#IndieVisbility

Last night was the most important Awards ceremony of the year. The #IndieVisibility Awards!

There was apparently much drinking and One Life Left was there and Rock Paper Shotgun and Indiegames and lots of Indie Devs who all won awards.

However the most important award of the show was clearly the one I won!

Waves is Rock Paper Shotguns “Best use of The Unreal Engine” in 2011.

So to celebrate I’m throwing an impromptu sale with Waves being 50% off until midnight tomorrow (GMT) so you have about 30 hoursish to take advantage of this deal before it goes away!

Quick Click this link!

As always buying from this site gets you a code you can register on Steam if that’s the kind of thing you want.

Two Weeks Later…

…and I’m back to coding again. Now that the dust has settled and all of the nasty bugs have been found and hopefully fixed I’m back to thinking about content instead.

There are two things I’m working on now - A Waves Update and Game 2. I’m splitting my time roughly 50/50 between the two and today is the first day of working on the Waves update (as opposed to just thinking about it).

The Waves update is going to consist of two parts. A big boat load of new achievements and at least one new game mode. Most of the new achievements have been suggested by the community over on the Steam forums and if you want to suggest some more then go ahead.

The new game mode is as yet undecided. This is because I’m actually going to be prototyping a bunch of new game modes and picking the one that’s actually any fun. So far there are three candidates and I expect this to increase over the next few weeks.

I’ve always had an open development philosophy with Waves and I plan to keep that going so here are the potential new game modes:

Outbreak - This mode was planned for the full game before the combo system and bombs appeared. It got ditched as a result of those mechanics making it completely trivial and very boring. Essentially this is based entirely around the self-replicating Virus enemy giving you a single life and a mission to stay alive as long as you can. This mode is NOT going to work as it stands because it’s missing a whole bunch of stuff that makes the rest of the game work (Virus kills don’t give XP for example). However it’s on the list for being brought back if I can find a way to make it work.

Chase - This mode has a time limit of 5 seconds. It could be the shortest mode ever. It is the speed metal of game modes. It’s a little like Bombing Run and a little like Rush. The mode is based around rolling over timer pads as quickly as possible in order to keep resetting the timer. You will be fully armed in this mode but with a 5 second time limit you’re going to find your route around the arena determined entirely by where the pads spawn.

EDIT: I’ve been messing about with Chase all day and it’s definitely going into the update. It is absolutely insane.

Hold - (Yeah I suck at names) This one is inspired by what a whole bunch of people did at the Eurogamer Expo: Not move. There will be an area roughly 25%-33% the area of the arena in the middle. Stay inside this area and all is well. If you move outside it for more than a few seconds though you’ll explode. Normally the edge of the arena is the safest place to be. This mode turns that around by forcing you to stay in the middle.

Those are the 3 modes I’m going to be prototyping up first and if it turns out that all 3 of them are fun then all 3 of them will appear in the game.

Now on to other business.

If you happen to be awesome with video editing software and interested in making a new snazzy trailer for Waves for no payment then I definitely want to hear from you because I suck at it. Also if you happen to be a marketing guru willing to work for compliments then I have a job for you as well.

There was an interview with me at True PC Gaming and some reviews of Waves here and here.

To end the post here are some statistics from Steam:

  • There are 1071 people on the Steam Leaderboards.
  • 66% of them are Chuck Norris.
  • 25% have killed more than 25000 enemies.
  • 4.5% have reached level 15 in Crunch Time.
  • 0.7% have ever reached level 40 in Survival mode.
  • 0.1% have gotten 10 5-star ratings in Challenge mode in a single game.
  • Nobody has 5-starred every Challenge in a single game (it is possible though).

 

 

 

 

 

 

WAVES IS OUT!

That’s right! It’s available for purchase right now!

To celebrate there will be 15% off for a week making the price a lovely $8.50 (ish) rather than $10 so take advantage and tell all your friends. You could use that extra $1.50 to buy some Fizzy Pop.

Now due to the nature of Time zones and the fact that only big name games with huge publishers get midnight releases locked to timezone the game will not be out everywhere all at once.

You can buy the game right now from this very website even if it isn’t actually November 16th yet where you are.

Next up will be GamersGate which should be available sometime around 10am GMT (It may be later or earlier I don’t have an exact time).

Then we have Steam which should be available around 6pm GMT.

Now not to worry because wherever you buy the game from you will get a code that you can put into Steam and it will work right away even if the Store page isn’t up yet on Steam.

If you have any issues then email me or post a comment.

If you feel the need to start tweeting your highscores then kindly use the #WavesScores hashtag and for everything else use #WavesGame.

Waves is Gold

It’s a phrase that has absolutely no basis in reality for a downloadable indie game but Waves has “Gone Gold” which is to say that the final release version of the game has been built and is ready for sending to distributors.

So like it or not Waves will be released on November 16th. There is even a timer counting down to it on the Waves page. Technology eh? Marvellous.

A Release Date!

Waves will not be released in October. Sorry.

It will however be getting released on November 16th. That’s an exact date right there. Put it in your diaries.

The reasons for this are many but I’ll give you the 3 big ones:

Battlefield 3 (In the UK at least), Modern Warfare 3, and Skyrim.

I won’t be playing any of them (well maybe Skyrim) but it’s simply a matter of publicity and the fact that when expensive high profile games come out nobody buys or writes about indie games.

Now this sucks because as my followers will know I’m basically broke now. I’m running on fumes in terms of savings and it is only thanks to my lovely girlfriend and some very understanding parents that I’ve been able to keep going as long as I have. I would love to release this weekend if I didn’t think that releasing now would be worse than releasing after all the big hitters have been and gone.

The other benefit of this delay is that it will let me poke various press people into action so they can play the finished version of the game rather than a beta for their reviewing. I will also be able to put together a launch trailer which is something I just wouldn’t have had time for otherwise. Post in the comments any ideas for the trailer because if I’m honest I’m a bit rubbish at them.

So remember: November 16th. It’s not a Wednesday it’s Wavesday. Aha. See what I did there? Gosh I’m funny.

Demo Updated

Just a quick note that the Demo has been updated to fix a bug in the installer that meant you had to run it with administrator rights. If you’ve been having problems getting the demo to run then you should download the updated version from here and reinstall it.

Let me know in the comments if there are any problems or if it fixed any problems you were having.

My First Press Release

Introducing Waves: a twin stick shooter for humans

Indie developer reveals high-intensity twin stick shooter for PC starring… balls.

Crewe, 08/09/11

Shooter fans deserve more. And those who haven’t discovered the pleasure of twin stick destruction deserve an entry point. Today, Squid In A Box introduce Waves, a twin stick shooter that can be played by anyone, but with a high enough skill threshold to keep even the most hardened schmup fan entertained.

Developed, coded, and designed by indie developer Rob Hale, who decided that after ten years of making games for other people he’d finally make one for himself, Waves was built from the ground up to be accessible, yet require mountains of skill to master.

“I wanted to make an action game that didn’t punish you if you weren’t part of the twin-stick elite, but also let shooter fans really test their skills. Everything else has been abandoned in the pursuit of making the world’s best twin-stick shooter. There are no space marines in my game.”

In Waves, the player controls a heavily armed ball. The goal is to clear the board of enemies while racking up a big fat Combo with swift kills and well timed Bombs and if it all gets a bit too much you can use your “Time Buffer” to slow down the action and turn defeat into victory. Players can compete across five different game modes with online high-score tables and Achievements in their pursuit of perfection.

Waves will be available Q4 2011, for digital download on PC from squidinabox.com and Steam.

Waves at Eurogamer Expo

I am delighted to reveal that Waves will be playable on the show floor of this years Eurogamer Expo as part of the Indiegames arcade. I’m going to be alongside some other excellent games and I’m really looking forward to watching the general public get to grips with the game up close.

Right now I’m working on lots of business type stuff talking to digital distributors and payment processors. I’m also working on a new (official) trailer and a bunch of promotional stuff (maybe some t-shirts).

As I’ve kept saying there will be a demo of Waves before the game is released and it may likely coincide with the EG Expo (Although the full game will be available to play at the Expo while the Demo will just have one of the game modes) so even if you can’t make it to the show you can give the game a try.

I’ll see you at the Expo!