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The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Edge of Space
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, lead game designer at Handyman Studios, Jacob Crane, talks Edge of Space, his space shark exploration game in beta and on Greenlight now. What's your game called and what's it about?The game we are working on is Edge of Space, and it is a 2D sandbox exploration game. You, one of the ArkCo Recruits, have been dropped into an area where terraforming should never have been attempted. Stranded in an unknown region of space on a busted-up planet where early terraforming protocols have gone horribly wrong, it's now up to you and whoever else you can find to overcome the obstacles ahead.How is the beta going?The beta is going very well. It has kept our feet on the ground and really helped us identify issues in the core system early on. Whenever you are developing multiplayer, we think it is key you get it out into the "wild" as soon as you can. We wanted to experiment with a different kind of development style to match our small team. After alpha, we pulled out all but the basic features for beta, and then started adding them back in layers as we found things were stable and the necessary iteration was put in place.This is very much a bottom-up approach. To ensure our foundations are rock solid is paramount. Even though mod development is not being released right at release day, everything has already been made to support it when we do. This has served us very well. It does come with the drawback of not being able to show everything we want to, but it allows us make the code infinitely more stable.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Ravaged
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, 2 Dawn Games' Carsten Boserup talks crowdfunding and indie publishing with his Steam game (now on sale!), Ravaged. What's your game called and what's it about?Our game is Ravaged and it's a multiplayer-only first-person shooter focusing on vehicle combat and car chases in a post-apocalyptic Mad Max environment.Why develop independently, rather than work for an established company?Working with a publisher tends to mean that you are giving away parts of your game's creativity and control. We wanted to create a game exactly the way we wanted and imagined. Going independent also meant that our marketing capabilities were limited, which is why we created a Kickstarter campaign. The campaign was a success and we almost tripled the amount we asked for to help with marketing.Our roots are with modding, as the core team created the popular Battlefield 1942 mod, Desert Combat, so we decided very early on to be 100 percent community-based. This means that we take feedback and ideas from the community and do our best to add it to the game. We also engage a lot with our community by hosting events and opening up our TeamSpeak virtual office to the fans, which is where we spent most of our time.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Full Bore
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, Whole Hog Games' Jake Federico talks fundraising for Full Bore, a platformer about friendship and, well, boars. What's your game called and what's it about?Our game, Full Bore, follows the story of a young boar named Frederick as he gets caught up in the troubles of the Full Bore Mining Company.You can try the demo of Full Bore here, or visit the website to see a trailer, preview the soundtrack and see more screenshots.The game is an open world, where players explore the old tunnels of the Full Bore Mining Company in search of ancient secrets, treasure and things better left undisturbed. The mechanics of the game are created by the interaction between Frederick and the various blocks that make up the world.The challenge of the game ramps up as block types are introduced and the player must figure out how to combine their unique behaviors to traverse the world. Exploration in Full Bore is driven by knowledge, instead of arbitrary goals and item collection.We are running a Kickstarter for Full Bore. If all goes well, we will be releasing in March.What will you do if your Kickstarter doesn't succeed? How about if it does?If our Kickstarter isn't successful, Full Bore will have to become our side project. All three of us would have to get full time jobs and work on the game part-time. We would finish it eventually, but there's no way we would be able to make our goal of a March release without severely compromising the quality of the game. We love Full Bore, but it could take years without some outside help.If funding succeeds, two team members will work non-stop to complete the game in time for March. Last member will work a day job to help pay for food.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Triple Town
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, Spry Fox's David Edery discusses the real impact of social gaming with his Facebook and mobile title Triple Town, which launched on Steam this month. What's your game called and what's it about?Triple Town is an original puzzle game about building a city. It's basically a re-invention of the match-three genre; instead of matching three-plus objects to clear a space, you match three-plus objects to create higher-level objects. Trees becomes huts, mansions become castles, etc. Meanwhile, giant bears move around the board blocking your progress. It seems simple at first, but this is a game that requires extraordinary practice and planning skills. Many people played for months before building their first castle (and there are two tiers beyond that!). We've heard Triple Town described as "the Civilization of match-three games" and we really like that. Triple Town won a bunch of awards in 2011 and we've been updating and improving it ever since!Are you trying to break Triple Town out of the "social game" box with the Steam launch?Not really; it's been doing fine as a single player game on mobile for over a year now. The goal of the Steam launch was to bring a flavor of Triple Town to people who might not otherwise have heard about it, to offer a full-screen and offline mode, and to satisfy fans who wanted an all-you-can-eat version of the game with absolutely no IAP in it.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Unmechanical
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, Jesper Engström of Sweden's Talawa Games talks his BIG win in Brazil with PC puzzler Unmechanical. What's your game called and what's it about?Unmechanical is a 2.5D, side-scrolling, puzzle adventure game about a small helicopter-like creature who gets pulled down into a bizarre, underground world. The rest you need to find out for yourself as you venture through this strange and slightly creepy place.What's the story behind Unmechanical's strange name?One of the key components we wanted for the game was the mixture of the organic and the mechanical together, so one of our team members just thought Unmechanical sounded good and we stuck with it. Unmechanical is obviously not a "real" word, and the appropriate phrase would be "non-mechanical" or "not mechanical."Some figure it was a translation error from Swedish to English to go "unmechanical," but it's meant as a play of words in the same sense as "undead" probably was when it was first coined. In the end it suited us just fine as it gives our game more recognition with just one made up word and the meaning we wanted is still there.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Kaiju Combat
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, former Godzilla dev Simon Strange is back to bring some mega-monster pain to Kickstarter with Kaiju Combat. What's your game called and what's it about?The game is Kaiju Combat, an online multiplayer game with behemoths fighting in destructible city environments.What inspired you to make Kaiju Combat?Sunstone Games is almost entirely made up of ex-Pipeworks employees, who made the very popular Godzilla fighting games from 2002 - 2007. We get messages every few days asking about a sequel, so making a game like this has always been something we've considered. The rise of Kickstarter funding this year presented a real opportunity to get the game made on our own terms – that's been the missing piece before now.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Skulls of the Shogun
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 like that. This week, Skulls of the Shogun lead designer Jake Kazdal discusses developing a game for four platforms at once, and what happened to that "launch alongside Windows 8" promise. What's your game called and what's it about?Skulls of the Shogun is an arcade-strategy game coming to XBLA, Windows Phone, Windows 8 and Windows RT (Surface) very soon. It's an original title, developed by a small team of highly experienced AAA developers over the past 3.5 years. It's a mash-up of tactical turn-based strategy, with a feel that is very arcade-like and action-packed. No grids, very few menus and quick, snappy rounds give it a very unique and charming aesthetic, easy for action gamers to adapt to, but with all the depth a good strategy game lover needs.Why did you choose to go exclusively Microsoft? Is there any chance of Skulls of the Shogun launching through Steam or anywhere else?Microsoft's XBLA group is full of old friends and co-workers from my past in this industry, they're close by so we can zip over there for lunch and meetings, and they have my favorite game console, along with a phone and a tablet and a new operating system.For a micro-studio like us to be able to launch on four platforms simultaneously was a huge incentive. We own the IP and would like to do more with it in the future (not only gaming) but Microsoft is the publisher for these versions and that has kept our hands quite full for now.%Gallery-171897%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Beast Boxing Turbo
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, Gordon Luk of Goodhustle Studios knocks out some details about Beast Boxing Turbo, a collaboration with Hawken's Khang Le, for PC and Mac. What's your game called and what's it about?Beast Boxing Turbo is a first-person monster boxing game for PC and Mac.You play as a lowly human who has to fight wearing a monster costume, as humans aren't allowed in the Beast Boxing leagues. You find a pig coach who is willing to help, and you set off on a quest for strength, fame and glory.Aside from the monster-punching action, Beast Boxing Turbo features frenetic, challenging gameplay, a story with four leagues to beat, skills that can be leveled way up, and 35+ unique pieces of boxing gear to mix and match. The whole game is rendered in a beautiful, hand-painted style, with detailed, imaginative monsters and environments.Do you see yourself as part of a larger indie movement?Beast Boxing has been more about quality of gameplay than breaking new ground, so it doesn't have the typical "indie" vibe, even though it's self-published. In indie games, people are a part of the products, and I'm more of a behind-the-scenes kind of person. Khang is too, but has been showing up a lot more lately because of Hawken. However, we're both passionate about our work, so maybe it's just about getting enough titles under our belt that people will know what to expect from one of our games.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Humans Must Answer
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. This week, former GSC developer and co-founder of Sumom Games, Eugeny Yatsuk, talks space chickens and shmups with Humans Must Answer. The babies are Yatsuk, co-founder Denis Matveenko and artist Olexa, by Olexa. What's your game called and what's it about?Humans Must Answer. It's a shmup, and one most will recognize as having an old-school vibe about it. You play as the pilot of a scout ship called The Golden Eagle, which is manned by chickens – they like to think they're a higher species of bird than they are.They're on the lookout for something (we're not saying quite yet) and discover it within the solar system that us humans inhabit. As it is set far into the future, humans have expanded to the other planets and set up a number of industries upon them. They also have a huge legion of robots operating for them around space. So the enemies you'll come across consist of robots and humans. Yes, humans are enemies – there are far too many plots about evil aliens when, in fact, humans are most likely more evil than anything we could fictionalize.The chickens attempt to contact them in a friendly manner but the humans respond by firing at them, which isn't particularly nice. They live to regret it though because we let you, the player, go on an explosive rampage against the aggressors. There is a purpose behind it other than mere carnage though, but that doesn't appear until later in the game's narrative.How does working on your own indie project compare to working on a larger series such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R.?Very different. Faster decisions and far fewer constraints. It's a very good feeling to be the author and be responsible for all aspects of the game, and not just some cogs as part of a big company.I know some guys who work on bigger projects and ownership of their creations boils down to things like, "I made that table and chair on Level 25." You start to fear for yourself when hearing this and want to avoid ever being in that situation. When I am 40 years old I'll look at what I have created in my life. I hope to be proud of it.%Gallery-170198%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Incredipede
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, Colin Northway describes how indie life in Honduras created Quozzle, the creature in his PC game Incredipede. What's your game called and what's it about?Incredipede is a game about playing with nature and life. Quozzle is a creature that can change her shape by growing new bones and muscles wherever she wants so you can build any kind of animal you like. After you build your creature, you control it to overcome obstacles and rescue Quozzle's kidnapped sisters.It's also a very beautiful game. Thomas Shahan and I worked hard to make the visuals unique and he did a truly amazing job.What inspired you to make Incredipede?Incredipede was inspired by the jungles of Honduras. My wife, Sarah, and I made the game over two years while also traveling the world. When we were in Honduras we lived in a little house slung out over the water at the end of a terrible dirt road. We climbed in the mangrove trees and snorkeled on the reef. Crabs scuttled and fish swam under the house, ants invaded the kitchen, birds ate our fruit and lizards and boa constrictors hid in the trees. Life was everywhere. I have always loved the creativity and variety of life and had to make a game about it.
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.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Brand
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, Guillaume Boucher-Vidal, founder and CEO of Nine Dots Studio, talks the craft of customization, XBLIG sales and launching near Diablo 3, with Brand. What's your game called and what's it about?The game is called Brand and it's about building a sword fit for a king. The game is in 3D, but the gameplay is in 2D. It features three large explorable levels, in a somewhat similar fashion to games of the Metroidvania genre, although a little simpler.How do you support yourselves, working full-time at Nine Dots with no salary? Is it worth it?I had saved up about $25,000 before starting the business, and I started doing a few consulting jobs to fill in my pockets a little whenever I can. Some guys work on the side, while others get support from their parents. It's not an ideal situation for anyone, but we try to make the most of it.We're all young and it's the right time to make these sacrifices. I think it's definitely worth it. The experience is unique, and even if Nine Dots was to fail, we'd still have a very strong portfolio piece, a unique background and we'd be of the very few developers who could proudly say: "We made the game we wanted to make, the way we wanted to do it." Some people have been in the industry for 15 years and can't say that.%Gallery-169115%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Cloudbuilt
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, Johannes, Anders, Martin, Poi and the Coilworks team discuss going Greenlight and modern-retro challenges with Cloudbuilt. What's your game called and what's it about?Our game is called Cloudbuilt, and at its core it is all about challenging high-speed action and platforming. We are borrowing inspiration from old-school games, combining it with modern elements and adding some unique twists. We really think that we have brought booster powers to a whole new level with this game.So what will Cloudbuilt bring in terms of challenge?We want there to be plenty of room for the player to improve. We don't want to make Cloudbuilt challenging in the sense of simply killing the player. Sure, there are parts of the game where people tend to die a lot, but we make sure it's not because of unfair design. Our goal is to make you feel in control, thus should you fail, it would be due to your own fault. That makes it truly rewarding and when you clear a level, you'll feel like you've improved and mastered something.Doing several easy tasks at once quickly becomes challenging. Wall-running on its own is not that hard, but wall-running while dodging mines and shooting at enemies, all while preparing to jump onto a new wall, is a little bit harder.Because we are giving the player access to all abilities from the start, we will be focusing on the player's development instead of a character's. There is no difference in what a player can do in the beginning compared with the end. But there will most likely be a big difference in play style and the player's way of thinking.%Gallery-167845%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Party of Sin
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, Crankshaft Games' Daniel Menard talks about his PC co-op puzzle-platformer about breaking out of Hell and storming Heaven, Party of Sin. What's your game and what's it about?Our game is called Party of Sin. It's a puzzle-platformer where you get to embody the Seven Deadly Sins. The Sins are locked in a prison deep in hell after an angel sting operation lead by the arch-angel Michael. You must use the Sins' seven unique powers to solve puzzles and battle your way out of hell and take the fight to the angels in Heaven. You can swap sins at any time (much like Lost Vikings or Trine) and must combine their powers in interesting ways to overcome the challenges that await.The game also has a coop mode, and in coop the Sins can directly interact with each other. They can use their to help the team, or fall to the other side of morality and backstab / grief each other. Two players can't have the same sins, so there is a lot of social interaction involved in solving the puzzles.%Gallery-167543%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Anna
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, Dreampainters talks ancient Italian legend, modern murder and the beauty of point-and-click adventure games with its new PC release, Anna. What's your game called and what's it about?The game is called Anna and is a point-and-click graphic adventure about a "sort of haunted" sawmill.What inspired you to make Anna?The main inspiration came from a real-life old sawmill in Valle D'Aosta, an all-mountain region in Italy (to be very precise, in Val D'Ayas). It is an ancient and beautiful place, with some legends about ghosts and hauting around it. We mixed all this with a set of local legends and personal stuff. This game is actually a true homage to Val D'Ayas and its heritage.%Gallery-167122%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Colour Bind
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, Melbourne developer Finn Morgan discusses the affects of color-coded gravity in Colour Bind, out today on Steam. What's your game called and what's it about?It's called Colour Bind (easy to misread, I know - it's "Bind" with no "l"), and it's a world where objects of a different colour fall in a different direction. Maybe red objects fall down as normal, but green objects fall up and blue objects fall sideways. You control a car thing that has to drive to the goal of each level, overcoming various obstacles and puzzles that are made possible by the weird outcomes of the fact that gravity is pulling different objects in different directions.What inspired you to make Colour Bind?It's kind of a silly story. I was walking through Melbourne during a traffic jam, and it occurred to me that, viewed from above, the shapes of the long lines of cars moving and stopping in streams would make interesting shapes for a 2D platformer. The cars in this scenario would have to have gravity pulling them away from the camera, but the character in this hypothetical platformer would need to fall "down" relative to the camera.Thinking about this situation, of different bodies being pulled by gravity in different directions depending on their "type," distracted me from that game and eventually turned into Colour Bind.%Gallery-162103%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: FTL: Faster than Light
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, Justin Ma and Matthew Davis of Subset Games describe their quick rise to space roguelike-like fame with FTL: Faster than Light, which recently launched on Steam for PC and Mac. What's your game called and what's it about?Justin Ma: Our game is called FTL: Faster than Light and we've been describing it as a "spaceship simulation roguelike-like." The focus is on managing a spaceship and her crew as they explore a randomized galaxy. Combat requires you to control the crew to keep your ship running and fight off intruders, balancing your power distribution, and trying to wreak havoc on the enemy ship. In between fights the game is filled with "choose your own adventure" style text-based events with many possible outcomes.Matthew Davis: The core game can be compared to something like Weird Worlds or Flotilla where the player is travelling to various star systems, encountering events and upgrading their ship. But the combat is focused on the ship interior as opposed to "dogfighting" in space.What's the coolest aspect of FTL?Justin: Each element of the game is pretty simple on its own: Blast doors can restrict enemy movement on your ship; oxygen can be vented by opening the airlocks; fire spreads through open doors. When all of these interact you can get some amazing and unpredictable situations. Your crew might be trapped putting out a fire in the weapons rooms while at the same time boarders are trying to break the doors down because they're suffocating after mistakenly sabotaging your oxygen system.%Gallery-166005%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Wyv and Keep
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, the happy crew from Jolly Corpse describes the joy of retro co-op on modern machines with Wyv and Keep. What's your game called and what's it about?Jesse: Wyv and Keep is a 2D platform-puzzler starring two rookie treasure hunters. It's packed with team-based puzzles where you must use both characters to unlock and reach a door to the next level. You can play solo, switching between the two, or cooperatively, locally on one computer, or online.It's also full of adventure, twitch-action and comedy. You'll be dodging poison darts, snakes and spear-throwing pygmies, leaping over spike traps and pits of lava, and using TNT to blast through crumbling walls and floors. All the while you'll be entertained by the looney antics and witty banter of adventure-loving Wyv and cunning Keep!David: It's about getting really frustrated with the person playing with you – or, if you are that person, it's about repeatedly making ever-so-slight mis-steps to wind up your partner.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Resonance
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, Vince Wesselmann throws it back to an adventurous era with his point-and-click title, Resonance, which launched today on Steam at 10 percent off. What's your game called and what's it about?My labor of love is called Resonance. It's a point-and-click adventure game where you take control of four characters and their memories to work your way through a complex sci-fi mystery. A scientist has died after creating a terrible new technology and the race is on to secure his secret vault before the technology falls into the wrong hands. The player can use the unique short-term memory system to talk to any character in the game about practically anything you see. So you'll have to do some logical thinking to figure out how to navigate the game's tricky puzzles and twisty plot.What's the coolest aspect of Resonance?One of the unique features to this game is the Short-Term Memory system, which is tightly interwoven with the dialogue system. In most adventure games, when you talk to a character, you choose from a small selection of dialogue options the designer has chosen for you. Resonance has that as well, but it adds on the ability to "remember" any object you see in the game using your Short-Term Memory. You can then use these memories in conversation with any character in the game.Since the correct options are no longer served up on a silver platter, you'll have to think critically about which topics of conversation might help you in each situation. And with hundreds of possible objects to talk about, brute-forcing these solutions is right out the window. The window, by the way, can also be used as a Short-Term Memory in dialogue.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: ErnCon
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, Ernest Woo of Woo Games (we wonder how he thought of that name?) talks mobile, multiplayer space combat with ErnCon. What's your game called and what's it about?The game is called ErnCon and it's a multiplayer shoot-em-up for Android supporting up to eight players over the Internet.Does the eight-player Wi-Fi gameplay of ErnCon help it stand out from other Android titles?I believe real-time multiplayer over the Internet (both 3G and 4G) is uncommon enough to set ErnCon apart from other games. I find that many games that call themselves "multiplayer" are only playable over local Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Implementing true multiplayer gameplay over the Internet was/is extremely hard and not for the faint of heart.One of the most important trends over the past few years has been the increasing prevalence of smartphones with mobile broadband connectivity. Mobile devices are finally powerful and fast enough to support the kind of multiplayer experience that was common on the PC 10 years ago.The most common feedback I received from FRG players was to add multiplayer – I know the demand is out there. I'm making multiplayer mobile games the focus of Woo Games – keep an eye out for more multiplayer games in the future!
