“It’s a constant barrage of Minteresque color and sound, sprinkled with hilarious text, Wilhelm screams and a hidden Heavy Rain easter egg”

-Bytejacker

“As psychedelic as a cartoon version of the Yellow Submarine (a truly odd example admittedly, as the Yellow Submarine was quite a bit a cartoon). Oh, well…”

- Gnome’s Lair

“Ten times better than the original.”

- Indiegames*

If you’re a pressy type and you’d like a gander over the demo before anyone else gets their grubby mits on it, drop me a mail and I’ll fire you the build over.

*if movie posters can do it, so can I…

Naturally, I’ll be mailing out some copies when it’s actually out there but feel free to prod me early.

So, there we go. The final day of my War With Farbs. And what shall I be spending the time doing? What did and did not make it?

Let’s have a looksy and reveal, finally, what Fish Fish Bang Bang is.

I’ve said all along that my intent was to not tread the same path as Farbs. To be fair to the man, the mashup is something that he truly excels at. It’d be a madness to try and take him on at his own game. Have you played RomCheckFail? It’s fabulous, both as a game and as an expose of underlying mechanics and how 30 years of gaming evolution has trained us to interpret these mechanics.

Read the rest on IndieKombat.

I was, unfortunately, a bit of a mess by the time I rolled up there. Generally, I don’t travel well anyway (as the missus will reassure you) but between a week with a distinct lack of sleep, a 6 hour coach journey where the coach turns up incredibly late and then toddling as fast as my little legs can take me to Antenna, guided ably by Mrs Bob on the phone for directions I certainly wasn’t even remotely close to my best. I think a bearded sweaty mess with a backpack would be a fair description.

However, any stresses immediately relieved by stumbling in to cries of “Ooooooh, here he is” from the Minster and immediately being flocked by the lovely organisers to get set up as fast as possible. Which we then did. Min dealt with the PC side of things, I took the Macwanker corner. Because someone had to, really.

Rather than go down to show off my stuff, which to be fair I get plenty of opportunities for, we opted to show off Min’s stuff and some not entirely random selections of the work of RR-ites.

So on display from the Retro Remakes camp during the night were Min’s Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Space Cabbage and Pheonix. (Due to framey-use on site, no individual links but here’s Min’s homepage), Stu and Smila’s Ultimate Bruce Lee and Quantasm, TCK’s COBEX, Kuto’s Typhoon 2001 and of course, at some point you have to regale everyone with the story of War Twat whilst blinding random passers by.

And by “on display” I generally mean “indulging in our own personal high score competitions with…” which is what happens when you let us lot loose in a room.

On display from the not-RR camp we got a glance at BlindGirl, a game I’d not had chance to look at yet on XBLIG thanks to life taking over. I really must write something up about it at some point and AVOID (short version – it’s a multiplayer Squares2).

Normally, when I roll up to something like this I’ll end up with a camera full of photos. With GameCity Nights my camera ended up stuck in my pocket being forgotten about because, well, here’s the great thing about GameCity Nights…

It’s highly relaxed and we spent most of the night just chatting. Which, y’know, any right minded person will tell you is far more fun than booth-babing it. Sure, you’re on hand if anyone wants to ask you something but that’s so far from a priority it’s silly. Enjoying yourself there takes absolute priority and for that alone I’d really recommend that if you can drag your arse down there, you do so.

It’s a good night and the gameiness stuff doesn’t take precedent over the social aspects.

Helped along by some seriously good company, one of the most relaxing nights out you could ask for punctuated with the odd bit of fun stuff to do and the panel.

Ah yes, the panel.

It was Doctor Who Adventures night so on hand, Mr James Moran, Charles Cecil and Anwen Aspden compered by One Life Left’s Simon Byron.

To be fair here, I’m more used to places where wot you get some indies in the room together and a level of candidness you can’t really apply once you get further up the mainstream ladder so despite the best efforts of everyone involved to spark it up a bit, for me on message stuff is always going to be a bit bland. At times I felt like I’d wandered into an episode of Dr Who Confidential (“we’ve got a wonderful team doing wonderful things and everyone is wonderful etc…”). That said, it was entertaining enough and getting a glimpse at Sumo Digital’s pitch reel for the Adventure Games made it all worth the while.

It was the sort of pitch reel you watch and end up thinking “yup, if *I* was making the decisions, I’d have picked that”. Good stuff, they really had nailed the show down rather beautifully.

A short Q&A followed with some general questions from the audience and the internets but y’know, when most answers are going to be “we can’t really say anything about that” there’s not a lot further you can take that sort of thing. A shame in one way but a not entirely unexpected one at that.

The three of us ducked out for a ciggy and chat outside for a while and wandered back into a Dr Who themed game of Consequences. We didn’t take part as I’m not allowed paper and a pen (or MSPaint or anything that I can draw on) at events after the Coders Workshop incident(s) about 5 or 6 years ago involving a kids art package and the drawing of manbits everywhere and no-one wanted to be that person who stood up at the front and instead of reading a story out had to say “and Bob has drawn a cock here”.

The winning entry is here for anyone wondering exactly what madness this entailed. A close second place must surely be the team who managed to have the ending to their story entirely in German and had to swap speakers to read it out to the crowd in a moment of lovely accidental performance art madness.

Then it was back to shifting between the bar and chatter for a while before the three of us had to peg off (ah, being a parent is so much fun…) into the night. Or in my case, into a long and torturous return journey that saw me land back home at gone 10am the next day. No matter though, a minor suffering to endure for a fine night with some fine people at a fine venue.

If you’re in the locale or y’know, a lunatic like me who fancies a bit of a trek, and there’s a GameCity Nights on – go there. Really. It’s lovely.

Even with the hellish travel, I had a stonkingly fun night and I’d definitely do it all over again.

Which is totally awesome. Just as awesome was watching how much he’d come on when typing a thank you comment (and getting the CAPTCHA right, something I routinely fail at). Only a few months ago I’d have had to hang over his shoulder to be a guide but no such larks this time. I went off, made a brew and et voila his first comment on the internet was done.

Everyone who has a kid and can write games should totally make a game with them.

Although, until yesterday I didn’t actually realise that this was something even remotely exceptional to do.

I make all my games with Boo and have done since he was old enough to sit down and play them and make suggestions. It’s how War Twat (he has his own “War Bus” version) ended up with handbags and yellow diggers as the enemies and well, everything I’ve put out since has been done with his input. Because he’s fab.

Sometimes it’s just testing things out and playing them lots but more often than not, he’s got ideas to throw in the ring too and I’ll listen to them and talk them through with him and more likely than not, end up with them in game.

I’m not one of those parents who wants a long and successful career for him in game dev or whatever daft stuff like that, it’s just fun and one extra thing to spend time doing stuff together because we can. That it could be argued I write games roughly on his level probably makes us the perfect team.

So yeah, parents! Make games with your kid. It’s ace.

Whilst I sit here and on one hand wonder how complaints about Limbo are “3 hours for £10″ instead of “£10 for Fat Bob Smith’s Another World Emo Edition Extreme” and on the other hand try and suppress the urge to shout out “WHY DID YOU KILL IANTO?” at James Moran at this Friday’s GameCity Nights entirely for my own amusement, it’s time to do some links.

Because I like links.

Pixels At An Exhibition – Magical Wasteland

“Even the most beautifully pioneering ones have clear points of inspiration, still the result of a non-gaming lineage”

Lovely piece and bang on the nail.

A New Challenger Appears

Excite Mike vs Dejobaan at Indie Kombat.

As myself and Farbs are close to wrapping up our bout, it’s time to get in the ring once more with two kings of the indie frontier.

And watch them beat the shit out of each other, obv.

Benchmark Reviews Busted.

Note to editors. A cursory google search of who you’re actually emailing might help in future.

Gillen on the Develop Micro Studio panel.

Well, not on it but writing about it.

Also, this is why I read RPS.

Edge go Bullshit Hunting.

And find some. SCIENCE FACT!

The Stifling Of Creativity

SCIENCE FACT! No wait, the other one. FALSE PREMISE! I’m not sure whether to be confused, irritated or angry over this one. But that was last week and it’s a new happier day now!

Ehhhhhhhh [stop with the Fonz - Ed]

So sang Ian Mcnabb and for once in his life, he was actually right.

Theory:

Games do music wrong. Ok, ok, not wrong but we’re very much stuck in a tried and tested formula which we rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

There are notable exceptions. Runman: Race Around The World gets it right. The bar scene in Prey gets it right. The end of Portal gets it right. Music is emotive and wonderful, it doesn’t have to be variations on a techno theme, aping John Williams or generic movie score #21 or some bleeps and bloops.

The right soundtrack can elevate something into the wonderful more often than not, we get a soundtrack that just fits. It doesn’t elevate.

I have been equally guilty of this in the past.

Experiment:

If you have both Left4Dead (the first) and Spotify. Turn the default music down and play through a campaign with this playlist.

You will, naturally, lose a number of audio cues so be on your guard. Despite playing the exact same game you normally would, the experience is drastically different from normal.

Proof:

via the lovely Mike Meyer. A request from earlier in the week from myself. Fulfilled for Klik Of The Month. Give it time to load.

The simple addition of Moroder porn ‘tache disco makes all the difference.

Conclusion:

More games need disco.

I’m still reeling a bit because y’know, I didn’t actually expect to raise enough money for a monitor and sort of vaguely hoped I might cadge enough to offset the costs a bit. Yet, thanks to some lovely wonderful people I’m sitting here typing this on a new monitor. Ok, I’m not typing on the monitor, I’m typing on a keyboard and looking at the results on a monitor.

Which is totally awesome and amazing.

After a bit of mad financial wangling involving mailing the hosts and getting a couple of days grace (this week is hosting monies week) and the magic of a Paypal top up card (and the switching of hosting payments onto said top up card) and then using the hosting money to peg it out at the last minute to go and get a monitor, I can has visuals. Which is crazy stuff.

Bit of bargaining on an ex display model to come away with a pretty decent size considering and yeah. Bloody hell. Thank you.

Rolled back in and starting wending my way through the thank you emails and working out who I need to send “a special drawing” too with a monitor that actually turns on! If I’ve not gotten back to you yet, sorry – it’s been a bit crazy and it took me a while to actually let what just happened sink in too.

After a few days of the old thing thing barely starting before killing itself this morning, that’s weirdly special. Especially given the month or so I’ve had where you sit tight thinking “as long as nothing blows up, I’ll see the other side of this in no time”, it was crushing to actually have something give up the ghost when you know there’s nothing you can do to sort it. And then admit to that in public.

I sorta kept shtum about the hows and whys of having to drop out of World Of Love, it wasn’t just the money as I said there were care-y concerns I had to factor in too but being hit by a pair of bills that wiped me out the day after I’d spent hours writing out the talk and doing the slides was harsh and made the difference between “I could still pull it off with a bit of a wangle” to “oh, nuts – I haven’t got a hope in hell”.

Really, I can’t thank everyone enough and y’know, the download link and a scribbled cock doesn’t seem like nearly enough to express my gratitude. Yet, grateful and humbled I am.

So, yeah, thank you. All of you who tried to rustle up a monitor or chucked in and dug me out of a hole or just offered words of support. You’re lovely and wonderful.

I guess I better get on and make some games then. Starting with beating the hell out of Farbs.

<3

It’s been a bit flunky for a few days now but today it finally bit the bullet and killed itself. Fuckety fuck.

Problem is, I don’t actually have the money to replace it. Nor do I know when I’m going to have the money to replace it.

As anyone who knows me well is aware, I don’t really have much in the way of money. I’m not saying that in a “oh, pity me, hard done by me” sort of way. It’s just a fact. 50% of what comes into this house (which is not a lot) goes back out again, split between paying to keep myself and others online with the RR server and paying for my internet connection. My idea of a luxury is the odd cheapo game in the Steam sale and a monthly Spotify sub to stop me from going mental.

There’s a few kind RR subscriptions that come in but they’re small (but vastly appreciated) amounts, they don’t even cover 1/10th of the server bill but they do make the difference between teabags and no teabags at times.

And Bagfull, obviously, isn’t earning me a wage. Not that I especially mind about that either, I don’t make games for the money, the fame or the glory. I’m a full time carer and that’s always going to be my priority.

I bought the computer and all the gear 4 years ago when we had a bit of an influx of money. We spent out a fair bit knowing that it would have to last out as long as it possibly could. It is, aside from getting the odd dusting every now and then, as is when purchased 4 years ago as well (including the most ill purchased graphics card ever in the case of the 2900HD), we knew we wouldn’t be able to afford to upgrade it on the fly so you just hope bits hang in there till I dunno, something happens. Maybe you get a week where things go especially well.

So, fuck. I dunno what to do right now other than throw this out there and ask for some assistance. I can’t write any more games if I can’t actually see what I’m writing on (before you ask, I’m typing this on the missus’ ancient Macbook, GM4Mac is a write off in my books and well, everything is on the PC anyway) and the time it takes me to even consider saving up for a new monitor, we’ll probably be looking at 3 or 4 months out of action. Yup, things -are- that shit. Part of (but not all, there were other equally pressing reasons I can’t discuss) the reason I had to pull out of World Of Love was that I simply couldn’t afford to get down there.

So, y’know, if you’ve enjoyed my games in the past or something and want to help me be able to write more, if you want to say thanks for some pluggage or promotion or you’re just passing by and feeling generous… I’d love you dearly if you could help.

I don’t really have much to offer but y’know, usual Bagfull rules – any amount donated will get you all my games released on Bagfull for the forseeable future, fuck – I dunno. I can probably punt up a custom version of SYNSO or War Twat or something if you wanted one when I’m back on the road, or draw you a cock on a piece of paper and mail it you or something.

And you have my thanks, natch.

[I've removed the paypal link now, thanks everyone. I dunno what to say other than sincere thanks but I've had a go here. Thank you.]