Archive for the ‘ games ’ Category

1278 Comments (Part 1)

The title of this post is an homage to the 1278 ‘comments’ I have recieved from my last post.  In other words, 1287 spam replies, indicating just how badly I’ve let my blog slip lately!

As well as addressing the broken comment system, I’m planning to do a great deal more with superflatgames.com over the next few months.

This is the first in what will hopefully be more frequent updates to my progress, and I plan on blogging about more non-game-creation topics a little more too.

Anyway, where to begin?

It’s been a tumultuous few months.  Since November when I wrote the last one, all kinds of cool, crazy and sometimes crap things have happened.  Though the good has outweighed the crap by a fair margin!

Soul Brother

So the first thing you might be wondering about is what happened to Soul Brother?  Well there’s very good news on that front… I’ve signed the game to [Adult Swim] games, one of the premier Flash portals out there.  It’s a massive deal for me, as I wasn’t even sure if I could make enough money to get by from it.  As it happens, the deal has meant that I have a degree of financial freedom for the first time since joining the ‘AAA’ industry, and bodes really well for future indie work.

I’ve put a lot more work into the game, more than I originally planned, but I want the game to be the best thing I’ve ever made.  So although the game was 99% done in November, four months have passed and it’s slowly gained an extra sheen of polish which I think has really made the whole process worthwhile.

I also put a lot more time into the soundtrack (and clearing some of the samples, which took frustratingly long – when you dig into house-megalabel Defected’s acapella records, it’s only to be expected I guess!)

There are now six tracks in all, and I really put the same amount of work in that I would have for my drum’n’bass records that were released as things in their own right (normally I consciously spend less time on game music, reasoning that the production quality doesn’t need to be as high to pass.)

Although [adult swim] own the IP to Soul Brother, I retain the rights to the music, which I’m planning on releasing as an OST later this year.  That won’t be a simple port either, I’ll spend a few weeks polishing, extending and even adding to the tracks.  I may even include a couple of bonus tunes, just ‘cos I love you all!

TIGJam, Game 1: American Dream

While attending our local indie-con, TIGJam UK, a four day jamfest at Cambridge’s CB2 (100m from my house), I finally got to collaborate with two of my close friends who I’ve wanted to work with since getting into this indie thing.

These fine fellows are Terry Cavanagh and Stephen ‘increpare‘ Lavelle (and there was also some art contribution from the talented Tom Morgan-Jones who I hadn’t met before, but had heard of.)

Terry had previously made a furnishing-simulator, which was going to be attached to an assasination simulator.  When the theme ’80’s’ came up at the Jam, I wanted to do something to do with the stockmarket, thinking Wall Street / American Psycho, so I suggested this to Terry.  Somehow we came upon trading 80’s film / music idols as commodities.

He got building a trading sim, I reworked the graphics, Stephen strung the whole thing together and wrote the wonderful music, Tom added cutscene art, and the rest is history.

The game was remarkably well received, getting covered on the likes of indiegames.com and Rock Paper Shotgun (one of my favourite blogs.)

Here is the link to play the game (online), hosted exclusively over on Stephen’s site: link.

End of Part 1

Anyway, I’m coming to the end of my allotted blogging time, so I think I’ll save the rest of the news for Part 2.  I have two other projects in the works I’d like to share with you guys, and I’ll probably talk a little about my indie plans for the future.  Hope to see you then!

Soul Brother Promo Video

Click to be taken to YouTube, where a funky introduction to Mr.Soul takes place.

My two projects which are actually small enough to be finishable

So my plans changed slightly after I began my indie career.  I did continue to work on Psychic Prison Break for a month fairly solidly.  It’s all wrapped up and ready to release but I’m still not happy with how some of the dialogue is working. For that reason I decided to put some distance between myself and the project, so that when I finish off the last few edits, I’l have a fresh view of it.  I feel much closer to knowing how to do it, I’m just letting it simmer until the other project is done.

The other project is the Flash remake of Soul Brother is getting close to being finished.  It’s very different to the original game, but I think it fixes a lot of the problems that one had.

I’m hoping to have it finished in a couple of weeks, all the content is done, and just the final polish needs to be added, and the odd nasty bug to iron out.

Will keep you all posted!

Superflat Games is now my fulltime job!

As per the post title, I’m no longer working for Frontier Developments, where I spent the last 2.5 years working on the Kinectimals project which launches in November I belive. I have decided to pursue my indie career, rather than look for new work within the industry, and I will be juggling that with my music career (as Sonic).

So, my plans are to:

1) Make a redux version of Psychic Prison Break with re-written dialogue (I wasn’t happy with it before), a few extra puzzles, and perhaps one or two more locations. I’ll be putting this up for sponsorship on Flash Game License.

2) Make another short adventure, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while. It’s a period piece set in a single bed and breakfast type building, and should be something a bit lighter for me. It’s also based on a period in my late father’s life. Again, put this up for license.

3) Meanwhile I’ll be working on Lone Survivor, which I’ve decided to make into a commercial release with a free demo online. I’m going to take my time over it, and make it the absolute best thing I am capable of making.

4) I’m also toying with Flash versions of Soul Brother and This Is How Bees Work. Both will be greatly enhanced and altered to fit the medium.

I’ll be putting up a donation button at some point in the near future to help kickstart my indie career (I had planned to take more time to save, but circumstances forced the move early). If anyone feels the urge to donate at that point, it would really help me support my wife and baby while bringing lovely games to you.

I’m going to make exactly the games I want to play, and never compromise in their content for commercial interests. I’m going to try to make games that touch on new subject matter. Adult games, for adults. I want to explore areas of interactivity that can be the only way to present certain stories. I want to tell stories most of all.

And so many stories have yet to be told, because of the youthfulness of this art form. Which excites me enourmously!

Ladies and gentlemen,

WELCOME TO SUPERFLAT WORLD

Back From The Dead

So I might just be working on Lone Survivor again.  Might meaning am.  I know I said it was unfinishable – but I must finish the unfinishable if I want to make a success of this indie lark.  And that’s exactly what I plan to do.

I’ve now christened my tool ‘TELEPLAY’ – it’s the combination of the visual editor written in BlitzMax, and the Flash project which runs the games made in the editor, which all runs on HAL-script (the high-level adventure language, natch.)

TELEPLAY is now 99% feature complete, and this means that work on Lone Survivor is progressing nicely at last.  Although I may miss my original goal of releasing it in time for IGF entry, I think it’ll have been worth the wait.  My plan currently is to go full-time indie from sometime in the new year.  2011 is the year Superflat Games will get serious!

To keep y’all sweet, here’s a recent screenie, showcasing the inventory system:

Lone Survivor – coming early 2011

New game – Psychic Prison Break

This is the first ever finished game to be written entirely in HAL, the editor / scripting language I’ve been working on for six years. The project really helped me see what I need to do to improve the language and tool, so for that it’s been invaluable. I’m reasonably happy with how quicky I could get new content in with it.

I entered it into the 48 hour game compo, Ludum Dare. The theme was ‘Enemies as Weapons’. Here’s a screenie, to whet your appetite – would love to get your feedback over on the submission page!

Link to the entry page, where you can play it now.

Shutdown #7

I am genuinely sorry… But Lone Survivor joins Amnesia, Soul Brother, iLoveWar, Super Neko World, Trip and Trip:One on the heap of unfinished and unfinishable games.

Wow… that adds up to years of my life!

El Crab Shack

I wonder when they sold their last crab?

Just to let you guys know things are being worked on.  I think it won’t be long before I can put together a teaser trailer as it’s getting to a decent level of polish now.  Have completed about 30% of the art and animation, only about 5% of the sound though.  But I plan to be actively working on that from now on (taking a break from my music career to do so).

I plan to enter Lone Surivor into IGF this year, and have the game finished by New Year… so wish me luck! As El Crab Shack’s owner likes to say: ‘Go Loco!’

Lone Survivor

I’ll let this wonderful image, courtesy of the equally wonderful Bento Smile, speak for itself.  It’s of the protagonist of Lone Survivor, also known as ‘You’.

It’s my first ever piece of ‘fanart’ (although really it’s ‘friendart’) – and for reason that it totally made my week.  Now onwards and upwards: the final stage begins.

Freedom

I feel like the guy in Shawshank, slowly tunneling away towards it…  Progress is excruciatingly slow, but it never ceases, and neither does the hope that burns with it!