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Arcade dogfighter Luftrausers on Vita, PS3, PC, Mac, Linux all at once
Publisher Devolver Digital has announced Vlambeer's chaotic 2D dogfighter, Luftrausers, will launch simultaneously on PS Vita, PS3, PC, Mac and Linux later this year. "Hope to have a date soon," the announcement tweet adds. In Luftrausers, players pilot highly modular planes across more than 100 different missions. With each successful mission, players unlock more parts to greater customize their aerial death machines. Luftrausers is a sequel to Luftrauser, Vlambeer's free-to-play Flash game. Vlambeer originally planned to launch Luftrausers last year, but a combo of having to work out the deal with Sony for the PS Vita and PS3 ports, on top of ongoing development for Ridiculous Fishing, contributed to Luftrauser's new launch window this year. [Image: Vlambeer]
Hit List Q&A: Rami Ismail of Ridiculous Fishing dev Vlambeer
In the "Hit List" from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, the video game industry's top talents describe their current gaming addictions, their most anticipated releases and more. This week: Rami Ismail of Ridiculous Fishing developer Vlambeer. Rami Ismail is the Business & Development Guy at Vlambeer, a Dutch independent game studio known best for Wasteland Kings, Ridiculous Fishing, Super Crate Box, LUFTRAUSERS, GUN GODZ and Serious Sam: The Random Encounter. At his upcoming 2014 D.I.C.E. Summit talk Rami will present on "No holding back: A look at independent game development during three years of Vlambeer." Rami discusses The Golden Age for independent development, running through the last five years as he learned of the independent gaming scene, founded Vlambeer with co-founder Jan Willem Nijman, and slowly worked his way into a central figure in independent gaming. He will discuss lessons learned and applicable to an ever-changing scene, the importance of technological democratization and the shift in the relation between developers, platforms, consumers and partners.
Transparent development tales from three indies baring it all online
With crowd-sourced development practices on the rise, indies are taking steps to more deeply entrench their fans in the game-creation process: Transparent development means pulling back the curtain and giving the audience a close look at the minutiae of making a game, including failed ideas, bad choices and awkward conversations – and hopefully some good moves, too. By opening up the development process, indies are molding the way players view the games they play. Game ideas change drastically throughout development; mechanics get cut and evolve; art styles waver; sounds shift from joyful to moody to dark and back to joyful again. Everything changes. Rather than a static, final product, players now have the option to see what a living, in-development game really looks like – and they're lining up around the digital block. Vlambeer, the team behind Ridiculous Fishing and Super Crate Box, draws in 25,000 to 30,000 viewers twice a week with live development streams of its next-gen roguelike-like (roguelove?), Nuclear Throne. Dejobaan shares its live design document for Drop that Beat Like an Ugly Baby, and months into it, random players still pop into the page's chat to ask questions about development. The ex-Zynga team at Proletariat Inc. streams its World Zombination review meetings every Friday and has learned that its audience is interested in some weird stuff. These are three stories of three different approaches to transparent development, from three different indie teams, but the audience, it turns out, is roughly the same: curious, nosy and extremely intrigued.
Ridiculous Fishing, Badland win App Store's Best of 2013 awards
Apple awarded Vlambeer's Ridiculous Fishing its much-coveted iPhone Game of the Year award today, while Frogmind's silhouetted platformer Badland picked up the iPad award. With App Store exposure being so crucial to an app's success, the awards are big wins for the two indie studios, both comprised of just two people. The duo of duos beat competition from major studios in 2K Games and EA PopCap, with runner-up spots going to XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Plants vs. Zombies 2. Kevin Ng's rollercoaster puzzler The Impossible Road and the stylish wordplay of Simogo's Device 6 also picked up runners-up prizes. If you thought those awards, while deserved, were a smidge predictable, be prepared for further non-raising of eyebrows: This year's most downloaded free app (not just games but all apps) was Candy Crush Saga, while Minecraft: Pocket Edition was the best-selling paid app of 2013. It's also worth noting that while Candy Crush Saga is free-to-download, it was also the highest grossing app of 2013 - Minecraft: Pocket Edition came in 11th.
Super Crate Box, Fuel Tiracas free on PS Mobile
Sony continues its PS Mobile promotion with another pair of free downloads today. If you have a PlayStation Certified device or PS Vita, you can grab Super Crate Box and Fuel Tiracas for free right now. Super Crate Box, from Vlambeer, is an arcade action game where players must battle waves of encroaching enemies while collecting crates – which have weapons inside of them – on a multi-tiered 2D level. We found the PS Vita installment to be the definitive version. Fuel Tiracas, a PS Mobile launch game from FutureLab, is a resource-management puzzle variation on the classic Whac-a-Mole carnival game. Players must boot up generators in the correct order so the titular planet of Tiracas can have breathable air. To grab either (or both) of these games, simply head into the PlayStatin Mobile section of the PlayStation Store on PS Vita or, if you're on a PlayStation Certified device, simply head into the PlayStation Mobile store.
Xbox One same-day launch clause nudged Nuclear Throne to PS4
Indie developers in the Xbox One publishing program, ID@Xbox, get two console development kits, a Unity license and the opportunity to self-publish their games – in return, Microsoft asks that the games launch same-day on Xbox One and other console platforms. Launch parity, rather than exclusivity. Building a game for multiple launch platforms can be hazardous for indie developers, transferring energy from building games to bureaucracy, Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail tells Joystiq. When Vlambeer learned about Microsoft's launch parity clause, it immediately contacted Sony to set up launch exclusivity on PS4 for its next-gen game Nuclear Throne. "Microsoft was doing reach-out to certain developers back in the early days of ID@XBOX, and we discussed potentially bringing Nuclear Throne to Xbox One with them," Ismail says. "There had been mentions beforehand that there was a launch parity clause in the contract, with the exception of games that were already signed to another platform during the announcement of their self-publishing program. Thus, before we signed with Microsoft, we e-mailed Sony that we quickly wanted to sign Nuclear Throne with them with a month of exclusivity."
First batch of self-publishing Xbox One developers include Double Fine, Crytek
Microsoft listed 33 developers that will be participating in its ID@Xbox self-publishing program for Xbox One. The list of those that applied and were approved by Microsoft included Iron Galaxy (Divekick), Crytek (Crysis, Far Cry), Halfbrick Studios (Fruit Ninja), Demiurge Studios (Shoot Many Robots), Double Fine (Brutal Legend) and Vlambeer (Ridiculous Fishing). Some developers have already announced the games they are bringing to the platform, such as Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune's Mighty No. 9 and Capy's Below. The independent developers program was announced in August, and grants indies access to two Xbox One development kits as well as a license to the Unity game engine in order to create games for the system. Microsoft said the first round of games published in the ID@Xbox program will arrive in early 2014. Microsoft's initial plans to disallow self-publishing on the Xbox One were reversed in July. A list of the participating developers, which Microsoft says is "far from comprehensive," can be found after the break.
Vlambeer Clone Tycoon turns indie dev's real problem into a game
Developing games is fun – or so we're told – but now stealing game ideas from real developers is just as entertaining. Sure, it's missing the vital "I've poured my heart and soul into this baby" aspect, but cloning games is still pretty fun with Vlambeer Clone Tycoon. Inspired by indie developer Vlambeer's real-life issues with repeated, obvious clones of its games, Vlambeer Clone Tycoon puts players in the shoes of a wannabe cloner. As an idea thief, players must read news and emails to learn about Vlambeer's coming games, and then create their own knock-offs before the real version is released. The successful clones are automatically tweeted out by @VlambeerCloning. The game comes from a composer and web developer who work in the same building as Vlambeer, so it's all in good fun. Play Vlambeer Clone Tycoon for free in your browser, and look out for clones of Vlambeer's next game, Nuclear Throne, before it's released for real.
Vlambeer's Luftrausers unlikely to take to the skies before early 2014
Super Crate Box dev Vlambeer said it won't release dogfighter Luftrausers before early 2014 "unless a miracle happens." While it's the season for such things, the indie dev believes a 2013 release window is "unlikely" because the PS3, Vita, and Steam game has still to undergo quality assurance. The Luftrauser sequel was first due in 2012, but Vlambeer admitted development hasn't been the smoothest - and that's without mentioning any thievery or clones. "The way we worked with Luftrausers, in hindsight, wasn't really optimal," the company's blog notes. "We assumed that certification would be harsh, but didn't expect it to take more than a month or two. While a part of our team was already focusing on Nuclear Throne and Ridiculous Fishing, we kept being pulled back to fix things or add last minute changes to the game to fit within the requirements. Switching between projects in such different states mentally is extremely exhausting, and a lot of our time was spent orienting on where the game was and where it needed to go." Elsewhere, progress has been steadier. An Android version of Ridiculous Fishing is on the way soon, while Nuclear Throne sold more than 10,000 copies across its first two weeks on Steam Early Access.
Ridiculous Fishing hooks Android soon, same price as iOS
Vlambeer's amphibious hunting game, Ridiculous Fishing, is on its way to Android after eight months on iOS, the studio announced today. An Android port of Ridiculous Fishing has been on the table basically since the game launched, but the task was daunting, studio co-founder Rami Ismail said in March. However, Vlambeer couldn't ignore the fans for long. "We've always thought of Android with a bit of reluctance, and we still think it's an awfully rough platform to develop for," Ismail tells Joystiq. "In many ways, the development of Ridiculous Fishing was a struggle for us, and to be honest we weren't sure about launching it or not until a week ago. There just were so many requests for the game on Android from our fans, so we couldn't withhold them the game if there was any way to make the game happen. We found a porting partner in Apportable, and they're the ones that really made the game happen on Android." Ridiculous Fishing caused a few waves with its price point, charging $3 rather than the App Store's norm of free-to-play. It worked out: The game sold 300,000 units at $3 by August, and it ended up with an Apple Design Award (plus we liked it a ton). Ridiculous Fishing will cost the same on Android, but it's going to launch with a "sale of sorts," since the Android market appears to behave differently at launch than the App Store, Ismail says. "We're really curious to see what'll happen after the launch – in many ways, we feel that how Ridiculous Fishing performs financially on Android will be an interesting comparison to the iOS ecosystem," he says. "For now, we're adding final tweaks and fixes to make sure that we can launch really, really soon. We really hope Android gamers will be happy with the effort we put into making this happen - this one is for them."
Vlambeer's 'Nuclear Throne' available now through Steam Early Access
Vlambeer's latest game, the "action roguelike-like" game Nuclear Throne, is available now through Steam's Early Access program. In its current build state, the $13 game from the studio that created Ridiculous Fishing and Super Crate Box, includes four playable worlds, seven characters, two boss battles and lots of weapons, skills and "randomly generated goodness." The final version will include at least four more worlds, "an undefined number of secret worlds to explore," more skins, sound effects and be shiny like a copper penny. OR ELSE! As with all Early Access games, it's best not to play unless you're willing to be part of the bug crushing process. And these are bugs created by fallout, so watch out!
Vlambeer's Wasteland Kings now Nuclear Throne
Vlambeer (Super Crate Box, Ridiculous Fishing) has changed the name of its upcoming project from Wasteland Kings to Nuclear Throne. Beyond being a better name, Wasteland Kings had the potential of getting confused with inXile Entertainment's Wasteland 2 and even Tribute Games' Mercenary Kings. In fact, inXile politely reached out to note the possible confusion. "We've been through a lot of trouble with people riding on things of ours, and we understand that American trademark law is pretty strict in that not defending a trademark weakens it," wrote Vlambeer founder Rami Ismail on the studio's site. "Although we aren't sure Wasteland Kings and Wasteland are confusing enough for this to be an issue, both us and InXile really don't want to spend development time on arguing over trivialities." As noted, Vlambeer has had its share of intellectual property issues, most famously for having Ridiculous Fishing cloned, with a similar incident happening again with the studio's Luftrausers. Vlambeer is livestreaming the development of Nuclear Throne to give greater transparency to the development process. Nuclear Throne is planned for PS4 and VIta in the future, but is scheduled to be available as part of Steam Early Access and Humble Store in early October for $12.99.
Wasteland Kings slithers onto PS4 and Vita
Wasteland Kings, the next game from Ridiculous Fishing developer Vlambeer, is coming to PS4 and Vita next year, Sony's Shahid Ahmad announced during the company's Gamescom press event today. Wasteland Kings is an action roguelike that tells the sordid stories of mutants fighting to control the Wasteland throne, inspired by 60s to 80s sci-fi novels. Its characters gather radioactive waste to evolve (or devolve, depending on your perspective) and gain new abilities, and it allows players to explore unique approaches to numerous hostile situations. Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail told Joystiq that Wasteland Kings combines aspects from all of its major games: Luftrausers, Super Crate Box and Ridiculous Fishing. "Wasteland Kings feels like the way I think about Vlambeer," Ismail said. "A happy place where weird shit happens all the time." Vlambeer will launch Wasteland Kings on Steam Early Access after Gamescom, complete with a livestream of the game's development.
Ridiculous Fishing reels in 300,000 sales at $3, but it was almost F2P
Ridiculous Fishing has sold 300,000 copies on the Apple App Store, Vlambeer founders Jan Willem Nijman and Rami Ismail announced during their GDC Europe presentation. Ismail pointed out that the game sells for $3, so ... "It's nice," Nijman said. Ridiculous Fishing made a statement on the App Store by ditching the popular freemium model and simply charging $3 for a full game, rather than nothing (or close to it) for part of a game. When the game turned into a breakout mobile hit, its price point became a talking point and Vlambeer championed the full-game pricing approach. But Ridiculous Fishing was almost a freemium game. During brainstorming stages, developers Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman considered offering the game for free and then selling a $1,000 in-game boat. In this version of Ridiculous Fishing, players could see their friends' boats sailing around in the background, and they'd theoretically be tempted to collect all the cool boats they saw, even that $1,000 one. In the end, that didn't work with Vlambeer's development style. Nijman also wanted to add a feature that had some fish wearing hats, and when players shot those fish they could collect the hats and wear them. While the hat idea stuck, the rest of that pipe dream was flushed. In the end, it was all for the best, it seems.
Wasteland Kings is Vlambeer's next big little game
Wasteland Kings crawled out of Vlambeer's adorably twisted hivemind during Mojam earlier this year, and since then developers Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman have been polishing the three-day action roguelike for wider release. It's mutated over the months – and its characters have, too. "It's a post-apocalyptic world inspired by 60s to 80s science fiction books," Ismail tells Joystiq. "It's a bunch of mutants and there's this trophy Wasteland throne that they all want to capture, and they fight about that. That's what they do on Tuesdays or something." Currently Wasteland Kings has eight power-hungry characters running around Vlambeer's prototype, but there will be more. They mutate throughout the game by gathering radioactive waste, with powers partially based on the character type and partially up to the player, Ismail says. The game itself is chaotic, with numerous approaches to the same problems. It's a mix of every major Vlambeer game to date – unique play styles as in Luftrausers, random level generation as in Super Crate Box and a clever narrative as in Ridiculous Fishing. It's a happy game. "It feels like Vlambeer," Ismail says. Luftrausers, as an opposing example, is rough around the edges and it feels like it comes from a darker place, he adds. "Wasteland Kings feels like the way I think about Vlambeer. A happy place where weird shit happens all the time." Wasteland Kings can also be described as a mix of other people's games: FTL, Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac, Ismail says. It will be playable at PAX Prime as part of the Indie Megabooth, and it's headed to Fantastic Arcade in Austin, Texas in September. Vlambeer will livestream development of Wasteland Kings after Gamescom, and the game should show up on Steam Early Access around the same time. Every major Vlambeer game to date has been cloned, making a pre-release livestream seem counterintuitive – but the sooner people know that this is Vlambeer's game, the quicker the clone problems die down, Ismail told us in June. He hopes to stream twice a week and receive feedback from followers – and also have some fun.%Gallery-196078%
Ridiculous Fishing brings a knife to a gill fight
Absurd angling becomes just a tad more convenient in a new update for Ridiculous Fishing (iOS), which adds – among other things – a way to cut your line and restart an attempt instantly. Equip the new knife item, available via the in-game store, if you'd rather not wait for the hook to return after a botched descent. This being Ridiculous Fishing, the knife is not suitable for slashing open your aquatic acquisitions – far too sensible for the game's floating, gun-toting maniac who tosses his asphyxiated prey into the air, shoots them to shreds, and then stands in a revolting rain of fishy entrails. Beyond introducing a $7,000 single-purpose knife, developer Vlambeer has also corrected some bugs (you can now re-equip the Swiss Lure), tossed some extra fishy friends into the Maelstrom environment, and enabled the use of your iThing's music during gameplay. You can't go wrong with Nightwish here – they're Finnish.
Indie developers cautiously optimistic about self-publishing on Xbox One
Microsoft's reversal of its publishing philosophy for the Xbox One has obvious and wide-reaching implications for the indie development community. While the original plan mandated that developers release games through a third-party publisher or broker a deal with Microsoft itself, indies will now be able to self-publish. Furthermore, retail Xbox One SKUs will function as development units, which historically are more expensive and more difficult to acquire than off-the-shelf models. "Ideally, this news could have been broadcast more proudly and loudly months ago, giving indies more time to prepare strategies for upcoming games," Minicore Studios founder and CEO John Warren told us, "but I suppose they don't owe anyone that courtesy. We know now, so now we can prepare for life with a Microsoft console, which is something I wouldn't have said yesterday." Warren and his team at Minicore are in the process of Kickstarting PC, Mac and Xbox 360 versions of their latest project, Laika Believes: The Sun at Night. "I think releasing on Xbox One without a publisher is a big step forward, of course, but the fact that (eventually) I'll be able to use my retail console as our dev kit is huge," he added. "My secondary (maybe flailing and futile) hope is that the fees for publishing won't be insane. It's one thing to only have to shell out $600 for a dev kit, but quite another if we have to spend another $10k on publishing fees. My hope is they'll be content with 30 percent of revenue and be done with it." Cautious optimism was a consistent theme among most of the indie developers we reached out to, though some had greater reservations over Microsoft's inner machinations than others.
How live-streaming development can solve Vlambeer's clone problem
[Image credit: Tommy Rousse] Vlambeer is going to live-stream development of its next game. This wouldn't be notable for many other indie developers, but Vlambeer's history makes this strategy appear, for lack of a stronger term, absolutely illogical. "At this point, all of our big games have been cloned," Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail tells me at E3. He goes down the list: Super Crate Box, Ridiculous Fishing, Luftrausers and Infinite SWAT all have clones. The only acceptable one is the Infinite SWAT "homage," Broforce, from South African team Free Lives, Rami said – it's an example of developers taking inspiration from a game and creating their own world with it. The other ones, though. Those are straight-up clones. These clones caused major problems for Ismail and Vlambeer's other half, Jan Willem Nijman. The Ridiculous Fishing clone affected the team so strongly that they almost stopped developing their own game completely. Ridiculous Fishing almost didn't exist. Because of a clone. Hence, Vlambeer live-streaming development of its next game sounds like a pretty terrible idea. Until Ismail explains his reasoning: "If you look at Ridiculous Fishing, one of the reasons the clone was such a nightmare was because nobody knew that we were working on Ridiculous Fishing. We had to rapidly announce Ridiculous Fishing while the clone story was going down, so people knew that it was our idea first and they stole it from us. With Luftrausers, when SkyFar hit, it was much better, because everybody already knew that Luftrausers was a Vlambeer thing and that SkyFar was a clone." That makes sense, actually. "No, it doesn't," Rami says. But Vlambeer is doing it anyway.
Ridiculous Fishing creator reeling from Apple Design Award, talks TU
Vlambeer founders Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman didn't think Ridiculous Fishing would win an Apple Design Award. Sure, it was in the running, but it was a long shot, and they had other places to be during the ceremony at WWDC on June 10 (E3, anyone?). Just in case, they asked Ridiculous Fishing collaborator and indie extraordinaire Zach Gage to go to the show, and he did. In flip flops. And shorts. And Ridiculous Fishing won. "Holy shit," Ismail laughed during our chat at E3. He was still getting over the fact that Ridiculous Fishing won an Apple Design Award, and that Gage collected it in what's commonly considered summer beach attire. So far Ridiculous Fishing sales have hit the "hundreds of thousands," Ismail said, and after the Design Award, sales spiked again. Even Elijah Wood got hooked on Ridiculous Fishing – or, as Ismail put it, "The Hobbit played it!"
Thievery at E3: Vlambeer developer's backpack full of games stolen
Wednesday night, a black Samsonite backpack filled with an Asus laptop, two iPads, two Vitas, a Kindle, a bunch of European-US outlet converters, and "enough power cables to power E3," disappeared from an E3 party. The bag and everything inside of it belong to Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail. Ismail was at the Sony mixer at the Figueroa hotel last night, and he left his bag near a table for a few minutes. When he turned to reclaim it, it was gone. Today, Ismail filed a police report, but so far no one has produced any information about the thief. "It's pretty much my entire company in that backpack," Ismail said. Vlambeer is responsible for Ridiculous Fishing, Super Crate Box and the coming multiplatform game, Luftrausers. Authorities said E3 and its surrounding events provide a hotbed for burglaries, so keep a close eye on your bags. And if you spy anyone playing Luftrausers on a Vita that isn't attached to a Sony booth, hit up Ismail's Twitter.
