I picked up Ziggurat (or I guess ZiGGURAT according to the app store) based on seeing the name pop up here and there. TUAW’s review mentioned that it adds ‘new controls’ to the genre. I would probably say that this is a bit optimistic. I have added ‘new controls’ to a lot of games. This wasn’t necessarily on purpose, nor was it a good thing.

This review only really needs one screenshot, the above, because that is most of the game. Its a very small game, and similar to Canabalt in its simplicity. The 8-bit art style has little flair, and the enemies are all pretty much the same in the few times I played it.

Both control modes feel experimental, and this feels more like a polished up game jam game than an actual game. Infrequently do I think I didn’t get my $.99 for my game. And this would be one of those times.

Today’s app review has been pushed back due to the pretty fantastical-ness of this cosplay video from Katsucon:

There’s a lot of…interesting…cosplay out in the world, but this video for me shows the best of the art. Fantastic costumes and talent, excellently shot, and they found some locations which had a very future meets past vibe. The performers are definitely having a great time (how could they not?).

Kotaku mentioned turning down the volume. I say no. Turn it UP. Cosplay is unabashedly bubblegummy, and so turn the Kelly Clarkson up and revel in the bright colors and anti-gravity hair.

Developing the audio for Monster Words was a difficult process for me. First, while I love music, that doesn’t mean that I love listening to music in games. I find a lot of game music to be niche, and very in-your-face. But there are some great tracks out there. Some of my favorites is Amon Tobin’s Splinter Cell soundtrack. Amanaguchi is fantastic, and I highly recommend their soundtrack to the Scott Pilgrim video game (speaking of in-your-face).

For Monster Words, I literally spent about two days looking for the music I wanted to hear. I could not afford bespoke music, although there are some buskers nearby I could record with my iPhone. I thought stock music would work, but this wasn’t a simple process. Similar to stock photography, every music student with a Casio thinks they’re Ramin Djawadi.

Finally I stumbled across the video game music section of PremiumBeat.com. Premium Beat’s music was easily the best curated selection on the web, with not a tinny Casio in sight. Even then, I still had trouble, until I found Levan Iordanishvili’s well composed music. Levan’s apparently worked on a lot of games, and I feel very lucky to be able to use such a great composer at such a discounted price.

I highly recommend listening to some of this work on its own. I really dig ‘Eternal Fury’ and if I could mix it right, I would love to find a spot for it in a dramatic moment in a future game!

Beat Sneak Bandit is a very polished and fun rhythm game. The game’s charm won me over, with a silly narrative and bright, engaging graphics. I became a disco thief, talking to my jive frog and stealing clocks.

The rhythm mechanic is what this game lives and breathes. So if you like thinking on your feet, and want to get your adrenaline pumping to the beat, then this is a game for you. Me? I don’t know if I will pick the game up again, to be honest. I played the first area almost to completion. I am a completionist, and felt that leaving the smaller bonus clocks behind was unfinished business. Getting the smaller clocks makes the game much more difficult. In fact, some levels are ridiculously easy if you don’t get the bonuses. Attempting to get the bonus clocks can be hard. Really, really hard for a beatless wonder like me. But you should see me play Dance Dance Revolution.

So would I recommend Beat Sneak Bandit? Sure. Would it be the game I’d recommend? Probably not (currently that would be Ghost Trick). I felt that getting a full completion was too tough, and I was really sick of that song, (and playing without sound is apparently not an option). But the art, style, and fun factor are way high. I could see kids going berzerk over this game, too.

We’ve been hard at work on adding more levels and content to Monster Words and Monstruo Pallabras. ‘Soon’ we’ll be shipping both. Here’s a background we did for the monster’s home world:
I think there are a couple distinct (and hopefully complementary) art styles in the game. I think of it as evolving, meshing the style with the game. Some of the artwork is done in Illustrator and painted in Photoshop, some of it is made completely in Photoshop. A large amount of it is done on paper first:

A lot of great artists are able to sketch out on the monitor, which I have yet to be able to do effectively. I can’t put my finger on why I prefer paper. I think it might be the higher ‘resolution’. I have a tendency to iterate quickly on paper, and I use an animation desk (technically, I just use just the disc most of the time) to draw things rough, and clean them up fast. Here’s the rough for the above image:

And this is from the roughs below. I iterated over a few different concepts before deciding upon a flatter composition. I initially went more panoramic, but felt that I could get a feeling of depth by using simple geometric shapes and fit more with the existing style.

Ultimately I drew it about 5 times. I showed a friend the cleaned up pencil drawing, then an hour and a half later the final piece. ‘Damn, that was fast’, he said but he didn’t see the hours I spent looking at ideas for composition, drawing little doodles, and staring at blank paper. Which is why I thought it might be interesting to write more of a ‘behind the scenes’ post.

There’s a lot of art that doesn’t make it, even though it might be cool:

This was a potential character within the game, but it didn’t make the cut. What replaced it? The new update will be out, and you’ll see soon enough!

This is a very, very small demo on how to do a simple color cycle using Cocos2d. Sometimes its necessary to use multiple color models to get things done. This code uses the HSL, hue, saturation, lightness color model to choose a color of a similar hue, and tween between the values.

Why use HSL over RGB? Essentially it looks better, and it can be more consistent. If you were to randomly choose two RGB values and tween between them, it is easy to get very bright or very dark images, the end result being very spastic. What would be ideal is if you could limit the range of possible colors to exist within a certain brightness level. It can also be helpful to define just how much saturation could be added, also. Enter HSL. But how do you convert between the two color models? Its not too difficult, but there is a bit of math involved, which has already been solved many times over.

Note the difference between HSL and HSB (aka HSV) in the above image. In HSB, 100% saturation is full saturation regardless of brightness. In HSL, 100% brightness trumps 100% saturation, and so it is better to use 50% brightness. HSB is a more common format, and if you use Photoshop a lot, you’re probably familiar with it.

Here’s the nugget of example code from the project:

You can grab the source code from GitHub here!

Valve likes to contrast bold colors, universal symbols and minimal design aesthetic with hyperrealistic art. And that’s exactly how I would describe their office. Yesterday Penny Arcade Report (they have a report, too? Wasn’t a TV show and video game enough?) gave us a great tour of the Valve offices. I felt the interior designers did a great job of translating the style of Valve’s games.

I wonder how often someone makes the joke that they just need to let off some steam in the office?

I’ve been attempting to play Hero Academy here for the last week. I still don’t know what to make of this game. There are things that really bother me, for example, this guy’s eyes:

Separated at birth?

I’ve been playing ONE, yes, ONE game for the past week. I cancelled another because one was already more than I wanted to  play. Finally I went ahead and turned notifications on so I could finish the thing.

GO GO GO

And I guess I didn’t understand that you can use some potion to ultra-buff your guy to destroy your opponent’s crystal in two turns (which is what ultimately happened). There are a lot of things that I don’t understand about Hero Academy. Its use of a font that is too close to Comic Sans for my liking or its awesome ads.

It’s ‘tutorial’ is very well tuned to provide lots of fodder for the core players who know what the hell is going on. This is a good tactic because any pvp game needs a constant influx of players into the ecosystem for the hardcore paying users to pwn.

At the end of the day, I’m not sure if I like Hero Academy or it annoys me. Perhaps I could like it, because there is a good game in there. And the dwarves look really fun:

Annoyingness:

a) its a very distracting game. You need to have notifications on to play this. And I think the expectation is you’ll have a lot of games running to make up for the very short playtime. More games == more distractions.

b) Non-existent tutorial == no idea what’s happening == pwnage. I’m not sure if I want to continue playing because I got pwned, or because its a genuinely good game. I kind of feel like the game is tricking me into wanting to understand the system by slapping my hand.

c) That dude’s eyes. They’re just creepy.

So…fun…or annoying? Aahhhh….who am I kidding? I’m going to play this game, and you know it.

Another Tucson developer (who I’ve never met) has released their new game Pizza Vs. Skeletons. Touch Arcade has a more in-depth preview of the game up here.

I was unaware of how pizza and skeletons interacted. The overall mechanic and the fun of smashing skeletons is very satisfying. The length of the levels are nice and short. I love seeing the passion and fun of making games come through in the final product, and this has it in spades.

The main criticism I have for the game would be that the tilt controls are a bit too ‘floaty’ to me, and I’m not sure that I’d be able to play for extended sessions. Rolando’s controls were also tilt-based and didn’t seem to have this issue, but perhaps the size of the pizza annoys my brain somehow.

Secondly the ‘decoration’ mode doesn’t allow me to preview on the pizza before purchasing, which is a minor issue.

Overall, I’m enjoying the uniqueness of the graphics, and the variety of levels is quite entertaining. Its a lot of crazy eye candy, and I think part of the appeal is seeing what the heck they are going to do next!

I don’t know how, but I got sucked into watching Notch play Day of the Tentacle for about a half an hour the other day. I see a restraining order in my future, because now I’ll be watching him this weekend Mojamming!

When I last checked the poll, it looks like they’re going to be making a steampunk real-time strategy title. Here’s my break down of Mojang’s art strategy based on their poll:

Steampunk – Bronzish boxes.

Post Apocalyptic – Gunmetallish boxes.

Fantasy – Purplish boxes.

WWII – Olive drab boxes.

Candy Land – White and Red stripy boxes.

Modern – Glowing wireframe boxes.

Ancient Egypt – Dusty boxes with lots of sand particle effects.

Horror – Creepers.