishing with such excellent titles as Thomas Was Alone, and I’m proud to be joining their stable! It is still important for very small development teams, such as myself, to have help in publishing on console platforms. And, while Sony are doing great work to reduce the amount of bureaucracy needed to make it possible, and I applaud them for this, it is still impractical for a one-man team to self-publish (go through certification, age ratings, translations etc.) As I said, this has been a life-long dream for me, to release a game on a great console with a bespoke controller, and this shows just how far things have come that a one-man team can do that with minimal help from a publisher. Whether that still makes this an indie release or not is up to you to decide (see Spelunky’s Derek Yu’s great article that deals with this subject.) To me it’s just a word that’s occasionally useful to give context, not something I give much weight – I consider myself a maker of games first and foremost! The main thing is that all the content is being made by me, with my own funding, without any external input.  Besides which, Curve are an entirely independent entity, so this is a very grey area and again shows me how easy it can be to get hung up on the word. Anyway, the important thing is that their excellent track record speaks for itself, and that their own games have a really good sense of feel (something that’s very important to me personally.) I’m positive that they’ll only improve the game with their years of console development experience, and are just the right people for the job. And of course I’m overseeing it closely at every stage to make sure it looks, sounds and plays exactly right!
 

Extra secret bonus stuff And stuff… 

One exciting aspect of this announcement for me is that I’ve secretly been devoting a lot time and resources into adding additional content into the game, initially exclusive to the PS3 / Vita. I even disappeared to another country for two weeks to work on it in complete isolation, to get back into the right vibe (making sure to eat and sleep poorly!) Of course, there will be Trophies, Cross-Buy and Cross-Play support, but I’ve also been working on (amongst one or two other surprises) more than twenty new items, new dialogue with all NPC’s, two extensive new side quests, two new locations, and a brand new ‘Yellow’ ending, featuring a new piece of music for the ending.  I’m looking into touch control for movement and inventory use.  The idea is that this version really will be enhanced in every way, smoother, nicer to control, with a lot of little extras that don’t change the game itself, just add to it (in fact, almost all of the content is only accessible in … wait for it … NEW GAME+!).
 
I hope you enjoy the game. And for those who’ve already supported it, thankyou so much. I can’t wait to share the new content with all of you in the summer!
 
I don’t have anything to announce at this point regarding bringing the additional content to PC / Mac / Linux, at least until I can focus my resources on it after the release.  But it’s something I hope to do, so I’ll keep you posted about that!
 
I’ll leave you with a link to the new trailer, which you can also find on the Sony EU blog… Just click on the image at the top!
 
Cheers,
 
Jasper
 
PS More NEW GAME+ news to follow soon, it’s had a short break while I’ve been doing this, but I’m constantly testing and tweaking it!  I took it to the Local Multiplayer Picnic in Utrecht while I was in Holland last month, and it was a fantastic day.  Thanks to JW, Rami & friends for that! Be sure to pick up their Super Crate Box on your Vita if you have one!

The Soulsian Quest

Making a “Soulsian” game is very enjoyable to me.  I was thinking about this a lot the other night at the pub with Terry Cavanagh and another rabid DARK SOULS fan, during a five hour discussion about the game.  Having spent four years fighting to get a narrative-heavy game to work well with its mechanics, and replaying the same bits of narrative again and again until they worked, it’s refreshing to do something more design-focussed.  Of course, the theme is still really important to me (perhaps one of the things I value the most), but as with Lone Survivor I’ve decided not to share any details of the story until the game is released.  The games I make tend to come from the theme, rather than the mechanics, even with NG+, but this time its focus is more a blend of the two aspects.

NG+ Meet The Ranger

So, the nice thing is every game is different when you have this many mechanics and styles of play…  It means I have to devote a lot more time to balancing and playing the game, but that’s turning out to be a lot of fun with four players anyway, and giving me a lot to take home after each event I take the game to (I’ve been starting to ‘hit the road’ with it recently, now I have four quite different characters and the stats and weapon systems fleshed out, as well as the coop and VS game modes implemented.  You can switch modes at any time during the game now via the ‘+ Altars’.)

I’ve begun to build more of the world (which I’m trying not to show too much of because *spoilers*) but I can say that there are now multi-level areas working, like Dungeon Master, one of my all-time favourite RPG’s, you can fall down pits and the enemies can even follow you down there, or be found lurking when you reach the lower level because you lunged at them and sent them flying off a ledge.)  I want to make a lot of use of the grid-based nature of the game, and have Dungeon Master-like traps, pressure pads, all those things that require you to be a little observant when moving forward.  You can throw whatever you’re carrying, in either hand, not only to land in monsters’ faces stunning them temporarily while you make your escape, risking a valuable weapon or shield, but perhaps also to set off these fiendish traps before they find you instead?

As it stands, I’m planning to have no inventory except for the armour and helmet you wear, the two things you carry in your hands, and one support item.  Designs can be subject to change of course!  But I want to try and reduce and RPG to the fewest elements I can while still being able to feel like an RPG.  That’s a key thing in what I’m going for mechanically, I think?  And with up to four players on screen the GUI has to be as simple as possible, so my intended solution is to practically show all of it on the player, one of the reasons the animation takes so long, because the player must be able to use every item, in both hands, with four facing directions, in every suit and helmet!

So the game is still a long way from being finished in terms of content, but the gameplay is definitely getting to where I hoped it would be, and people seem to be having a lot of fun with it when I play with them.  I really look forward to sharing it with you all!  Just don’t expect it this year (unfortunately.)

One two a few more thing(s)…

I’m off today for a couple of weeks to work on a secret project.  So if I’m fairly quiet on email or twitter, that’s why!  I’m basically going to be internet-less for this time while I buckle down and get it done, but suffice to say it’s something exciting that I can hopefully announce soon!

– There’s no comments available at the moment just because I couldn’t hold back the spam any more.  Planning a website overhaul soon, I promise!

– I’ve also been doing some exciting music projects too, at least two new games will feature some of my guest tunes.  Hope to get into this more after NG+, if such a time ever exists.

– I’m finally going to my first IGF / GDC this year!  I’ll be in San Francisco for the whole week and a few days either side.  Hope to catch some of you there…

– Hope you’re all having a wicked 2013!

2013

It’s back.

I am going to finish this, after all. It may just take a while.

Happy new year, everyone!

Good news and…

Hello everyone!  It’s been a while since I last wrote, mainly because I’ve had to be absolutely sure I was going to post what I’m about to post.

There are two things I’d like to share with you…  Some good news and some not so good news.  If you’d prefer the good news first, skip to the later section!

The Bad News

NEW GAME+, the dungeon crawler I’ve been working away on for the last six months (I realise I never officially announced the name), is no more.

I have decided to abandon the project.  It’s been a very tough decision to make, quite heartbreaking really, but it IS the right thing to do.  It was too big for a single person to make.  This is the root of the problem.  It wasn’t that I fell out of love with the idea, just that I can’t physically do it.

The good thing about being a self-funded, one-man team is that I can drop a project without hurting any co-workers, without feeling pressure to complete something that isn’t working, and without being somehow responsible to investors.  It’s one of the reasons I prefer to remain a solo game creator, so that I feel less pressure to try and force something that doesn’t want to be forced, to remain agile so that I don’t need to flog an already dead horse.

I reached a point where it was getting very frustrating: the game demanded a lot of animation, very detailed level design, and a huge amount of gameplay code, all of which were taking so long that it felt excruciating.

I’d like to say sorry to any fans who were looking forward to it – it’s still a game I’d love to play, and should I ever have a team to work with in future, it’s definitely an idea I’d like to come back to.  I had an incredibly detailed story worked out (it’s not what it appeared!), which I won’t share in case the idea ever resurfaces.

For now, let’s take a minute’s silence and look through the work in progress shots, leading up to the first build that I shared with a few friends a week ago…

Initial mockup

First engine tests

First bits of level creation, writing the editor, figuring out the perspective etc…

Working out what sprites might look like…

Adding gameplay, weapons and AI…

So this is as far as I got with it.  It still had a long way to go before it was going to be fully playable, and yet it had taken so many months to reach this point. I realised, not for the first time, that I’d been too ambitious.  If you’ve followed Lone Survivor’s creation, you’ll see that there were quite a few failed versions of it in its wake.

So that is the story of NEW GAME+.  When considering my decision, I received this excellent piece advice from Stephen ‘The Catamites’, something it really helped to hear…

there’s no such thing as a trashed project, it always just gets subsumed into something else where you least expect it, so i won’t mourn new game +, even though it looked really cool. i am eagerly anticipating when the idea / images behind it suddenly appear in an unrelated dating sim or something some months hence…”


… and I think he’s absolutely right.

The Good News

That’s right, something wonderful has also happened in this time period.  I have something I’m very excited to announce:

LONE SURVIVOR is coming to PS3 and PS Vita!

It’ll be re-coded from scratch by Curve Studios in London, creators of a number of great PS3 games like Fluidity, Hydroventure and Explodemon.  It’ll be super-smooth running, and better yet (for my European cousins, at least) the plan is to include translations into French and German.

I’m greatly looking forward to this, as it’s been a dream of mine since childhood to release a game on console, and especially the Sony ones as I love what they do most of all.  Anyone who follows my twitter will know that I don’t tend to play games on PC, I really am a couch gamer, most happy on my PS3!  Lone Survivor was designed as a console game (in my head, anwyay.)  In fact, all the games I work on I really imagine being on console, or fantasise about, anyway!

So there is is…  With one door closing, another opens.

I’ll be sure to let you guys know when I figure out what my own next project will be.  Who knows, it might end up being the dating sim The Catamites suggests…

… For now there’s just a glorious blank sheet of white paper in front of me.

New Game

I think I have a good idea of what it is I want to work on, finally. It’s very rough and sketchy and won’t look like this exactly… but…

Basically it’s a combination of all the ideas I’ve been shooting around since the later parts of making LONE SURVIVOR, from dungeon crawler to sci-fi head-messing to whimsical platformer… or another way of looking at it may be Zelda x Demon’s Souls?  The story is a little weird, though. I have a prototype (using more basic top-down view a bit more like this):

It has two-handed combat, equipable weapons and rolling (I love rolling), but I’m now writing an engine to make this sort of Zelda-Phantom Hourglass type projection to try and make the environment more exciting, but unlike that game it will use sprites to convey the characters. I still have a good way to go before I can get this sort of look in-game, a lot of tools to write and art to draw.

It’s been through various prototypes and art styles, a bit like LS before it… Does that mean it bodes well? I guess we’ll see…

Original mockup

Various 2D & 3D prototypes for “New Game”

Fantastic Arcade

I’m looking forward to finally meeting a bunch of indies I only know from their online personas!  Seems like fellow Poppenkast, Vlambeer & cactus will be there, as well as fellow Cambridgian and fine friend, Terry Cavanagh, and a bunch of others from the US and EU.  Look forward to checking out the event, and I’ll be doing a ‘live director’s commentary’ on the Sunday afternoon, so I’ll catch you down there if you’re about.

First Aid Edition Art Card Update

I’ve had a bit of back pain in the last couple of days which was when I planned to finish off the art card pile (signing and numbering) and get at least the first half sent off, but unfortunately I am going to have to delay a little longer until I get back from Texas.  The selling of a game and setting up of a business never fails to take longer than expected, I’m hoping to get back into full-time work on a new game towards the end of the year.  Which leads me onto…

The Golden Joystick

Hello, my friends.  It’s been a fair old while since I wrote, and I’m sorry for that!

Things have moved very fast this year, it’s hard to believe so much has happened.  In the last few months I’ve been doing various things, in amongst the continued support for LONE SURVIVOR.  I guess I should start with that…

So first of all I’m really proud to announce that LONE SURVIVOR has been nominated fora Golden Joystick in the ‘Best Downloadable Game’ category!  This really is the greatest honour, something I never believed I might ever achieve.  Actually, this award is voted for by the public, so if you like you can head over to:

http://www.goldenjoystick.com/awards/best-downloadable

… and even though I probably don’t have any hope against some of the amazing games selected, your vote would definitely be appreciated! 🙂

… As well as this, the game has been selected to be exhibited in Fantastic Arcade, and I’ll be in Austin, Texas this month from the 19th-26th to meet some of my US / Canadian brethren, eat BBQ, and generally enjoy the Southern hospitality!

http://fantasticfest.com/news/entry/fantastic_arcade_official_game_selections_announced

If you’re going, let me know and we can meet up!  The show itself runs from the 20th-23rd.

I’ve also been getting the art cards finalised.  It’s taken quite a few print runs to get them right (including throwing away a whole batch which got cropped wrong.) Anyway, they arrived with me the day before I came on holiday (where I now am, in Spain.) I plan to get these out as soon as I return, and I’ll be sending a final email to all the supporters when I do, in case of any final address changes.

Besides that I’ve had to do a lot of business stuff, setting up Superflat Games as a Ltd. company etc, stuff I don’t really understand, which scares me a lot, but of course I have to do.

I’ve also been doing a fair bit of music. I’ve put some love back into my studio space and made it a much more pleasant place to work.  I made a couple of tunes for my good friend and idol, Jonatan ‘cactus’ Söderström, for his new game, Hotline Miami (also selected for Fantastic Arcade, so hopefully we finally get to meet), which seems to be blowing up right now, and I can tell you guys, from watching it develop, that it lives up to the hype in every way!

Been doing some 140bpm tunes under the North Base moniker too (which mainly consists of four other friends from Manchester, one of whom, Silver, was my drum’n’bass partner for about ten years) … some of which have been signed, others still in the works.  Really enjoying making music for the sake of making music again.

One I did a few months back with them, called Acid Flashback, has recently come out on Wheel & Deal records: http://www.beatport.com/release/ruffneck-acid-flashback/904623

And then there’s the games which aren’t LONE SURVIVOR.  Well, I’ve started about four different games now (none of which have names yet besides XO3D), and all are currently on hold while I work out what it is I really want to spend the next few years doing.  I just don’t see myself making shorter games, they always end up large in scope somehow.  So I want to be absolutely sure I’m making something I’m still going to enjoy in a couple of years!

I may choose to enter LS into IGF again this year, I guess I figure that it was only half finished last year, or at least the beginning was not in a good shape, so now it is final, I figured I’d give it one more shot?

Anyway, that about brings it up to date. Thanks once again for your support, and all the kind messages you’ve sent.  I really never expected it to reach so many people, and as I’m sure I’ve said before, I’m awed and humbled.

Art Cards & New Projects

Hello everyone!

I’ll be mailing out the art cards soon… but there is one final decision to be made.

I’ve looked at various treatments for producing the thing.  Fine art papers (wrong texture, needed to be smoother), highest quality photo papers (very nice print, but still like a photo and quite thin), and lastly actual postcard printing (haven’t seen the sample, but I imagine the print quality is less fine, but it’s a nice card that you can put up somewhere.)

It’s a toss-up between the photo print or the postcard print, so I’m really calling for all you First Aid owners to suggest what you’d like!  Either way, I’m going to submit it for printing next week, so if you have a strong opinion, chime in now!

I personally feel, even though I haven’t seen the postcard sample, that the lower dpi won’t matter that much, I’m assured the colour balance should be identical, though.

So, would you rather a super sharp but photo-like print, or a physical postcard, sturdy but less detailed?  Answers on a … er … comment down below!

Have you moved house recently, First Aid Edition owner?

As per the title, and if you’re a proud owner of 1 of 200 ‘LONE SURVIVOR – First Aid Editions’ ever made, have you moved house recently? I’ll be needing your new address, then, to mail this lovely card!  Please write to:

support (at) lonesurvivor.co.uk


… making sure to use the subject line “First Aid Move” or something pretty obvious so I can tell it’s not an update request etc, including your new address.

Thankyou all for supporting the game when it first launched, it’s been an unbelievable few months since then!  Thanks also to those who’ve recently got it through the Steam and HIB sales, and welcome to the world of LONE SURVIVOR.

In other news…

I’ve been working on this for a while, but just recently decided to abandon it, for no other reason other than it didn’t get me super excited.  I may return to it and add what I planned to, and it may become something exciting because of that, just not right now.

So I started working on this – although it’s nothing more than a few bits of art and some vague ideas at present. For some reason, and maybe it’s just the the UK summer finally decided to show its face, a couple of months late, that I really want to explore some nostalgic Blue Sky™ right now!

Who knows where it will take me…

Steam Summer Sale / Day One Indie Bundle

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15378/

Get LONE SURVIVOR, Cave Story+, EDGE, Anomaly: Warzone Earth and The Baconing for $10!  For the next two hours!  (Sorry, my site & email were down…)

Or…

http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/209830/

LONE SURVIVOR itself is 35% off for the next 9 days, the cheapest it’s been on its own!  (Under a fiver!*  You can’t go wrong! Etc!) *UK

About other stuff…

I’ve been working on my new thing, a shooter which spilled over from 7dfps.  I’ve just got the engine done and I’m pretty excited about it!

About Lone Survivor Updates (support@lonesurvivor.co.uk)

Please bear in mind that they are coming in much slower now, but I’m still doing them in batches of ten or twenty to keep things methodical.  This means your update can slip for a few days sometimes, depending on how many come in around that time – but it will come through eventually!  As I’ve done thousands of these by hand, some have slipped through the net and I apologise for that, please just send your Fastspring order code starting with SUP-xxxx through and I’ll reply with your update key in the next batch.

About First Aid Edition Art Cards (UPDATE)

I forgot to mention that I’ve found a printing company that’s going to do the kind of quality I’m after.  It’s all going to be by hand and I’m even going to be going down there to help trim and crop the cards when they’re done!  They’ll probably be about 8 inches across, and printed on art-grade materials, either the finest photo paper or 308gsm art-print paper, depending on how they turn out.  I’m still waiting to get samples done, and tweaking the print itself (not much to do, just get the framing right and colour balance for print.)

The only downside is I will end up spending more on this than I imagined, and eating into the actual money set aside for freeware work, although it’s all very grey, and I’ll sort of do it as and when it fits anyway, without a specific budget.  I want to enter more jams this year, to keep myself agile, and I will roll out the rest of LS3D and release it for free at some point (I don’t plan to add much, perhaps a second monster, maybe some more foods, but the main thing is really just having some text between levels.)

Humble Indie Bundle V / LONE SURVIVOR for Linux

The title says it all, and you’ve probably heard it from the a million internet streams before this one – Lone Survivor is now a part of Humble Indie Bundle V!  I’m incredibly proud to be a part of this incredible collection of games, and once again in awe of the guys over at Humble, Inc.

I did have a good think about whether to accept the offer, for a couple of reasons… not least of which is that I’m feeling a bit burnt out – I really do need a proper break (after 7dfps, anyway…)   But I realised in the end that I may never get another chance to reach people in a way like this, and I couldn’t pass that up.

So the game will be given to everyone who bought HIB V before today as thanks for early adoption, regardless of what they paid – which means close to 400,000 people will already be guaranteed a copy!  It will also be given to anyone who pays above the average from now until the end of the promotion, so if you’ve held off so far, why not head over to Humble and pick up your tasty bundle?

For those curious about how it’s broken down: Superflat Games will only receive income from the developer’s share of any sales that fall above the average price from today onwards (the developer’s share is determined by the public as you can see on the Humble site.)  The rest of the income the bundle generates goes towards helping a couple of great charities and building awareness of the indie scene in general, supporting indie developers such as myself, via the Humble Store and so on.  And most importantly of all, with this bundle comes the unique opportunity to reach hundreds of thousands of people with my work, and reaching people has always been what drives me.  For that reason alone, it really is a dream come true … and my mind is blown to be in the company of such heavyweight games, and … well … TIM SCHAFER!!!!*

Sorry, Tim...

LONE SURVIVOR for Linux

The other great news is that the game is now available for your favourite Linux distribution (and included in the bundle, of course) – as a rock-solid Flash Projector, which has been re-coded from scratch – so that you get all the bugfixes and improvements of CODENAME: RED but with the Flash saved game system of the original Mac Projector release (which was a patch for the then non-working AIR build, which now works on all Macs with the Snow Leopard or above.)

So to Linux users, although the Projector version should work identically, you won’t be able to transfer saved games between versions, and you should watch for clearing your Flash cookies as it can delete your saved game in some instances.

I wanted to use AIR for the Linux release, but AIR for Linux was abandoned by Adobe a while back.  I do hope they’ll consider getting it back up and running, as there are a lot of successful indie games that are starting to use AIR, and it would be a shame to have to restrict those to Mac and PC only as new AIR features mean Linux becomes harder to back-port.  Perhaps Adobe will take notice of the growing interest in AIR on Linux for game developers? I’d love to see a Linux Captive Runtime with AIR 3.3!

Adobe’s support team have been great all through this, once I got their ear – testing builds of LS I’ve had trouble with, and inviting me onto the AIR beta program and so on… they’re really listening to what developers are saying, so if enough developers make noise about an AIR update for Linux, maybe it’ll reach them?

So, the TL:DR version: a lot of technical stuff has had to happen to make this dream come true, but like magic, it should Just Work TM**

It’ll go up as part of the Humble storefront on my own site, which initially will be the only place to purchase the Linux build, so if you are a new customer, you’ll now get three platforms for the price of one!

It’ll also be available for purchase on Linux from this day forth over on Ubuntu Software Centre, who are handling the redemptions for the Humble Indie Bundle V.

And finally…

Once again a massive thankyou to everyone who’s played the game, and shared their analysis, thoughts, personal feelings, images, music, videos, and general humanity via the update request emails.  I’ve really loved reading them all!

Things will hopefully start getting a bit calmer soon and I might even announce the new secret project I’ve been working on at some stage after 7dfps, which I’ve been (also) secretly getting ready for, making a special ‘virtual console’ and a basic 3D engine – screenshots to follow on Saturday.

And to my 400,000 new friends: thank you for playing Lone Survivor, and don’t forget if you liked it and want to support Superflat Games in some way, why not head on over to Space Recordings on Bandcamp and give the OST a listen?  Either way, I hope you enjoy your adventures with You.  Be sure to write and tell me about them!

– Jasper

*(I’m deeply influenced by the Lucasarts adventures, as you’ll see if you track down Keith’s Quest for the Amiga (please don’t.))

**(not my TM.)