Friday 20 April 2012

Kompendium - IGF feedback

I submitted a collection of 2-player games I was working on to the IGF. Maybe a little cheeky sneaking in ten games for the price of one, but I couldn't pick one and I was working on them all in parallel at the time, considering it as an album.

Since then I got an iPad and started porting them to it, because it seemed a more natural setting for same-computer-multiplayer. Glitch Tank came out of this; it instantly became a much better game as soon as it had touch controls so I polished it up on its own and released it. The rest will be released in some form at some point (maybe individually, maybe as an album, I'm not sure right now), there's some nice stuff there, but I need to spend quite a bit more time on them to get touch controls feeling vaguely acceptable, and I've been distracted making other things.

Here's the IGF judge feedback:

I just lurves me some games-about-gameplay. And this one had lots of really interesting things bouncing off of other things. That said, the heat of frantic two-players-one-keyboard combat is not the most comfortable environment for navel-gazing. Sometimes you just want a second to process, you know? (Maybe less if you are a twitchier or schmuppier player than I'll ever manage to be.)

On the other hand the 2 people playing had some wacky real time exchanges about what they thought was going on. Now that it's over (whew!) I wish I could remember more of what we said...

This game has a lot going for it. I totally dig the art style, especially on Zeta Forge and Hostile Pantograph. These two also had the gameplay that resonated with me the most. I think you could make a little pocket money with these if you could find a good place to release them. Hostile Pantograph could benefit from some AI, so you could play against the computer, but Zeta Forge makes more sense as a multiplayer game. Both of them would be really fun on the iPad, with two players sitting down touching the screen. I really like Shot Shot Shoot and MultiPong, and your games could deliver a similar experience.

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