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The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Ensign 1
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, we take the Indie Pitch to the magical world of Kickstarter, to Brandon Smith and Only Human Studios' in-progress space-combat masterpiece, Ensign 1. What's your game called and what's it about? The game is called Ensign 1, and it's a multiplayer space-combat game where players won't be limited to piloting just one fighter during the course of a battle. They will have the freedom to dock and pick up another ship, or to join another player and man some turrets while the other pilots. Players will even have the option of commandeering large space frigates and capitol ships. What's the coolest aspect of Ensign 1? With Ensign, I really wanted to capture scenarios like being in the midst of a huge battle, and finding a derelict ship hidden behind an asteroid, and then being able to bring it back into the fight. Or perhaps being able to land on a pirate base and take control of some ground turrets while your buddies fight in the sky.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Battle Group
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Alistair Doulin of Bane Games talks tactical missions, platform-specific gameplay and the Australian development scene with Battle Group. What's your game called and what's it about? Battle Group is a tactical/action modern Navy game for iOS, Android, PC and Mac. Players command multiple warships drawn from the navies of the world and lead them into seaborne combat viewed from a top-down perspective. Simple tap and click mechanics make the game easy to jump into and a range of weapon types, new ship unlocks and a special ability system earned through experience points add depth to the experience. A pirate corporation has formed, attacking the trade routes of the world and the player must fight off this threat using the combined might of the Allied Nations.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Mr. Condyle's Escape
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Shawn Pierre of Origaminc is playing with time, luck and platforms in Mr. Condyle's Escape. What's your game called and what's it about? The name of the game is Mr. Condyle's Escape. The game is about a misunderstood scientist who is was trapped in a virtual world and must escape by getting past the world's defense systems. Players must choose the moves for Mr. Condyle in advance, before the world is set in motion. Once the game world moves, Mr. Condyle will need to avoid wonderful traps, such as Death Balls or Spore Chambers, while also navigating though constantly shifting environments, in hopes of reaching the goal or surviving for a certain period of time.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Arcade Jumper
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Mandy and Blake Lowry of Black Hive Media channel the charm of some classic arcade games stashed in their attic and give them a modern, portable twist with Arcade Jumper. What's your game called and what's it about? Arcade Jumper is about a boy, Eddy, and his beloved little brother, Jimmy, who he must save from the evil arcade labyrinth they were sucked into whilst playing an arcade. You play through levels with completely random platforms, dodging random baddies, collecting redemption tickets, fruits, and coins while also trying to collect warp coins to eventually get to the Megacade and fight Ghosty, who is holding you brother hostage.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Fara
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Andrew Strickland and Brett Estabrook of Pixel and Texel show iOS developers how RPGs are supposed to be done with their title, Fara. What's your game called and what's it about? Fara is an iOS Action RPG where you play a scientist stranded on a bizarre island full of vikings, wise-cracking blobs of goo, magic and disgruntled monsters. What's the coolest aspect of Fara? Brett: Probably our favorite aspect of Fara is the way we've integrated physics gameplay with classic action role-playing. This gives the world a really exciting, dynamic feel and gave us the opportunity to try new mechanics that would only work on iOS. In Fara, you swipe to control flaming arrows, tilt the screen to steer a suit of armor, or slide your finger to smash obstacles with a battering ram. Andrew: A combination of physics, the touch screen, and the retro mechanics was a design we wanted from the beginning with Fara. It's the sort of "something old with something new" mentality that makes the game feel like it was made for iOS, rather than shoehorned onto the platform.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Hidden in Plain Sight
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Adam Spragg attempts to revive local multiplayer with an XBLIG game about looking like you're not playing a game at all, Hidden in Plain Sight. What's your game called and what's it about? The game is called Hidden in Plain Sight. It's a set of multiplayer game modes that share a common theme: trying to accomplish goals without drawing attention to yourself. In each game mode, players control characters in the midst of a large group of NPCs. Players are given a task, but also the means to eliminate each other from the game. So the goal is to try to blend in with the NPCs, but still do what you're supposed to do without getting killed. For example, one of the simplest game modes is called "Death Race." Players and NPCs are racing to be the first to cross a finish line. The naïve approach would be to simply run quickly to the finish line. However, each player has a gun with one bullet, and can eliminate one person from the race. So players want to win the race, but run the risk of being eliminated if they look like they're trying to win. (Of course, you could try a double-bluff by running way out in front, because no one would be that obvious, right?) Other game modes create similar tension by putting players in a conflicted position of wanting to accomplish a goal, but risking elimination by doing so.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Critter Rollers
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Andrew from The Rampant Mango discusses the cuter side of indie mobile development with the free Android game Critter Rollers. What's your game called and what's it about? Our little bundle of love here is called Critter Rollers, and it's an action platformer out now for Android with a one-touch control system. It's not an endless runner or a hold-to-hover game; it's a full-on platform adventure filled with hazards, collectables and lots of cannons.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Control and Conquest
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Eric Goldberg wants to get you off the couch with an RPG that uses GPS to make IRL things more exciting, and he calls it Control and Conquest, from Grind Factory. What's your game called and what's it about? Our game is Control and Conquest and it's all about going out and playing -- quite literally. We want to encourage (but not force) our players to go about town, crawl the dungeons of their neighborhood, and treat the game as an augmented-reality layer on their normal world. At its core, it's a fantasy RPG with location elements, territory control, a battle system and mini-games. And epic beards!
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: A Valley Without Wind
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, CEO and lead programmer for Arcen Games, Chris Park, talks innovation, ghosts and game creation in A Valley Without Wind. What's your game called and what's it about? A Valley Without Wind is a Metroidvania-style adventure game set in a procedurally-generated post-apocalyptic world. There are also some strategic and city-building elements layered on top of this core game -- you can literally help your settlements to rebuild, expand and reclaim the world from the forces of evil that now oppress it. The game focuses on magic and crafting, which leads to a pretty interesting take on action-adventure combat.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Pot Smash
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, brothers Ben and Punya from Australian studio MiniMega break some pots and some rules. Ok, maybe just some pots. Their game is called Pot Smash, after all. What's your game called and what's it about? Pot Smash is a collection of simple minigames that all involve cracking and smashing pots. Basically it piggybacks on the fundamental human truth that we all love smashing stuff. It's wholesome and fun – a timewaster that currently has three game modes: A "match three" game, a typing game and a word game. We're currently creating additional game modes to be added to future updates. What's it like developing with family? Working together as a brother team is great. We've grown up playing games together so there's a bit of ESP going on when it comes to decisions about game design. Our first system was a Sega master system. Seeing how quickly we became obsessed, our uncle jigged it up so that it would only play for one hour each day. That was always our favorite hour of the day. We were hooked, and have never stopped playing. We're both very much on the same page with our ideas and style so decision-making is easy and we are yet to have major disagreement. We're very lucky to be able to work together like this.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: High Flyer Death Defyer
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Game Mechanic Studios founder and creative director Jason Alejandre explains why freefalling is a great way to feel truly free as an indie developer, with his latest title, High Flyer Death Defyer. How did Game Mechanic Studios get started in development? In 2008, Jeff Hua, Henry Ji and I left EA and started Game Mechanic Studios and we really had only one goal-to create games that make us smile and have fun doing the jobs we love. To get to that point we prototyped a lot, dreaming up a bunch of different original games and pushing ourselves to innovate and think creatively. We immediately started working on creating original IP, kind of modeling ourselves after the beginnings of Pixar. Once we had something we were truly proud of we set that as the bar for all the other games we were developing. We probably had about 30 different game ideas that were each developed to various points, so by having that quality bar established we could immediately see which ones out of the 30 were worth developing further. We ended up with about four ideas we really wanted to pursue and one of those was High Flyer Death Defyer -- which we just recently released and are currently working hard to update.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Plague
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Kyle Moseley unleashes a deadly computer virus on Joystiq -- er, not an actual virus. His game, Plague, is a computer virus. Wait, no! It's not a virus! Just... just read Kyle's interview; he explains everything. What's your game called and what's it about? Our game is called Plague. It is about a devastating computer virus that takes over the world and you play as a personified, bottom-of-the-barrel, anti-virus program and have to save the world. It plays like a side-scrolling shooter where the enemies are computer viruses.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Love+
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Fred "Trunks" Wood educates us on that thing we all need with his 8-bit inspired platformer, Love+ -- read on to learn how Trunks makes Love. [Fred "Trunks" Wood could use some Love (left), and James Bennett's music station.] What's your game called and what's it about? My game is called Love+. It's a stylish indie platformer with a retro visual style that comes straight out of the 8-bit generation, a clever checkpoint mechanic and a smooth soundtrack by James Bennett. The idea of the game is to get from the start to finish of each level with as many lives intact as possible.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Astroman
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Michael Stearns takes indie interplanetary with Astroman, a space platformer with a classic story and hard lessons on being too hard. What's the coolest aspect of your game? If I have to pick one favorite aspect, it's got to be the map. The game starts out as a straightforward platformer, but after the player recovers his space ship, he'll find himself back in space and the scope of the game becomes apparent. It's a very cool moment, the map isn't really an overworld map like most games have, it's a stylized planetary system and the player steers his ship through it, Asteroids-style. Power-ups that you pick up for your ship are visible on the ship and have a direct effect on where you can get to. The music is another high point for me, it was all composed by our very talented friend Jeff Ball, and he's even put the whole soundtrack online for free at his site, and we don't want people to be shy about checking it out. To me, music is a really important part of the game experience, back in the SNES/Genesis era, I used to turn on games to get my groove on just as much as for any other reason, and Astroman's soundtrack upholds that tradition even better than I expected it to.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Dungeons of Dredmor
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, the gang from Gaslamp Games explain the hilariously time-consuming adventure of indie development with Dungeons of Dredmor. What's your game called and what's it about? David Baumgart: Our game is called Dungeons of Dredmor. It's a humorous, graphical, roguelike-inspired dungeon crawling RPG. The setup is the archetypal hero descending into the dungeon to defeat an evil dark lord -- that's Lord Dredmor -- by fighting, casting spells, collecting loot and experience, and generally being bothersome. This is no sure process, for the dungeon is filled with traps, monsters, and bottles of acid. Everyone will die at some point. If a player has selected the traditional permadeath option, then upon death the player's character is dead forever and the player must start again with a new hero at the beginning of the game. It's more fun that way.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: A Cloudy Adventure
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Emmanuel Petti of SkyKey gets us high -- like, physically, in the sky -- with some helpful friends in A Cloudy Adventure. What inspired you to make A Cloudy Adventure? In the general sense of things, I've always been interested in making games. I've worked for many years on the edge of the gaming industry through my day job, where I make simulations using game-engine technology, but I haven't actually made a real game until now. Specifically with A Cloudy Adventure I just wanted to make something for an accessible platform that was fun and light but wasn't what everyone else was doing. I've been a long-time fan of cartoons and I think my love for them played a big inspirational role for the idea. It probably didn't help that I spent almost every Saturday and Sunday morning with the TV on Nickelodeon watching various cartoons while I was putting this game together.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: City Tuesday
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Chris Zukowski asks the tough questions about free will, terrorism and beards with his artistically charged indie (which was featured in the Xbox Live Indie Games Summer Uprising), City Tuesday. *Not an actual gun. Prices and participation may vary. Do you see yourself as part of a larger indie movement? Yes.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Pro Zombie Soccer
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Enrique Corts of the Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team talks international development dreams and drama in the iOS darling Pro Zombie Soccer. What's the story here? In Pro Zombie Soccer you control Jax, a soccer player who destroys his professional career due to hardcore partying. When suddenly he finds himself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and he is bitten by the best undead soccer player in the world, he gains his powers and decides it's time to take some of those nasty zombies with him before he transforms into one of them, with only the help of his trusty soccer ball and the ability to control a mass-destruction super-powerful military satellite. Phew. The story is just as surreal as it gets. No intention here whatsoever of winning a Nebula Prize for best script, but players had a lot of fun with it and it's deeply integrated into the gameplay, which is exactly what we wanted.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Mactabilis
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Bruno Beaudoin of Blazing Bit Games takes us on a spaceship ride through shmup hell -- and maybe back -- with Mactabilis. What's your game called and what's it about? The game is called Mactabilis and it's a modern take on shoot 'em ups, or shmups. In it, you control a spaceship and engage hundreds of enemy ships in a 2D sidescrolling fashion. The game keeps the feel of the classics, but adds all the modern features you've come to expect like achievements, unlockables, online multiplayer and even RPG elements. The main feature here is that, at all times, there are two places that you can be in: the background or the foreground. Some levels have a top-down view and in this case, you can switch between the ground and the air. Also, the game is a lot more accessible than most bullet hells and while it has features for experts, you can complete the game without too much trouble.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Soldiers are Dreamers
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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Peter Willington makes the transition from game critic to developer with Soldiers are Dreamers. What's your game called, and what's it about? The title of my game is Soldiers Are Dreamers, taken from the poem "Dreamers" by Siegfried Sassoon, a celebrated World War I poet. It's inspired by war but I've tried to be as ambiguous as possible when it comes to the actual message and meaning. I really want those that experience it to make their own interpretations on what the narrative itself is.
