An Intro: Grabbyhands

Good morning folks! (Or afternoon or evening or night)

The last post I made was little more than a screenshot of our next project. No information, no clues, no promises. As you can probably see, the game is a fair bit further along now and I’m ready to talk about it a bit. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Project Grabbyhands. Don’t worry, he won’t bite.

What is Grabbyhands? Well, I’m so glad you asked: Grabbyhands is a two-player split-screen dungeon-crawling battle to the death. You and a friend are spawned somewhere in a randomly generated dungeon. You both start off completely equal in stats. You then have a limited amount of time to explore the dungeon, killing enemies, opening chests and so on in order to grow (hopefully) stronger than your enemy. Of course, the only way you’d really know if you were stronger would be to find the other player, and they might be doing the same thing…

Our goal for this game is to create a competitive, crazy and fun game environment. The game is hotseat, so whether you’re playing with controllers or on the same keyboard, it’s going to be up close and personal. There will be elbowing, shoving, and a lot of dirty play. But that’s totally okay. In fact, it’s what we want. We’re designing this game with the intention that it will be as fun as possible. That’s the long and short of it. With previous games we’ve sought after emotional connection and meaningful story. This time around, we want to make you smile. We want to make you laugh and yell and scream. We’re getting there.

I’ll do my best to keep a relatively steady flow of devlogs and updates for this project. Now that it’s in a position where we can actually show it off a little bit, I would love to really help you get to know it a little better! I’ll see you all soon.

 

Chris

 

Ascension Release!

I must say, I never thought I’d be writing this post.

Exactly one year after we released that initial demo, the full version of Ascension is available for public consumption! It comes at the low, low price of absolutely free, and we really hope you enjoy it! If you don’t, that’s perfectly fine too. We won’t be too upset

http://www.mediafire.com/?uxdaq7x2jeurbus

Let us know your thoughts on the game! I’ll see you all in a year when I’m brave enough to return to the internet.

-Klassic

Ascension – Launch Trailer

After far too long, the trailer is done and ready to be watched by your watching eyes!

Ascension comes out on the 31st of October. Be ready for it then!

 

-Klassic

Ludum Dare 23! Shrink things! Excitement!

I spent this weekend participating in Ludum Dare 23. If you (for some reason) aren’t familiar with the Ludum Dare, it’s a 48 hour competition in which hordes of people get together and make a game. It’s exhausting and stressful, but very very rewarding and fun. My entry, Shrunkit, can be found here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=3595

Let me know what you think!

-Klassic

Ascension Phase Two (WOO)

Attempting to make posts more visual, brace yourselves.

An interesting fun fact for everyone: We’ve been working on Ascension (on and off, of course) for 10 months now. Considering the fact that we’re all just highschool know-it-alls, that’s quite the accomplishment. Or at least I think so. I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to create in that time, and while there are things I wish I’d done better, I can’t beat myself down for not being perfect.

Around October of 2011, we released the Ascension Demo to ye old internet to see what people liked and didn’t like. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and motivated us to create a finished product that would improve on the complaints while keeping the fear. Not an easy task, but well worth the effort.

For the past 3 months or so, we’ve been doing two things:

1. We’ve been fixing the issues people had with the demo. Things like the HUD being confusing, the game being too dark.

2. We’ve been boxing out the full game. The screenshots you’re seeing are of parts of the game that are more complete than the rest. Most of the levels we have developed right now are empty and boring. We’re doing this so that starting this week, we can work on the storyline and atmosphere without worrying about any programming issues.

This is the first project we’ve had to do something like this; all our other games were small enough to not need proper planning. It’ll all pay off, though. This is gearing up to be our best game EVER!!!

As of midday Saturday (Feb. 4th), we’ve finished boxing out the game. The skeleton is in place, and now it’s time for the fun stuff.

What are we going to do now? Well, our first step is to finalize the story and write the script. Once we have that done, we can use it as a basis for the game’s atmosphere, pacing and gameplay. There are a few design issues we have yet to puzzle out, like combat, but in order to test then properly we need to build an environment where they can be tested.

If I had to guess, I’d say we should have this phase finished in two to three months, less if we stay as motivated as we are now. After that, only two things remain: testing and polish.

(Illuminated here is the fantastic portrait of Atty, drawn by Tangleworm)

As always, I’ll keep you guys closely updated with our progress. We’re going to (hopefully) be moving quickly from this point on, and our progress will actually be somewhat visual, so I’ll have a lot to show off on the blog.

Exciting times are abound, comrades. See you soon!

Klassic

 

PS: Our Twitter is lonely, follow us and join the everlasting party!

 

You Monster Tutorial & Credits

You Monster

Made in 72 for GMC Jam #5

Thanks for taking the time to check out our jam game!

I’d strongly advise you read through the entire tutorial, otherwise you might end up a bit confused when it comes to playing the actual game!

You Monster is a game set in a small portion of a big city over the course of an undefined number of days. During the daytime, your goal is to persuade as many people to follow you as possible.

You do this by:

(Moving with the arrow keys)

1. Bribing (Z key) – affects entire groups, low success rate

2. Threatening (X key) – high success rate, but if it fails all shadows will disappear temporarily

3. Charming (C key) – high success rate, but if it fails you will move slower for a short while

Depending on the level of each separate skill, your chance of success will vary.

As the day progresses into the evening (6 pm), you must lead your followers into a darkened area (indicated by shadows).

When it turns to night, you will become a dreadful monster and will consume your entire following.

Each person you consume will give you EXP, which you can use to upgrade your skills. (Clicking on each respective button. You will know if you can upgrade by a “+” next to the skill’s level) Apart from eating your followers at night, you can also collect EXP orbs that are scattered across the map.

Be warned, though. A team of police officers are patrolling the city, looking for you. If they spot you, you have a short time window to escape before it’s game over.

Be aware: as your kill count rises, police will begin appearing during the day. You must avoid them, the same as you do at night.

The game has no definite ending; you are free to increase your skills as far as you want. The better your skills, the more followers you’ll have come night time.

Enjoy!

Credits

Klassic – Programming, design, sound

Tangleworm – Art, design

Facade

Hey all!

The 5th GMC jam started today and we’re hard at work putting together an insane concept that I hope we can pull off. I’ll explain more about it later on (so that no one is tempted to steal it, of course ;D), but to provide a brief summary:

-The interface is a world map of 7 nations. Your goal is to take over the world without alarming the other nations.

It’s very in-depth, potentially too ambitious, and I love the concept. I’ll post updates as we go!

-Klassic

EDIT 1:

Starting the game HUD…

EDIT 2:

Bogged down by the complexity of the project, taking a breather while I wait for Tangleworm and Worthington to become available again so we can reassess this mess. HAH, I rhyme.

EDIT 3:

Ditched the previous concept (Luls), we’ve spent the past few hours working on a new idea. Here’s a screenshot from it after about 4 hours in.

TOP DOWN!?

EDIT 4:

Almost done working on this game. I’m happy to have been able to get this game presentable, there was a point last night where I wasn’t really sure. I might do a little bit tomorrow, but I have school all day and I don’t want to leave anything that long if it can be helped. Here’s a look at how things are coming:

 

Note: some placeholder art is still visible, obviously. Hopefully Tangleworm can finish those tonight. If not, I’ll cook something up.

Game Design Expo!

What’s up everyone!

Worthington and I attended GDE (Game Design Expo) in Vancouver this weekend and had a blast meeting people. There were some fantastic presentations (and one less than fantastic presentation) about a spectrum of things, ranging from storytelling to level design to how to work under restraints set by a publisher. There was a lot of information to take in and, to be completely honest, after 8 or so hours of sitting in a chair listening to people talk my brain started to break down a little.

We were considering staying for the reception after the indie panel (great panel, by the way. Four serious, earnest indies and then Chevy Ray, who I get the feeling was the centre of attention for most of that panel) but to be honest, we were just too damn tired. Someone let me know how it went, I’d love to hear.

We actually took some notes on a couple of the more informative speakers and I’m feeling refreshed and ready to jump back into Ascension now that finals week has finally ended. If things go the way I’m hoping, we’ll get some good work done on Ascension this week before school starts again. We’re about halfway done the barebones development of the game; after that comes the story and atmosphere. I’m really looking forward to that, call me a sadist if you want.

There’s not a whole lot for me to show off right now, most of what I’m working on is behind the scenes technical stuff. One thing I’m particularly satisfied with is the lift sequence in the storage room. It’s not finished or polished yet, but the basics are in place and I figure I might as well show it off to you all.

 

I’m not going to explain what’s going on in the photo because it’s part of a puzzle (“puzzle”), but to put it simply the lift goes up and down a short distance. It’s not an elevator, but rest assured; we have that too.

Right now I’m working on the cold storage zone (zone 3 of 5) and making everything look very cold. We’ve got some great ideas lined up for the second half of the game, and I’m looking forward to showcasing them.

 

See you soon!

Klassic

Ludum Dare and a progress update!

GOOD EVENING.

Ludum Dare 48 has ended this night! The results are fantastic, I was able to snag 5th in the Mood category and 75th overall out of 891 games! Pretty damn good for a first attempt if I do say so myself. Oh, and other people did well too. Whatever.

Moving onto something you actually care about, we’ve just finished the bare structuring of two out of four zones. What does that mean? Well, it means that all the basic game functions are set in stone for those zones. That doesn’t include anything like story, atmosphere or fear. In other words, we are most definitely NOT half way done, although it might seem that way.

If I had to give a completion percentage… 20%? Most of the engine is already finished, and that took us six months to make (shudder). As long as we keep motivation strong, we’ll be well off.

In other words, we’re doomed.

At any rate, I’m excited to see this game progress. It’s turning out very, very well. I think you’re going to enjoy it.

 

-Klassic

Ludum Dare COMPLETE!

Hey everyone!

This year I decided to enter the Ludum Dare for the first time and really go all out with it; try to put the 48 hours to good use. Apart from six hours when I had to go to work, I had the entire 48 hours to work.

It was a hell of a lot of fun, and exhausting at the same time. I’ve never worked so hard for so long on a project like this. I’m glad I did it though, and I’ll definitely be participating in future jams.

I put together a short (very short) atmospheric exploration game called A Life Apart, and I’ll give you all the link once the Ludum Dare website is back online (down now due to too much traffic).

And now, back to Ascension. Because you know, why would I ever stop working?

Klassic

EDIT: LD is back up, here’s the download page.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=3595