Hello, chums!
Been quiet lately, I know. That’s because we’ve been making this
2016 should be an interesting year 🙂 DDMR PS4 and iOS due for launch in February. The Death Ray Manta album whenever the game comes out. Wing Kings being developed now for PS4, PSVita and XBox One. All that and whatever life throws up in between. Looking forward to it.
Hello! So it’s been a long time since I’ve updated this blog. Over a year! Bla bla should try and do it more often.
So a whole lot has changed since the last update! Achieved a whole lot and done some ace projects with some new ones on the horizon. Anyway, less chat more updatez!
Don’t Die, Mr. Robot!
This was finally released in North America on 4th November 2014, and 5th November 2014 in the EU. Fireworks night no less! Quite fitting. Here’s the launch trailer:
Avoid Droid ended up being called Don’t Die, Mr. Robot. That’s because Lucasfilm have a trademark on the word ‘Droid’ which apparently they vigorously enforce. We didn’t fancy that so we changed the name. Actually, it was our pal Rob Fearon who came up with the name, so cheers mate!
It did well! Currently at at a metacritic score of 77
It got load of awesome reviews which you can read about here on the ISG blog:
http://infinitestategames.com/2015/03/10/do-buy-mr-robot-reviews-roundup/
DDMR was the biggest release of our independent career so far, so it’s quite a big deal for us to have finished it, got it out the door and well received by critics and players alike. Plainly speaking – we did a great job considering no budget!
Oh, and one more bit of DDMR news – we’re working with an awesome, excellent man to bring Don’t Die to PS4! Yeah! PS4 BABY!
DRM: Vita
I’m now working on the soundtrack to Rob Fearon’s Death Ray Manta for PSVita and PS4. It’s a musical collaboration with the very talented Bristol based singer and musician Jenny Ramage under the banner of ‘Jenny and the Giants’. This is quite an interesting project because it’s the sound track for a game, but also a concept album of catchy electropop songs which tells the story of a girl who’s fell in love with a sentient, omniscient space fish which fires lasers from its head.
The game is due out at the end of 2015. At the time of writing this blog, we’re just mixing down all the tracks. Next week we’re off to the studio to master them, so I’ll probably try and blog about that part of the process because it’s interesting!
Frutorious HD
Remember Frutorious? Don’t worry, no one else does either. However, we do! During the last 2 years while doing all our other stuff, we’ve been quietly and slowly working on the ultimate edition of Frutorious. We’ve fixed all the shitty levels, we’ve put in a new guide line to help you aim – and we’ve given the whole game an HD overhaul upping the quality of the graphics.
It’s playing great, it’s looking great, and when we’ve got a bit of spare time we’ll release it! But only when it’s the right time. One does not simply ‘ship’ a game like Frutorious HD.
Here’s some video of it running –
Wing Kings
Oh yeah! On top of all that, we’re making a new game over at ISG!
Wing Kings is an air combat dog fightin’ roguelike. We’re developing it for PSVita and PS4 for release in North American and Europe (sorry, Japan!)
We’ve hired an artist for this one too (WOWZERS!) He’s an industry veteran who may have worked on some of your favourite games, who knows! Check out this hot mock up…
We’re currently prototyping, and already dogfighting is tense and explosive, while landing is nailbiting and exhilarating. So far so good!
Here’s a Vine of our current prototype we’re using to tweak the flight model
And that’s it! Loads of great stuff going on, and personal satisfaction levels at an all time high – for which I must thank Jenny and Charlie for being my two sources of joy, productivity and inspiration. And thanks, yourself, for reading about my things wot I’m doing!
See you next time!
Here’s what I’ve been up to lately!
So the entire reason I wanted to make games was a chap called Jeff Minter. My first Minter game was Gridrunner for the Atari 65XE. Then Attack of the Mutant Camels. Even as an eight year old, his games stood out as being by far the most intense, imaginative and coolest. So when the opportunity to do a tune for his PSVita game ‘TxK’ came around, I was on it like a rat up a drainpipe.
Here’s the whole album on Bandcamp. Mine’s called ‘Gin Swigger’.
I’ve also completely finished the Avoid Droid soundtrack EP! You can download it for free or pay what you want here:
Pocket Gamer came round to the old ISG design labs to play the game! They had a good time, as did we. You can read the preview they wrote here: http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/PS+Vita/Avoid+Droid/news.asp?c=58332
I also did a little interview with PocketGamer.biz about making games with zero budget and winging it. You can see it here:
Hello, chums!
It’s been a while since I updated my blog, so let’s dive straight in with some stuff I’ve been up to.
Firstly, Nike+ Kinect Training is out. I worked on that while still at the perennially awesome Ruffian Games. My job was to design and implement some crazy games you play to keep fit.
I can’t remember much cos it’s going back a bit now, but I remember doing the game where all the balls bounce towards you and you have to dodge out of the way. I don’t know if it made it in the final build unadulterated but the ball dodging experience I designed was so much fun to make. It was a really fun last couple of months at Ruffian, designing waves of balls in CryEngine, walking over to a devkit and testing the game physically.
It was very gratifying to watch friends at work play my stuff. I think my favourite bit was seeing people go ‘OH, HANG ON! FUCK!’ when my 5 foot high basketball suddenly flew at them at the end of the session.
Secondly, I’m working on a new game! It’s called Avoid Droid.
It’s chock full of HYPER DODGING FRUITY ACTION. It was inspired by a game called ‘Jimmy Dodger’ that our old mate Matthew Downie made for us to play at lunchtimes back in the day at Razorback.
Here’s a video of our E3 reveal trailer.
Thirdly, enormous news, Me and Charlie have been talking to some really really cool guys at Sony, and they’re gonna help us bring Frutorious and Avoid Droid to PS Vita! Imagine that, Frutorious in HD on a PS Vita! Pretty cool prospect, I reckon.
This is great news for a couple of reasons.
1. We get to reach out to a new audience on some incredible hardware.
2. I’ve prove to myself that I can come up with a design, prototype, pitch and sign a deal. And I’m also now a director of Infinite State Games Ltd! Serious sounding business, eh?
Infinite State Games has just been the perfect company to work at for the last few years, and I’ve been very lucky indeed to have been able to play my part in us getting this far. We’re being accepted now as a team who can produce things people want, and that feels so blimmin’ lovely I can’t really put it into words.
We were interviewed recently for 100% Indie, too. It’s quite a nice interview, you can read it here: http://www.100percentindie.com/2013/07/05/infinitely-happy/
So onwards and upwards to bigger and better things!
Well I’m settling in nicely as my new role of creative director at Infinite State Games.
It’s great to be making games I care about again, and fantastic to be making games suitable and appealing for everyone and anyone.
We’ve assembled a great little team at ISG, headed up by code Godfather; Charlie Scott-Skinner.
As Creative Director, I’m dealing with the design, art and audio as well as social media marketing and all that stuff. We’ve also roped in an old talented friend Neon Hearts on senior level design duty who’s bringing a lot of joy and original ideas to levels and the company as a whole.
Our first big project as the newly expanded Infinite State Games studio; Frutorious, is going REALLY well. It’s a good few months off being complete, the art needs a bit of polish and we’re knocking out as many levels as we can to give people a rich and varied experience. There’ll be a lot of focus testing before release to make sure it’s as fun as possible and we’re starting to get very excited indeed.
What’s equally as exciting is the amount of people who are inspired by it to offer us help in a variety of ways from marketing and graphic design to play testing and feedback.
For me though, the best thing about it is that it has inspired some friends in the mainstream games industry to start making their own games in their spare time. I suppose if three guys can make a game out of plasticine, felt and pipecleaners it gives everyone hope!
They Can't All Be Zingers! 