Posts tagged uDevGames
What the hell is taking so long?
Dec 20th
I keep promising to release Wholesale Hero, or a working beta, onto the unsuspecting public, but nothing has yet to emerge from the dark depths of Mojiferous Industries, for a variety of reasons.
1) I’ve been busily refining the game, tweaking gameplay and adding features to keep it interesting and fun. I’ve been taking my time to turn out something high quality, a game I can be proud of releasing. I’m fairly happy with the results so far, it’ll obviously require some polishing and beta testing, but hopefully it will end up being less of a stinking piece of shit than the games that I have quickly shat out (like Motor Pants or Heatstroke…)
2) I’m still waiting to see if there will be uDevGames contest this year… If there is, I plan on entering Wholesale Hero, but the rules stipulate that it couldn’t have been released publicly before the start of the contest – so until I figure out the state of the uDev contest, Wholesale Hero will remain unavailable to the world at large.
3) Wholesale Hero would seem to be the perfect place for in-game advertising or product placement, since the game actually involves manufacturing and shipping products. However, I’m torn on the subject – I would obviously have to find a sponsor/advertiser that would be okay with the little oddities of a Mojiferous Industries game (this isn’t Bejeweled after all) and that I would be okay with (which rules out 90% of potential advertisers). It would be nice to eventually make a little pocket change off my hobby, but I wouldn’t want to do so at the expense of my creative freedom or insistence on making numerous irrational mustache references. Is this crazy? Should I even think about seeking out advertisers? Is it even worth it? And how the hell do I proceed from here? Cold calls? (Sounds like too much work.) Find an ad firm to represent me? (Ha! As if that’s likely.) Any advice from the peanut gallery?
–Mojiferous
Simoebic Dysentery voted "Most Original" game in uDev Contest!
Mar 17th
The votes are in for the uDevGames Contest 2008… and King Thor and I walked away with a couple of awards for Simoebic Dysentery! Our (as-of-yet unfinished) little gem of a game garnered the most votes in the “Most Original Game” category and placed third in the “Best Sound” category (due entirely to the amazing soundtrack by The Republic of Thoronia [band].) I’m surprised, elated, and a little gassy!
Many thanks to everyone who voted for the game, to Liaht for the technical advice, and especially to King Thor for the concept, ideas, levels, early testing, and that amazing fucking soundtrack (the guy’s got a natural talent for video game music…)
p.s. We’re going to continue work on the game- finally record the dialog, fix some annoying bugs, add content, retool the difficulty… Look for it soon!
Play & vote for Simoebic Dysentery in the uDevGames contest!
Mar 5th
King Thor and I toiled away for a couple of months on the uDevGames Mac game contest, and finally shat out something resembling a working game (I settled on the name Simoebic Dysentery, despite the lukewarm reception from everyone on the team… But I needed a name ASAP and nothing else really stuck, so for the time being, Simoebic Dysentery it is)
Despite currently being more of a working beta than a true game (there are so many features I wanted to add, but didn’t for lack of time, and bugs? There are a few…) I am pretty damn proud of how the game turned out: it sounds great (thanks to the Republic of Thoronia), looks pretty cool, and hasn’t destroyed civilization quite yet (although I’m sure it’s bent on destruction… I can smell it!)
You can download the game Here…
And vote for the game (and download and vote for everyone else’s) Here…*
*This is an indie-developer do-it-yourself in a short time without-billion-dollar-budgets and teams-of programming-monkeys contest: I encourage everyone to download and rate all the games in the contest, if only to support indie developers (especially indie Mac developers!)
King Thor finishes amoeba game soundtrack, I build a level editor!
Jan 23rd
King Thor has finished the soundtrack to our (still unnamed) amoeba game for the uDevGames contest… and you can listen to it right here! Doubleplus good amoebasong!
I also just sent the Good King the first build of the level editor, which is far from feature complete but will get our level building adventure started. I’m not completely satisfied with the graphics right now; they’re not quite etched/woodcut-Gray’s-Anatomy-like enough for me quite yet, but I’m hoping to get them there soon enough… Anyone have any suggestions?
That’s all the news that I have for now. As soon as we have a playable beta I’ll post it here!
–The Admiral
On the uDevGames contest and being an indie developer…
Jan 11th
In a fit of daring, King Thor and I have embarked on a new quest for fame, glory, and trousers! We’ve decided to enter the uDevGames development contest and try our luck at making something worthwhile (whilst the Republic of Thoronia iPhone game is in near-permanent alpha stage…) We’re making a real-time biologically-inspired puzzle game that I recently described as “Sort of an ugly man-beast-child of Frogger, Dig Dug, Super Mario Brothers, Portal, and dysentery.” I will of course keep everyone up to date about all the fun and excitement of the development process, and in the meantime you should all sign up for the Mojiferforums and shoot us some ideas or feedback about our insane/inane ideas here.
On another note, everyone should read this Kotaku article (wellll… A Kotaku article based on an Ars Technica article about a blog by Wolfire Games) about indie game development and the Mac, and how the Mac community seems to be more supportive of indie games because of the lack of support for the platform by major studios.
I have seen exactly this same effect here at Mojiferous Industries: Thousands upon thousands of people downloading my oddities, playing my crappy games, enjoying my output that would probably be ignored or fade into the sea of commercial software in the Windows world. It probably also helps that the Mac community is historically composed of a large number of highly creative people- artists, musicians, designers- the type of people who may be more inclined to enjoy an inspired labor of love than something that is strictly functional. Eight years of a *nix kernel has also expanded the hardcore-IT-guy user base, bringing in more people who actively support free, non-commercial, and open-sourced software and further reject the flood of mega-corporation drivel in preference to indie development. This has all come together to create a great environment for developers like myself, allowing me to develop inane things like Zoltan and still know that someone out there will see and appreciate the crap I develop.
On the other hand, I think the future is probably fairly bleak for major studio Mac game development, despite the increasing user base and ease of development- the switch to Intel means that the average Mac user can run Windows easily and quickly, reducing the profit margin associated with cross-platform builds. I personally have a Boot Camp partition just for this reason… Why wait for the next big game to come out on the Mac when I can play it today with a simple reboot? There has also been a slow bleed of talent and creative juice away from computer games and towards consoles, and even the PC market has seen less “amazing” and more “mediocre” than in times past. Not that every major corporate game studio will abandon the Mac, but there will definitely be less of a reason monetarily for them to port something over.
This means that the Mac indie community should become stronger, stranger, and more creative than ever before; people will still want native games and the huge corporations will still make blockbuster ports, but the environment for the little guy (or the very bizarre little guy) should be great…
–Mojiferous