Innoquous 4: Early Stages

A blog post about my current active project, Innoquous 4, and some information on it.

Firstly, it's initially aimed for YYG Competition 05. It's going to undertake the alias Innoquous Hand Held for this. Innoquous Hand Held will lack online functions, be capped to 480x272 as its screen resolution, and be slightly fiddlier than usual. This is a direct result of the competition restrictions. What it will contain will be 100 levels (40 new, 60 from Innoquous 1, 2 and 3, many of which will be tweaked to accommodate the faster controls). There will also be other obstacles - I'm aiming for timed-shooting guns and pushable blocks, that will debut, and make appearances in both new and old, tweaked levels. I'm looking to add a level editor - this may not make IHH as the control restrictions would make it difficult to implement.

Once IHH is released, I will upgrade it to Innoquous 4. This will be the full-on game. 800x600 resolution, mouse-controlled, easy to use level editor (mouse-controlled), improved menu, plenty of customisation options (complete control over block colours, a choice of characters - play as a fish!, and other options), etc. I'll also poke UnknownGamer into making the online for it, which will build on I3's site - you'll be able to make an account on it, share statistics, see your rankings, upload levels you've created and download others', with level ratings etc. Depends on how much he can do.

Now, cost-wise. I initially said I was going to make Innoquous 4 my first commercial game. However, with the need to make IHH free, this is now unlikely. What I am edging towards is making the game DONATIONWARE. This would mean you could pay $/£20 (madness!), $4 (what I would've initially charged), or even 1p/cent (*stares*). The reason I want to charge for the game is because I'm about to jump into the world of work, and in all honestly I'd quite like to be able to jump out of it ASAP into commercial indie game production. I know it'll probably be a few years before that provides any kind of income, but hey, the sooner I start making this damn game, the better!

Yesterday I released a trailer for the game, showcasing its new IOTAS-style graphics and mentioning some of the planned features. If you're interested, here it is:And that's pretty much it, really! If you have any comments, suggestions, or anything else, don't hesitate to comment. Even if I don't reply to them, I certainly read them and take them on board. Thanks!

Until the next blog entry.

~ NAL

The attention madnessMADNESSmadness has been getting is... wait for it... madness

Long blog title. Ah well, it works for me. It summarises what I have to say, too.

madnessMADNESSmadness didn't place in GameJolt's Minimal contest. However, any mild disappointment I get from that (not too much, there were better games entered) is more than neutralised by everything else that's been happening.

For starters, it got featured on YoYo Games. This makes for my fourth featured game (the first three being Elemence AuX, Innoquous, and Innoquous 3). It also a couple of days ago replaced the feature with a YYG Spotlight, the first I've had. Then, and this is to me the most important and pleasing one, it got onto Bytejacker's Free Indie Rapid Fire!

Last but not least, today it entered the GMC Cagematch. This marks the third time I've had a game in the GMC Cagematch. I'm hoping it's third time lucky too, as the previous two games, EverScrollingHue and FKR3, were both knocked out in round one. I've never won a round!

To make matters better, I've had positive comments on the game from quite a few high-up indie developers, including cactus (on YoYo Games) and Joe Larson (on Bytejacker). Both, of course, had criticisms, which I'm seriously considering working on in some sort of spin-offy sequel thing (I won't call it a direct sequel - I'll probably shave most of the name off and re-form the game into something extra. There will still be the ol' get-chased-by-big-wall arcade mode).

I collaborated with Jack Brockley (Broxter) on a game for the 14th Mini Ludum Dare. Having spent three days on an entry which turned out to be far too large, we (mostly he) made something completely different in the last 24 hours. It's called GETSUMCOKE, and can be found on Game Jolt. I mainly did the trippy graphical background and menu design, he did the rest - gameplay, online highscores, in-game sprites etc. We'll be continuing the game we spent three days on whenever - don't know yet.

Anyway, that's pretty much it for now. Until the next, probably-miles-away blog, goodbye!

Magazine Coverage, Part 2

I got a game in a printed magazine again, so I'm happy. This time, I got into PCZone, a UK (again) magazine focusing on - get this - PCs. The game in question was Innoquous 3, my personal favourite creation.

I found out about it via a PDF version of the page in question (which you can read by clicking this), and am now trying to find out if that issue is the current one, or if I'll need to order a back issue. I'd like to get a copy of the magazine, as I did with last year's EDGE that featured the original Innoquous. It's a long shot, but if any of the readers of this blog happen to get PCZone, I'd appreciate a comment on the issue number or date of the magazine with the Innoquous 3 review in (page 96). Thanks!

Not yet touched any of the other videos I got from the charity shops (see previous blog). I doubt I'll watch Titanic or Independence Day any time soon, and I'll be downloading the Indiana Jones trilogy so as not to unwrap them and reduce their resellability when I'm bored of them. I'll watch Harry Enfield's shows, the Connolly stand up, and the Mr Bean episodes at some point, though.

Still not making much progress with game creation, what with the distraction of all the other entertainment I have on offer. TIM is still my active project. I've an urge to make some kind of puzzle game though - kinda like Bust-A-Move/Worms Blast, both of which I thoroughly enjoy (I still have my old copy of Worms Blast. Still play it too). I may end up canning TIM if I can't think of anything awesome to do with it, or going Innoquous 1 and half-ass-releasing it with its source code.

On a different note, my old school rang up yesterday. I failed all but one A Level. They thought my IT was close to a pass, so are allowing me the chance to tune up the work from home and re-entering it. I accepted - I don't have to go back there, and I could get another shiny notch on my slightly grubby education record. Suits me!

All bases covered? Fo sho! G'bye!
-NAL

Return of YoYo Games

Well, after YoYo Games took pretty much the entire of yesterday to have a little down time, I was glad to see it back up. But, oh look.

Innoquous 3 and Head Candy have lost their screenshots. Hopefully that's temporary, and they'll come back. Still, at least the games themselves appear to be intact.It appears to have affected many new releases too, including the recent, amazing game Purple.

Sigh.