31.12.05

Drill

Posted in everything, games, shmups at 11:20 am by the2bears

I’m obviously a fan of shmups, especially indie shmups. Now independent gets interpreted a number of different ways with regards to game development but for now I’ll just assume it means this: an individual or team that work to create the game they want to make, regardless of outside pressure from publishers, licensors, or even financial worry.

Homebrew development for gaming consoles seems to me the pinnacle of indie programming: one often has to use tools themselves that have sprung from a community of fans, there is little or no hardware support from the manufacturers and the market is generally small as the consoles worked on are invariably “old”.

There is an interesting exception to this, Sega’s Dreamcast. Despite being out of production for a few years there are still 2 commercial games (both shmups) scheduled for release this year. But it also has a very active development community, with sites like Dreamcast Homebrew for support. Sharing hardware with Sega‘s arcade Naomi board has helped, as the Naomi is still an active platform for arcades in Japan and is now considerably cheaper to develop to when compared with the current generation of consoles.

Drill is an interesting project, quietly, and slowly progressing well under most people’s radar. Which is a shame, because it’s a very promising game. I downloaded an ISO image they provide and burned this to an ordinary CD, and popped it into my Dreamcast. All I can say is, “Hurry up and finish this!” It’s very good so far, a nice mix of Japanese and European styles with some manic bullet patterns. The game is very polished with good production value.

If you’ve got a Dreamcast I highly recommend trying this out. The sight does not have any screen shots available, but don’t let that scare you off. I sincerely hope this game gets finished.

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30.12.05

Mobile Digressions: Mech Battalion

Posted in everything, games, mobile at 4:25 pm by the2bears

I’m very interested in Mech Battalion, a “coming soon” game shown on Glu’s website. Of particular interest is this: “Fight against up to three other players simultaneously online…” The gameplay looks close to real-time, I’ll be interested to see if Glu can pull this one off. Looks to be by the same artist as Alpha Wing 2, and if the rest of that team is working on this it has high odds of being good.

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Sam & Max Comic

Posted in everything, games, web at 2:38 pm by the2bears

There’s a web-based Sam & Max comic strip up at Telltale Games, the start of which is here. Only two strips so far but I like how it’s an interactive comic – you roll your mouse over a panel to see something happen. While you’re there you might check out their game, Bone: Out From Boneville. It has a free, trial download. Now, where’s my Sam & Max t-shirt that’s on backorder?

comic games sam & max

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29.12.05

Indie Awards…

Posted in everything, games at 8:58 pm by the2bears

Congratulations to Caspian Rychlik-Prince and Ultratron on getting 2 awards in the Game Tunnel Game of the Year awards, Indie style. Ultratron placed 3rd in both the 2005 Action Game of the Year and the 2005 Game of the Year: Sound categories. More on Ultratron here.

Congratulations also to Tribal Trouble, created by Oddlabs, for getting 2nd in the 2005 Strategy Game of the Year category, 3rd in the 2005 Game of the Year: Graphics category, and 4th in the 2005 Game of the Year: Multiplayer category. Tribal Trouble is another game built with Java and LWJGL.

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Mobile Digressions: Assault Wings 1944

Posted in everything, games, mobile, shmups at 5:44 pm by the2bears

Here’s another mobile shmup published by Gameloft. It’s the prequel to Siberian Strike and therein lies its problem. Not that either game is bad, in fact I played Siberian Strike on a Nokia Series 40 phone a few years ago and quite enjoyed it. Both are airplane-themed shmups, though with “1944″ in the title I wonder why I would be attacking a Russian submarine. Regardless of origin though, the bosses in both games resemble the always interesting WWII style weaponry found in comics like Blackhawk or movies like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. This is a favourite shmup theme of mine, and works really well – see Progear!

The games are described as “two-parts”, Assault Wings 1944 and Siberian Strike respectively. The problem? There’s only enough content here for one game. Now granted the titles are a few years old now, and a game that was released on a Series 40 phone (maximum of 64K) is going to be quite small. However, Gameloft saw fit to release this on a 2005 phone, the Sony Ericsson S710a. It can obviously handle a lot more content, as it does nicely with Xyanide and Alpha Wing 2. Instead of combining the games though, Gameloft releases Assault Wings 1944 with only 3 levels, or more accurately 2 flying levels and a stupid dodge icebergs level. The iceberg level is the last one, and I guess it is the setup for Siberian Strike. It’s not just a stupid level though, it’s also stupidly hard due to the inaccurate hit-box of your plane. What a dumb finish to a game. I can’t imagine not being able to fly over an iceberg, but apparently this plane cannot.

5 levels would have been about perfect, or I guess 6 if Siberian Strike is the same length. $5.99 is not a lot for a game ordinarily, but it is when you compare this to what else is available. Gameloft should feel a little shame selling this, though as it’s still generating some revenue I’m sure it’s not. Ok, I take that back. It’s not a bad game (except for the icebergs), just not enough game. If it was mine I’d sell it too.

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