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The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Symphony
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We believe they deserve a wider audience with the Joystiq Indie Pitch: This week, Francois Bertrand and Matt Shores of Empty Clip Studios discuss the battle to liberate your own musical library with PC game Symphony. What's your game called and what's it about?Our game is called Symphony. It's a vertical shooter that's 100 percent driven by your music. Your music is under attack by a mysterious evil entity and you must fight to liberate it.What's the coolest aspect of Symphony?We really pushed to have the tightest connection possible between the emotions, events and mood of your music and the game. The characteristics of each of your songs – the beats, the energy and the spectrum, all contribute to generate a unique level. We also wanted to add a lot of replayability and wrap everything into a coherent storyline so you have a satisfying, long-lasting gameplay experience.You're not just playing individual songs – you're fighting to liberate your music collection. As you progress through the game, you'll fight boss battles, unlock difficulty levels, get rewarded for reaching score targets, collect items and customize your ship. Every song in your collection contains an item you can discover, equip and upgrade.
Empty Clip Studios porting Monaco into multiplatform engine
Andy Schatz's four-player rob-em-up Monaco is currently built in Microsoft's XNA framework, a format that is fine for PC and Xbox Live Indie Games, but precludes a release on any other platform. Schatz is solving that problem with the help of Empty Clip Studios, who is using its RapidFire Engine to make a more multiplatform-friendly Monaco. Schatz announced this porting process on Twitter, but didn't specify any platforms but one -- in a followup tweet, he revealed that " at the very least it means that Monaco will be on Mac... still haven't announced other platforms."
Empty Clip Studios composing a Symphony with your music
Empty Clip Studios revealed its followup to the WiiWare/Wii retail Groovin' Blocks, with another game that mashes up a traditional genre with music. Symphony is a music-based shooter, similar in concept to Rez. Unlike Rez, however, it draws its music from your own collection, dynamically generating enemy patterns. It's also much less abstract than Mizuguchi's masterpiece, as sound is translated into visible waveforms, which then become patterns of enemies. It's a lot easier for us to tell you to just watch the video after the break than to explain it. Empty Clip plans to release the game sometime next year. No specific platform has been mentioned.
Groovin' Blocks heading to Groovin' disc release
Empty Clip Studios today announced that, thanks to the WiiWare release of its puzzle game, Groovin' Blocks, Zoo Publishing has picked up distribution rights for a disc-based version of the game. Essentially, Zoo saw the Wii game and thought, "You know what? This would make a great Wii game."The disc release of the musical falling-block game will be expanded with new levels and music, and will be made available in both North America and in Europe, where the WiiWare version has yet to be released. In addition, Zoo will release an iPhone version of the game, which, of course, won't be on disc.
