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Indie gaming gold
By Oddbob
Veck 2: Veckscosity.
Gamesite
Veck 2:Veckscosity is an upcoming game from Ayden "Smayds" Wolf that mixes Robotron-esque waves of enemies with fluid dynamics—imagine the entire arena filled with goo and you're about halfway there, its the WAM fetish of gaming—and immense levels of firepower.
The original Veck has been around for a while now and gained a fair bit of acclaim from Indie review sites and gamers in love with its back to basics, stripped down gameplay - we asked Ayden how he planned on following up an already fantastic game.
"It's essentially the same as Veck, but different, of course, in that it's got heaps of different baddies that are generally smarter. The game itself is a faster pace than the original and everything adds up to make the game quite a bit more challenging."
Veckscosity is obviously hitting the right notes somewhere. Like Grid Wars before it, Veckscosity has attracted the attention of the Geometry Wars team at Bizarre Creations, albeit this time from a far more favourable point of view. In a recent news post on their website entitled "Homebrew Done Right" (http://www.bizarrecreations.com/news.php?id=14123), Bizarre Creations dropped a nod in Aydens direction describing Veck 2 as having "…a great new graphical style, a bunch of cool gameplay ideas, and most of all its super fun to play."
Its not often that a homebrew/freeware author attracts the larger studio's attention in such a complimentary way, and having cornered Ayden it'd be rude not to ask him how that feels:
"Well, it's good to know that what I came up with fits their definition of ‘doing it right’ - they have a pack of lawyers on retainer and that scares me. As Veck's got about as much in common with Geometry Wars as, say, Geometry Wars itself has in common with Robotron, I always knew I'd be able to successfully argue my point if they'd decided to make me into another Mark Incitti. It looks like I won't have to do that now, and that's incredibly relieving. That aside, it's immensely gratifying to think that the creators of the number one game on Xbox Live Arcade enjoy and respect my work. Gratifying, perhaps, isn't the right word. ‘Getting a blowjob from God Himself’ is a bit closer."
Having enjoyed a sneak preview of the game ourselves, Rodent can safely agree with Bizarre Creations that in Veckscosity, Smayds has got something really special indeed. It’s due to land sometime towards the end of June, and you heard that here first. Those worried that their PC may not handle the game need not fear. "[Veckscosity] still runs on low-spec PCs, not by design though. I really thought the minimum requirements would be a hell of a lot higher than they are. Basically, if you've got a 5-year-old PC, you can play Veck 2." And we bloody well will – so there.
Neon Wars
Gamesite
Staying in the realms of the arena shooter, Neon Wars is all about subverting a formula we've all become accustomed to. Instead of the twin stick brutality familiar to players of Robotron, Geometry Wars and their ilk Neon Wars strips the player of the firing control leaving you in a permanent state of panic. Finding a clearing becomes imperative. It’s about staying alive, staying safe and defending that clearing with your life. Well, with your life plus a big fuck-off smart bomb.
We've mentioned the smart bombs before, even nominated them for a Rodent Award, and with good reason. The smart bombs in Neon Wars are bloody gorgeous. Where the game could be accused of taking more than a few of it’s graphical cues from Geometry Wars - when you let rip a bomb you're treated something utterly unique: a series of storming visual effects, orbs that sweep and arc around your ship leaving a glowing trail in their wake, explosions that shimmer across the screen, particles bouncing off the arena walls in a fit of multicoloured retina-burning glory. They really are special.
What made Reflected take the visual route they did? According to Richard Phipps, one of the coders, it’s all about creativity from constraint:
"[…the style] mostly came about due to the lack of artists! I do like the vector look and it is easy to do, although I did try to use some shading within the enemy graphics to add a bit more visual depth."
With four previous games under their belt from "Happy Ball", a take on the omnipresent indie standard "Breakout" to "Storm", a cavern shooter featuring destructible terrain - Reflected Games have been around the block a few times. Instead of targeting either the hardcore or the casual market this time round, they've attempted to stretch their legs across the divide and reach out to both. A noble undertaking indeed, but has it worked?
"I think it's likely that the vector look has attracted some people to the game who like fast arcade games and put off others who think it would be too hard. I do think the visual style suits the game though."
"The original game design was very different, being more of a scrolling level based game than an arena based shooter. As we did various prototypes the mouse movement seemed to work better with a scrolling screen. Over time the game evolved into an arena shooter with specific enemy behaviours which worked better than the original design of enemies following preset patterns."
While we were talking about who Neon Wars is for, I asked Rich for his view on life as an indie coder: "If people are looking to make a full-time living off of shareware then I would have to say it is very, very, hard to do. All those late nights staring at the computer monitor, copious cups of coffee and all that prototyping to get the game just right aren't for everyone. The road from start to finish can be a long one and you've got to be prepared for the haul.”
However long it took, and however many versions the game went through to get where it is today, we're glad it turned out as well as it did. Neon Wars is a solid and compulsive blaster that brings a smile to even this miserable old gits face.
Super Obliteration
Gamesite
What do you get if you cross Asteroids, Pang and Turrican? Now, if you're wincing right now at the thought, stop it! The wind will change and you’ll look like a burk. Super Obliteration is Andrew Pointon’s take on an old Amiga public-domain game of the same name and despite the concept sounding like a mess of some of the most bizarre idea's in gaming history, it actually works.
Over to Andrew to tell us a little about the game:
"Super Obliteration is one of my top two favourite public-domain games from the Amiga, both of which ate up so many hours of my time way back when in the early ‘90s. When I started coding again after discovering Blitz Basic in 2002, this is the game that was on my mind and the one I wanted to do, but being the lazy coward that I am, I chose to keep it simple and try not to bite off too much at once."
"I ended up coding Pangic instead, which was pretty liked in itself at the time. Pang meets Space Invaders with one never ending level, because I didn’t know how to do levels and transitions. Just like a mentally unfaithful partner I was coding Pangic but thinking of Super Obliteration, so I feel like I have really come full circle with this and done the one I originally had the passion and urge to bring to the PC".
Andrew is no stranger to the remakes scene having brought around fifteen classic games back to life – his take on the Atari 2600 classic Yars Revenge, renamed Vectors Revenge, recently earnt heaps of praise from no less a person than Yars’ original designer Howard Scott Warshaw.
"I emailed Howard a few times during the development of my version, asking if he could possibly check it out and get back to me either if he would prefer that I stopped coding it, or more hopefully give me his blessing and approve. He took a while to get back to me as he wanted to run it on another less mission critical PC - I can see his point, I could have been any old loony asking him to run my code, and it could have been a virus or worse."
Andrew’s badgering obviously paid off, as Howard happily gave his blessing. Getting hold of the original author of Super Obliteration didn't go quite so well. Unable to find David Papworth, Andrew has thrown the game out anyway and hopes that David will get in touch and give his approval or disapproval…
In the meantime, we can all enjoy the fruit of Andrew’s labour by visiting www.tcksoft.co.uk and grabbing a copy of Super Obliteration. Its by no means an easy game - when you hit upon the invincible stalker that drifts along the floor from level eight onwards you'll be cursing the designer, but with the addition of online high scores allowing you to compete with players all across the internet - has there ever been more of a reason to do your best?
June 2007
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