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How to make a game in an hour, no experience required
For many, game development seems like an unreachable dream. We envision a world where we can come up with an idea, hunch over a laptop, bang out some code and – voila – video game. Tom Francis, creator of Joystiq favorite Gunpoint, is putting together a very handy Game Maker tutorial and, while it won't make things quite as easy as they are in your dreams, you'll have a working prototype in about an hour. The tutorial is published as a series of videos on YouTube (here's the playlist) and all it requires is a free download of Game Maker, which you may recognize as the engine that powers games like Spelunky, Hotline Miami, Risk of Rain, Gods Will Be Watching, Nidhogg and many, many more. You can download the free version of Game Maker Studio right here. Even better, the tutorials require no programming or game creation experience whatsoever. If you can follow instructions, you can follow these tutorials. After the first two lessons, clocking in at a total of 50 minutes or so, you'll have a character that moves with the WASD keys and shoots in the direction of your mouse pointer. As noted by Francis himself: If you can shoot, it is officially a video game (also it's pretty easy to program). Don't take my word for it though. Just check out the trailer for my upcoming indie-developed blockbuster, World of Shoo(ting). If you want to do more than just shoot, of course, you'll have to watch the rest of the tutorial series.
Super Game Jam's final episode now on Steam
The fifth and final episode of Devolver Digital's Super Game Jam is now available on Steam. Super Game Jam tells the stories of five pairs of developers that craft games during a 48-hour game jam. The final episode follows London-based developers Tom Francis (Gunpoint) and Liselore Goedhart (Remembering, Nott Won't Sleep) as they quickly concoct the game SimAntics under the game jam theme "simulation." The five-episode documentary series is currently 25 percent off ($14.99) on Steam through the end of the weekend, and includes copies of the five games created by the development duos. Announced in March, the series was directed by filmmakers Bram Ruiter and Daniel Oliveira Carneiro in five cities over the course of six months and features designers such as Vlambeer's Jan Willem Nijman (Ridiculous Fishing, Luftrausers) and Jonatan Söderström (Hotline Miami). Nijman appeared in the first episode, which launched in May. Head past the break for a teaser trailer of Super Game Jam's final installment. [Image: Devolver Digital]
Gunpoint dev seeks artist, composer for follow-up Heat Signature
Indie developer Tom Francis outlines his upcoming PC stealth game Heat Signature in the newly launched gameplay video above in the hopes of assembling a team to finish the project. Announced earlier this year, Heat Signature challenges players to infiltrate randomly generated space vessels while subverting heat-detecting security measures. In its current state, the game now features multiple playable classes and assigns players a randomly generated list of objectives during each session. As was the case with his previous game Gunpoint, Francis is opting to hire collaborators after Heat Signature's prototyping phase instead of setting up a dedicated studio. Artists and composers interested in a paid position on Heat Signature's development team can apply at Francis' website. [Video: Tom Francis]
Gunpoint dev working on stealth space game Heat Signature
Tom Francis, the developer behind Gunpoint, has announced one of his new projects, Heat Signature. It's a stealth game, set in space, in which you stalk randomly generated ships and board them. Stealth isn't so much about the enemy ship's line-of-sight as it is about your ship's temperature. Each randomly spawned vessel has heat sensors that can pick up on warmth within their proximity, so it's paramount you float up to ships while using your thrusters sparingly. Of course, relative size of your target also affects the difficulty of this maneuver. Once you've docked, you can walk around inside the unsuspecting space barge, avoiding or killing its guards. As Francis points out in the video, this build is still early and missing a lot of the final systems he has planned for Heat Signature. At first you'll spawn into the world as a random class of character, with a certain goal or objective that requires you to board ships and hack terminals for more information. One play session of Heat Signature may ask you to kill a target, while another may challenge you to track down and steal a rare ship. Francis doesn't say when to expect Heat Signature, but he's set up a mailing list for all those interested in being notified of important development updates (like this one). [Image: Suspicious Developments]
Gunpoint review: Indie film noir espionage
Gunpoint is the perfect game at the perfect time. At the same moment the industry is heavily promoting console innovation with aurally destructive stage demos, this indie game from reporter Tom Francis and a ragtag crew of volunteers offers a simplistic and quiet respite: an outstanding puzzle game with sharp writing, beautiful music and clever mechanics. As freelance spy-type Richard Conway, players work to investigate a murder – in which he is inadvertently involved – using handy spy skills like long distance leaping and scaling walls. Gunpoint oozes creativity, leveraging a simple primary mechanic that is paramount to both completing missions and taking out adversaries. Called "Crosslink," it allows players to view how electricity flows throughout buildings and rewire circuits to Conway's advantage. You can, for example, disconnect the link from a light switch and connect it to a door, making it easy to swing it into an unsuspecting guard's face as he walks by. Endgame puzzles require you to juggle a number of different Crosslink set-ups, triggering an object in one area to give Conway an opening to progress somewhere else. What makes the simple system work is that there are very few limitations – so long as you link the correct colored circuits. Conway's goals change between missions. One may find him breaking into a building to extract information from secure computer terminals. Another sees him stealing a piece of top secret equipment. Ultimately the goal is an excuse, there only to offer a different way to use Conway's skills and provide a new challenge.%Gallery-134433%
Gunpoint success allows dev to become independent, Mac and Linux ports on the way
Writer and developer Tom Francis originally planned his game, Gunpoint, as a showcase piece to earn him a job at a game development studio, but after seeing the success of the title so far he says he doesn't need to join another studio. As you can see above, Francis hit his initial goal for the game from preorders alone, and sales have only gone up since then, to the point where Francis now says designing the game was "so commercially successful that I'll never need" to work for someone else. Since the only real monetary cost of the project was a $30 purchase of Game Maker 8 a few years ago, Francis says Gunpoint "recouped its development costs" in just one minute and four seconds. That's after three years of work, of course, but the point remains that Gunpoint was very successful indeed. The next priority, says Francis, will be to port Gunpoint to the newer Game Maker Studio, where it can then be released for Windows, Mac, and Linux. He's looking to hire someone for this task, so he can get moving on actual updates and another project eventually. It sounds like a tough job, essentially taking over the core game's development for other platforms. "But as the graphs above should suggest," says Francis, "I can pay."
PSA: Gunpoint infiltrates Steam today, discounted until June 10
Games journalist Tom Francis has finally launched his side project Gunpoint. Steam is celebrating launch by knocking off a buck from the asking price until June 10, bringing Gunpoint down to $9; the special edition containing the soundtrack and in-game commentary is 25 percent off, down to $15. Francis, meanwhile, is celebrating with an AMA on Reddit today. Within, he's confirmed first-day sales are quite encouraging - an hour ago, he claimed it was the number one game on Steam's sales charts. Gunpoint is a Deus Ex-inspired spy game where players must rewire security systems using the Crosslink device - for example, it can be used to turn a light switch into a trap door controller. In Gunpoint, the goal is for players to infiltrate buildings and steal valuable data because spies.
Gunpoint gears up for Steam
Gunpoint, a 2D collusion of quiet intrusion, espionage and elusion, will be available for PC through Steam once it's complete. The game stands out for its romantic combination of spy and electrician, letting you divert power in devious ways between switches and several objects in the environment.Lead designer Tom Francis has posted a new video (above) demonstrating Gunpoint's gadgets, some of which allow you to reprogram gun triggers, survive tremendous falls and scale steep surfaces.Note on something that should have been mentioned earlier: Clicking play on the video above has likely electrocuted a stranger somewhere in the world.
Gunpoint walkthrough video is eight minutes in Heaven
Following our previous look at indie gem Gunpoint, there is no excuse for not having this game on your radar. Quick, check your radar. It's there, right? That's what we thought. Here, we've got an eight minute video chronicling a majority of game features. And lots of jumping through windows. %Gallery-134433%
Secret agent indie Gunpoint makes being an electrician cool
From plumbers and farmers to ... Noids, video games have a long tradition of elevating blue collar jobs to rockstar status. Now, after eying these new Gunpoint screens, it looks like we'll be adding "electrician" to that list when Tom Francis' secret agent game arrives this Christmas. As you can see in the prototype video after the break, Gunpoint casts the player as a secret agent breaking into high-security facilities. Though he's good with his fists and has one hell of a vertical, the agent's most notable tool is the Crosslink, which lets him rewire buildings. So, for instance, a guard attempting to use a light switch inadvertently opens a crucial door for our hero, or maybe even electrifies a buddy. We're not making it sound particularly thrilling, we know. But check out the demo video and the game's brand new look in the gallery below. We're sure you'll get a ... charge out of them. Because electricity. %Gallery-134433%
