The moment you use the right stick to open fire on the waves of space baddies swarming the screen it becomes clear how We Are Doomed diverges from the formula. Instead of blasting enemies with a never-ending stream of long-range laser fire, players instead must rely on a medium-range “overpowered laserbeam,” as Vertex Pop’s website describes it. In actuality, it doesn’t come off like a laser at all. Instead, it looks and feels more like you’re wielding a flamethrower with an infinite fuel supply.
I do enjoy the various interpretations as to what the laserbeam actually looks like.
So PAX East flew right by! I’m an exhausted mess, but I had such a great time! A fair share of journalists stopped by over the weekend, and I’ve rounded up their words below.
Mark Labbe at PlayStation LifeStyle has the basics covered:
We Are Doomed is great to look at, and even more great to play. Instead of having long-ranged bullets or missiles, players are armed with a somewhat short laserbeam. […] The laserbeam forces player to properly manage their movements and space around themselves, getting close enough to enemies to kill them but staying far enough away to not be killed.
I love how James Cunningham at Hardcore Gamer describes the new Endless mode:
There’s also a new Endless mode that spawns enemies in an infinite cascade of popcorn enemies, ramping up in difficulty far more quickly than the main campaign as the horde zones you in and forces you to manage the space around you rather than worrying about screen-clearing.
And finally, The Queen of the Nerds sums it up quite nicely:
I would play the hell out of this game. The colors are very eye catching and the music is good. I think my favorite part of this game is the unique and colorful bad guys. Blast ‘em!
WE ARE DOOMED promo cards for PAX East. From concept to completion.
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be showing We Are Doomed at PAX East 2015, as part of the Indie MEGABOOTH!
Last year around this time I was getting ready to debut We Are Doomed at my first PAX East. The show was a huge success for me: attendees loved the game, as did the fine folks at Sony and Microsoft. It’s no exaggeration to say that I wouldn’t be where I am today if Indie MEGABOOTH hadn’t taken a chance on me.
I’m thrilled and honoured to be part of this year’s incredible line-up. I’ll be at Booth 4165, please come by if you’re attending!
New Trailer Lots of fun putting this thing together. I think it captures the chill feel and SUPERBEAM zapping action of the game quite nicely. :)
Release Plans April is looking good! I’d love to be more specific, but I’m still coordinating things with Sony and Microsoft.
Good news: WE ARE DOOMED has been submitted for certification on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One! It shouldn’t be too much longer until everyone gets to play.
I’ve been a bit quiet lately, but I’m working on having some fun stuff to show off over the coming weeks. Hit me up on Twitter if there’s anything in particular you want to see/read about!
I posted about this on Twitter a few weeks ago, but I should probably give it another push here: We Are Doomed is going to be at the PlayStation Experience event on Dec 6th-7th. That’s later this week! (which reminds me: I have so much work left to do!)
It looks like quite the show, great lineup of games and panels. I’ll be at Booth #I78 showing a near-complete build of We Are Doomed running on a PlayStation 4. Please come by if you’re attending.
And if you’re not, check out the game’s updated website, with new screenshots and even more colours (always).
As a first-time console game developer there was a lot I had to learn, especially around graphics/rendering. It involved a lot of trial and error, with an emphasis on the “error” part. Copy too much data, or not enough, or the right data to the wrong place, call the wrong function, pass the wrong data format, free memory at the wrong time, or never, or…
I did eventually get it all right, but not after producing some beautiful glitchy output. These are the screenshots I took along the way.