The Company of Myself just won the award for Best Indie Game at the 2010 Mochis, which is a part of the Flash Gaming Summit.  I couldn’t make it out to the event because it’s in California and I’m not, but David, the music guy for Company, got out there and accepted the award in my absence.  I’m also nominated for some kind of “rising star” award from the Tech Council in my area, but that’s not until early April.  Interestingly I got the phone call for that while I was waiting on the announcement about the Mochis.

I keep track of all the comments on the site, but I watch the comments for the Grief demo particularly closely, because it’s the project that stands as the most important to me.  Company did extremely well and got me a fair bit of recognition, and a lot of that is due to extensive testing and feedback from Average Joe, the very best and most influential member of my audience.

(For those just joining us, Average Joe is anyone and everyone in my audience.  That includes you.)

Something that comes up here and there is the green square that you play as in the current demo.  A lot of people seem to think that this is actually the art for the character (Henry) in the game.  As it stands, I haven’t locked in a character artist for Grief, so I don’t have an nicely animated man running around, and instead, all we get is a lovely little placeholder graphic, which is the green rectangle.

Way back at the beginning of my work on Company, I used similar placeholder art for the character, Jack.  Instead of green, he was a red rectangle.  The same assumptions were made back then–People thought that the red rectangle was the final character art, and I had to explain myself, much like I’m doing now.

So, then, here’s The Point:  As with everything in the Grief demo, the character graphic isn’t final.  Even the things that already look “good” (backgrounds, crates, effects, etc) aren’t final.  It’s all going to change in some way or another before the game is released.  And as it stands, there’s no story or puzzle solving in the demo, but of course, they’ll be in there eventually.  And yes, the gun fits into the story.  And no, this isn’t a shooter.  For a more detailed explanation, check the beginning of this post.

Breach is close to finished, now, as is YFYIAR.  They both are mainly just missing sound.  YFYIAR also needs a sponsor, but it’s understandably difficult to find one–The game is pretty risky from a business perspective, just because it’s a text game.  If you’re a sponsor with some cojones, be sure to give me a ring.

Most of my dev time lately has been spent on Breach 3, which won’t be called Breach 3, but that’s still what it is, so whatever.  YFYIAR is pretty close to being done, and at this point I’m waiting on David to hammer down the music (which is approaching something awesome very quickly) and sound (which ought to add something nice to things).  Grief is briefly paused while I finish up these other projects.  Chris is still messing around with art styles in various mediums, so progress is being made there, it’s just not progress that I’m responsible for.

Anyway, Breach 3.  I haven’t said anything about it yet, other than tossing out a quick demo (which is updated now, by the way, so go play it).  The game is my attempt to maneuver around modern casual game design–Upgrades are very prominent, because they give you a very direct sense of progress.  It’s also very un-punishing:  When you successfully complete a round, you get a bonus.  When you fail, you aren’t penalized, but you just don’t get the bonus.  Even though it’s still obviously better to complete a round, losing doesn’t seem to be a bad thing.  Instead, it’s just not as good. The bonus is extra, so failing to get it isn’t bad.  It’s just not as good as it could have been.  It’s a euphemism for failure.

Also, something that I enjoy way more than I should:  When you complete a round or visit the upgrade shop, the titles of the screens are randomized.  You get a different “you win” or “you lose” message each time, and the upgrade shop has various titles.  It doesn’t add anything in the utilitarian sense, but it’s just some extra flavor.  We did this a bit in Spewer, too–When you completed a level, you were given a few statistics (steps taken, jumps, etc).  The last statistic was always a random statistic with a random value (for instance, “Laws broken: 6″).  I got a shitload of chuckle-worthy emails asking about some of those.

Oh, and one of the titles for the upgrade shop is “Happy Item Room.”  If you understand this reference, then you are a superhero and I’m sending the president to your house to give you a handshake and a beer.

So, Grief was originally supposed to be a game that featured pretty big levels that contained lots of little challenges that you could approach in any order.  I like the idea, but I don’t think it’d quite work out in the end–It doesn’t have enough focus.  I think I’m going to instead aim for an approach more similar to Company–Small levels that feature one main challenge per level.  It’s much easier for me to control, design-wise, so I think I can create a tighter overall product like this.  As a side effect, smaller levels means less stress on the physics engine, which means better performance on slower machines.  Box2D is incredibly fast, but even so, better performance is better performance.

There are still more design problems to solve, but I’m getting much closer to having a full view of things.  The story is reaching some awesome places as well.  This is going to be good.

So, a few updates.

First off, I don’t know whether or not the text game will get finished–I’ve got more important things to work on, since that was just a “for fun” sort of project.  I still have no intention of actually competing in JayIsGames’ casual game design competition, because as I said before, if I submitted my game, it’d get disqualified.  We’ll see what kind of time I have to work on it.  It’s still a possibility.

Second, and more importantly, I finally started writing code for the next “big” project, which is a semi-sequel to Company.  The theme of the game is grief, but I don’t want to give too much info on how it factors in quite yet.  I can handle talking about more vague stuff, though, so here’s a few quickies:

It’s a story based platformer that is heavy on exploration and discovery.  You play as a character from Company, but not Jack, the original protagonist.  That only leaves two other options, since Company doesn’t have a whole of characters.  The game is set in the same universe, but it stands alone, so you wouldn’t need to have played the original to understand what’s going on.  I’m using Box2D to give the game some physics, but I don’t really want to call it a “physics based platformer,” since the focus isn’t on the physics.  There’s a strong trend right now, especially in Flash games, to base an entire game on physics (usually with Box2D because it’s so damn fast).  It works, and these games can definitely be fun, but I’m starting to get a little sick of it.  Maybe that’s just me.

I’ve got pretty big plans for it, so I’m gonna have to be getting help from more people than I’ve ever had before–The game needs lots of music, at least three voice actors, and probably two artists (one for static things like the level art, and one for characters and animations).  I’m pretty set on music and one of the artists, but the rest is up in the air for now.

This game is going to require an absurdly powerful level editor, and like Company, I probably won’t be able to release it with the game.  It’d just be too hard to make it userfriendly.  I might put it up on my site though, once it matures a bit, just so you guys can check it out and fiddle with it.

Alright, so here’s the most ridiculous thing that’s happened lately.  This is Corey, and he’s got balls of steel.

An actual god damn Spewer tattoo.

There’s gotta be someone who can top this.  Any takers?

JayIsGames has occasional game design competitions, and I’m going to enter the current one.

And I’m going to get disqualified.

The idea is that everyone makes a text-based game where you have to escape from a room, and it’s all jolly and fun.  You’re supposed to use Z-Code to write it, because it’s basically the standard for making these kinds of games.  My first fault will be not using Z-Code.  I’m just gonna make my own text engine.  They’re simple enough to crank out anyway, and Z-Code doesn’t do everything that I want it to.

That’s a pretty minor rule to break, though–The other rule that I’m breaking is the real problem.  They say that the games have to be an equivalent to “rated Teen” or lighter.  Fuck that.  This game is going to be pissed off and proud of it.  This game will be the drunken uncle of text-based games.  This game will hate you as a player and a person, and will tell you so at any opportunity it gets.

It’s going to be called “You Find Yourself In A Room.”  And it’s going to be awesome.

The Company of Myself continues to collect viewers and spread around the internet like a video of a cat falling off of a table into a vat of molten lead.  Unfortunately, due to agreements with the sponsor, I wasn’t allowed to put in a counter to keep track of the total number of plays across the whole internet–I can only check on individual sites, and only when they publicly list how many plays a game has.  Armor, for instance, has the game played over 300,000 times.  Newgrounds has something like 130,000.  The game has also reached the “best of all time” list on NG, currently sitting on #6.  We’ll have to wait and see how it shifts around there over the next few days and weeks.

I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I want to work on next, but I don’t want to say too much about it just yet, as it’s got a lot of room to evolve.  Once I become more sure of the project and have something to show, I’ll post about it.  For now, enjoy the Zen demo, because that’s not it and it’ll disappear eventually.

I threw a link to Company up on Reddit, and it’s gotten a fair bit of comment feedback–As of right now, almost 250 comments in 12 hours. I’m always intensely critical of my own work, and that makes it very hard for me to say that I really like something I’ve made until I hear opinions from lots of other people. I liked Spewer the whole way through its development, but I wasn’t ready to call it a good game until the people who played it called it a good game.

From the looks of it, Company is a good game.

I decided to handle all of the game design for Company on my own, because I wanted to find out if I could actually do it successfully–My recent projects have all been joint efforts, so I was getting nervous that the game design was only good because of the other person’s contributions.  Hopefully the positive response here is enough to convince me that I can indeed do this stuff and do it well.

A smattering of responses from Reddit users:

• This game is pimp.  (Word.)
• Braidish but cool.  (This is a very expected response, since the game is largely inspired by Braid.  The number of people who note that it’s similar to Braid is about where I expected it to be.  Good eye, gaming community.)
• I would seriously enjoy having this game on a handheld system of some sort. It strikes so many awesome chords with me. I just love the style/storyline/atmosphere of the whole game so much that it would easily be addictive. You did a great job!  (At this point, I don’t really see myself doing more with this game, to be honest.  I did what I wanted with it, and I’m satisfied with leaving it where it is.  Making another version for something other than Flash would just mean reusing puzzles, and that’s no good.  A lot of people don’t realize how important it is not to repeat puzzles in these kinds of games–Making more content becomes really huge challenge by the end, and once you’ve done all you can, there’s nowhere else to go.)
• Best flash game I’ve played in a long time. Gameplay is simple, but challenging and thought-provoking. Music is wistful and nostalgic. Graphics are crisp. Story is subtle but deep.  (This person managed to compliment all three people who worked on the project. Luka Marcetic did the graphics and animation, and David Carney wrote the music.)
• Wow, great game design AND great writing! You rule!  (Bawwww, thank you.)
• Add a mute button. (Whoops.  There’s volume control in the pause menu, but it’s obvious now that this isn’t clear enough for average-gamer-Joe. Next time I’ll make it more apparent.)
• Very rarely am i impressed with an online game, but I thought this was very well done.  (I’m not tearing up.  I’ve got something in my eye.  Give me…give me a second.)
• You’re fucking brilliant, man. Seriously.  (Hey, I love you, too!)
• That was awesome. perfect use of challenge without being impossible. Neat story the game play, perfect music. Just the right amount of emotion to make you connect with your little mass of pixels. This is how it’s done. Thanks!  (This is pretty much EVERYTHING I strived for in development.  Hearing someone else tell me it works is unfathomably satisfying.)
• Thank you for making this game, I really enjoyed it while it lasted, I am truly amazed how a small game like this can create such an atmosphere.  (Atmosphere, hooray!  Another big goal of mine, so it’s great to hear it turned out how I wanted it to.)
• The way the story was presented reminded me of World of Goo, I liked it.  (This one confuses me, actually.  There’s no intentional WoG influence in Company, although WoG is definitely a very good game.  I’m curious what parts they considered similar.)
• SUCKS! Is Crap!  (Hey!  Fuck you, buddy!  …Okay not really, but this is a good moment to share a bit of insight about art, business, and life in general.  I hate it when somebody makes a product and then gets all pissy about customers who don’t like it.  It’s not your job to like it.  It’s my job to make you like it.  If you don’t, that’s my fault.)

And with that, it’s just about time to work on something new.

Finally, after lots and lots of wading through business delays and whatnot, Company is out in the wild. You can play it on a whole bunch of websites, as it looks like it’s started to spread around already. Find it right here.

Up next, randomly generated dungeons and adaptive difficulty.