Mersey Remakes

At last, I can feel the end in sight. After a minor panic in the early hours of this morning after discovering an exploit and having to go and fix that, I’m on the final run through of stuff before finishing. Providing I can be bothered with the tedious remnants of one feature that needs finishing off, all going well it should be available to download by late Sunday. Given we’re at the end of half term break for schools over here in Blighty, and as my darling child has a habit of ramping up the madness as the week draws to a close, there may be a delay depending on how much he breaks my brain.

There’s not too great a deal of stuff added from what folks have seen in the beta. It’s not that I haven’t been fiddling with stuff and adding it, it’s just that, well, it already feels pretty complete to me (at least, I’m bloody happy with it and most people who played the beta have been so I’m counting that as a win) and I don’t really want to distract from what already feels pretty right.

There’s been a lot of stuff I’ve spent far too much time on that just plain didn’t work out. Y’know, you don’t really know until you try. A couple of ideas for bonus stuff that I added and pulled because it just felt like it was forcing you to play the game a way that was never intended. A number of new enemy types that got ditched just before the beta never surfaced in the end. So, most of what I’ve been doing aside from that has been under the hood things – silly mistakes that hindered playing the game, the infamous blur issues, keyboard responsiveness and a few other tweaks along the way. Hopefully, it should just run better but we’ll see

There is one new enemy, mind. And no, you can’t kill it. It’s an edge skimming thingy to stop those with a want to cruise around the edges making life easy for themselves. There’s 4 of them and they appear on start up. Try not to run into them, there’s a love.

Other stuff that’s made an appearance over the course of the week? Background images, turn on and offable obviously. There’s one for each world to give that “ah, so this is a different world” vibe that a few folks requested. Personally, I prefer playing to a blank background but hey, the choice is there for you should you want it. Closed captions, just to prove it can be done really. They’re quite amusing to have on anyway regardless of how well you can hear. Finally, there’s colour blindness mode, which is precisely what it claims to be.

There’s some other stuff I’ve still got in mind, but I’ll likely save that for an update. I’ve got some work on SYNSO1 to go back to and finish off, so I’d like to take a small break and get on with that before returning to Squid Harder.

What else? Umm, this… it’s by Andy Noble. You might recognise it. Not sure what we’re doing with it yet. Hit the jump to take a peek.

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You might find it rather obvious as to why I like this and why I’m recommending it. If ever there was a game that had a sign writ large “This Is For You, Bob” then this is it. Obviously, it wasn’t done for me in any way, shape or form but it’s none the less that wonderful distillation of a genre that I adore so much. It goes similar places I wanted to explore with War Twat only does it without assaulting you in the face or with a rude name. Which is admirable.

War Twat was part inspired by Terry’s previous shooter “Self Destruct” and part a reactionary assault after increasing frustration with the grind of Everyday Shooter wearing me down.

Bullet Time is inspired, short fuse, crazed retro fun made in roughly the same time frame as War Twat too. I’ve still yet to make 30 seconds and somehow it feels as though the boot is on the other foot for a change.

Play it here.

See here.