Indies in Due Time 4-27-2012 Scent of the Indie Ocean Edition
May 27, 2012 9 Comments
We’ve got trailers, yes we do, and we have a special guest, Mr. Alan C with the Tea, the operator of the Indie Ocean. He has assured us that he actually wants to participate and he’s not here just to hide from the army of half-naked women that Team Shuriken sent to kill him after his review of Avalis Dungeon.
Nuclear Unicorn Force
Kairi: Missed this one last time.
Brian: For shame.
Kairi: Well, it’s a bullet hell. It’s probably the only genre that I truly can say I’m not a fan of without exception, but I am capable of enjoying them. I liked Ikaruga, wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. That’s about it.
Alan: “Drink the blood of a unicorn”? I don’t care how gravelly your voice is, you can’t say that without sounding like a Dungeons & Dragons handbook. Which is appropriate, considering that whole thing looks to me like a combination of bad Harry Potter fanfiction and the kind of disturbing kid’s shows I grew up on in the *ahem* mid-80s. A small girl riding a vitamin capsule toward a moon that’s puckering up to give her a creepy kiss? Grim in ways I’d rather not know about.
Kairi: I would like to point out that the opinions of Alan do not reflect those of IndieGamerChick.com
Brian: Bullet hell. Funny term. You have to wonder if there’s a bullet heaven.
Alan: It’s where the good Bullet Bills from Mario go.
Kairi: So I take it all the bullets in a bullet hell are from bad things, like wars and assassinations and shit.
Brian: Exactly.
Kairi: I think I see the bullet that killed President Garfield.
Bezircle
Brian: We’ve seen a lot of games that were made in 48 hours, but this is honestly the first one that looks like something I want to try.
Kairi: Totally agree. I hope this isn’t one of those awkward moments where I say “I’ve never seen anything like this” and it turns out it’s a clone of something that everyone but me knows about, but what the hell: I’ve never seen anything like this.
Alan: I’m not sure what’s meant to going on but the sound in this freaks me the hell out. That “um um um” background music at the beginning, that sounds like several people rubbing themselves at each other.
Kairi: It’s territorial control.
Alan: Territorial control as designed by Monty Python.
Brian: At first it seems kind of slow, but once you get the idea, it actually seems neat.
Alan: This game should be controlled under drug legislation. About 3 minutes in the music picks up and…well, I’m sure the effect it had on me shouldn’t be legal.
Blaster
Brian: Yea, jetpacks! We inch closer to my dream of a game with monkeys and jetpacks.
Kairi: Hell, that will probably be the plot of the next Planet of the Apes movie.
Brian: Day one, I’m there.
Kairi: I’ve played a lot of side-scrolling shooters at IndieGamerChick, and it usually comes down to one thing: make it fun to shoot stuff, not a chore. I can’t really get a feel if this game does that from the video.
Alan: It looks like it feels like it controls like a dead goat balanced on the roof of a badly manufactured European car.
Brian: I’m not sure a Porsche would suffer too much from having a dead goat on it.
Kairi: He said “badly designed.”
Alan: Right, Porsche will do for that.
Brian: MOTHER FUCKER! YOU TAKE THAT BACK!!
Alan: I’ll take it back when Porsche take back their entire product range.
Kairi: Sigh, this is what every conversation I have with these two turns into. Can we talk about the game?
Alan: Yes, well, ahem. An XBLIG platforming shooter that doesn’t make my intestines crawl out of my body in protest is a welcome novelty. Basically, it could be okay, but it looks like ass and I’m afraid that it’ll handle like ass too. And as anyone who has handled ass can tell you, ass handles badly. Not as badly as a Porsche, but..
Brian: Grrrrrrrrr.
OneOnOne Soccer
Brian: Here’s a peace offering. Soccer. I like Soccer.
Alan: Look, it’s called FOOTBall. F-O-O-T-B-A-L-L.
Brian: Yes, but people in America get confused if you call it that.
Alan: I can see how you guys could confuse a game that involves using your hands with a game called FOOTBALL. Americans are special like that.
Kairi: Oh for Christ sake, you two! The game looks good! I mean completely fucking stupid, but still, I want to try it. It looks.. fun.
Alan: Side-scrolling soccer? That…could actually kind of work. Well, for five minutes or so. Like my bladder.
Brian: Basic gameplay. Basic presentation. But it looks like silly fun.
Alan: I actually quite like the presentation, but I don’t know long the novelty would last. If you’ve ever tried a novelty condom, you know novelty wears thin pretty quickly. So does rubber for that matter.
Senoka
Alan: So…Tetris soundtracked by someone falling over a bin? Or possibly a Porsche…
Brian: Seriously Kairi, why is he here?
Alan: The ambiance.
Kairi: You know, to this day I’m not sure if I’m actually having fun when I play Tetris or if it’s just a great big, hypnotic time-sink. Not that this is anything like Tetris.
Brian: Falling blocks and a well. No, nothing like it at all.
Alan: I think it’s subliminal programming. Play it enough and you see falling blocks in your sleep. It’s happened to me more than once. Eventually the falling blocks form into the words “Kill Dave”. Or sometimes “Remember to buy milk”.
Kairi: Oh that’s a load of bulls.. hey, where are you going, Brian?
Brian: I dunno, I just suddenly have an urge to go kill milk.
Alan: Told you.
Kairi: Back to the trailer, why is he showing the ENTIRE high score screen?
Alan: Fuck if I know.
Kairi: Oh my God, it’s never going to end!
Alan: It’s okay Kairi, we’re going to make it through this.
Kairi: No we won’t. It’s still going, and my boyfriend is in the kitchen trying to smother the milk carton with a pillow.
Alan: I used a knife. Milk is surprisingly stabable.
Miner of Duty
Kairi: I just want to once again state that I have nothing against Minecraft clones. It’s a genre that is trendy right now, so as long as the developers make an effort to have a decently playable game and not a rush-job cash-in, I’m good to go.
Alan: I don’t know whether that title makes me want to laugh or headbutt the developer on the crotch. In a bad way.
Brian: It looks good in a “Minecraft meets Doom” kind of way. Minecraft can’t be all that bad. It got rid of my roommate Bryce for an entire weekend. Our living room has never smelled better!
Alan: Holy shit, you get to shoot Dolph Lundgren? Count me in!
Brian: Seconded.
Kairi: I’ll never forgive him for killing Apollo.
Alan: Wait, you have to choose blocks as part of your loadout? That could be…uncomfortable. Frankly I’m curious about this, mainly because I have an almost indecent love of genre hybrids. I’m still under a restraining order from Abaddon Retribution. It won’t even return my calls anymore. Or my underwear.
Brian: Um Kairi, why is there an army of half-naked anime women gathered outside of your house?
Kairi: They’re here to murder Alan. He’s claiming sanctuary.
Alan: That’s right, sanctuary. You guys are Catholics. You have to grant it.
Kairi: Oh there is no such rule and you know that.
Brian: They’re brandishing tentacles and hot oil and.. I just remembered that I, um, left the keys in my car.
Kairi: Hey, what just happened?
Alan: I think we just found Team Shuriken’s target audience.
Indie Gamer Chick 
You can play Blaster as it’s in xna playtest at the moment. So you can see if you think it controls like ASS or not!!!!
I don’t do games in play testing, and I’m pretty sure Alan doesn’t either. I’m a big believer in separation between myself and the development side of things. Let me know when your game is out though, in case I miss it.
Cool stuff. Feel free to try our existing game Adventures Of Sid . Been out for awhile now, but you get to control a few flame throwing Tomato so worth a giggle O:-)
So far, Adventures of Sid is fun. The jumping feels a little bit wonky, but the presentation and level design are good. It reminds me of a top-end Master System game, in a good way. Maybe something like Psycho Fox, of all things.
Hey, some asses control very well. Mine has its own steering wheel attached.
Trailer assessment is based on visual info. It’s hard to judge the controls from appearance. It looks like it might feel awkward. It equally might not. Relax, have a herbal tea. I’ll play the game when it’s release-ready. Any sooner would be unfair to the game.
I’m pretty sure the ‘drink the blood of a unicorn’ thing is a sample from the 1985 film Legend. I confess I’m biased against NUF as I found the Kickstarter annoying (pay $5; don’t get anything, but we promise to compile your name into the code somewhere that no one can see it, pay $10 to get the PC version, pay $50 to be in the actual credits – for an XBLIG that will presumably cost $3).
Blaster looks like it has a Duke Nukem 2 feel to it (which is a good thing). My playtest access is still broken, but if/when I get it fixed I will look out for it in peer review.
Actually the $5 tier also included exclusive artwork, you got in the credits at $20 not $50, and you also got extras like soundtrack/artbook starting at $20. You make the KS sound far more ridiculous than it was. Just saying.
$50 was the actual credits, $20 was just the ‘secondary credits’ aka website (‘secondary credits’ for an indie game, right). Compare this to Sequence, one of the best XBLIGs of all time, where $20 in the Kickstarter got not just your name in the game credits, also a voiced public thank-you from the developer plus if you wanted an audition for a voice part in the game. Now that is how you engage with your supporters.
Well, I made a sincere effort to give reward tiers that I thought would be appealing. Personally, I’d rather get an artbook and a soundtrack than a vocal thank-you and my name on a single game screen that (let’s be realistic) nobody will ever read. Being in the credits were just side benefits and were never intended as major draws for their respective reward tiers. Perhaps I severely underestimated the appeal of having your name listed as a supporter in the credits and if so, my mistake. I never claimed to be a genius at promotion, exactly the opposite. Clearly the rewards didn’t appeal to you, and fair enough. But it’s not like I was somehow trying to screw people over, so I’m perplexed as to why that would make someone “biased” against the game itself. If you’d mentioned these things while the funding was going on, I’d have been receptive to your suggestions.
I also intended to personally thank everyone who contributed ANY amount if the project funded, but it never occurred to me to list this as a “reward” since it seems like an obvious and natural thing to do.
On a side note, giving out roles in the game for $20 actually sounds like a pretty bad idea, considering it has high potential to directly and negatively impact the game’s quality. Engaging supporters is great, but letting anyone with $20 contribute content to one’s project is asking for problems.