I’ve spent most of the last two weeks porting We Are Doomed over to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It’s been an absurdly massive task. It was straightforward in some ways, but challenging in many other ways I didn’t even expect. At some point I had a real fear that I’d bitten off far more than I can chew. But I’m happy to say that as of last week, We Are Doomed has been running smoothly on both platforms.
Now to be clear, there’s a lot of work still to come: sound, leaderboards and achievements/trophies, save data, account management, and a whole lot of bug fixes and polish. But I’m over the initial hump. It’s a small victory, but totally worth celebrating.
In terms of the game itself, it’s mostly done. By and large it’s been a fairly smooth process, but there are a few pesky design problems that persist. I’m looking to sort those out and close out on all the major features by early next week.
Onward!
New look for the player.
Design/balance notes for the new Endless mode in We Are Doomed.
I love looking at other designers’ notes and all the weird vocabulary they invent to express issues in their games, so I figured I should post mine too.
I’m going to come right out with this and say that there are videogames that deserve to be known as THE THINGS TO GO TO WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ARENA SHOOTERS. We have Robotron, we have Llamatron, we have Geometry Wars, we have Geometry Wars RE2 and we absolutely, if there was any fucking justice in the world, should be throwing We Are Doomed into the mix there too. Yeah, I went there. It is that good..
Wow. I’ve taken so long to post this because… well, what can I even say? Rob’s work, specifically Death Ray Manta, was the inspiration and starting point for We Are Doomed. The tiffins trinkets, quick level transitions, videogame-as-pop-song metaphor, that all started with playing DRM.
So for Rob to say that about my game? It’s such a huge honour, and such great motivation. It’s hard to process, but all I can do is keep at it. Keep at making my best game even better.
So that was a crazy week!
I spent Thursday on Microsoft Campus demoing We Are Doomed to the press and general public. Microsoft really went the extra mile to make us indie game developers feel welcome and taken care of. It was also fun to talk to the Xbox team.
On Monday I was demoing at SIX. I’ve been attending since the first year (where I debuted Orbit1) and this was definitely the best year yet! The venue was great (both figuratively and literally underground), and we had a particularly strong showing of games. A nice balance of hyper-polished and weird indie games.
The audience turn out was great at both events. I took a more laid back approach to demoing, and just watched how players took to the game without prompting. I was pleased to see that the newly-added tutorial worked really well, and some players even complimented how clear and non-intrusive it was.
The best part of the weekend was talking to the players who came by my booth, especially when they got deep into design criticism. I also met so many cool game developers, all of whom were eager to help out and advise a new full-time indie like myself.
A close second was being able to say that, “We Are Doomed is out now on Windows and Mac, and will be on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in Early 2015”. If you told me a few years ago that I’d be telling people about my new console videogame… man!
We Are Doomed will be at the ID@Xbox Open House tomorrow from 6pm to 8:30pm at the Microsoft Campus.
Then on Monday, We Are Doomed will be at the Seattle Indies Expo for pretty much the whole day (10am to 6pm).
I’ll be demoing the latest build with many improvements and added features, including the new Endless mode. I’m especially excited to see how experienced shmup players take to it. And of course, I’ll have the usual supply of pins and postcards.
Please come by if you have the chance!
Matt Lees, with a great, in-depth review of We Are Doomed. He touches on every feature and mechanic I threw in there and why they work so well together. I get really happy when someone totally gets the game… this is definitely one of those moments.
I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.