Here’s a clip from the Pointonium Mines where we cross a checkpoint and dispatch a couple of bat dot bots. We don’t have their death SQUEE yet, so you’ll have to imagine your own for now. Each Gauntlet is broken up by two checkpoints and a finish line, where a bonus round rains death and pointonium upon you in equal measure.
Based on current projections, it looks like we’re shooting for a September/October release. If you’d like to try joining the beta we just started, click here.
A new enemy for the Pointonium Mines, the Bat Dot Bot is a fun experiment in micro-boss style enemies. They travel in packs, and you can choose to avoid them or try and get an angle on their target weakpoint. Breaking it will earn you some sweet bonus pointonium and make them go “SQUEEEE”.
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Our first gauntlet, Lockdown, has been polished up pretty nicely. So now we’re moving forward with our second, the Pointonium Mines. Pointonium is what we’re calling the blue jewels you collect whilst trying not to die, which you may remember from the short Vine we posted last week.
Obstacles in the Pointonium Mines are designed to feel very different from Lockdown. Lockdown has a lot of smashing, skewering, and bullet dodging, while in the mines you’ll be dealing with falling boulders, sweeping lasers, and bat dot bots.
We don’t have enough ready for a trailer (there’s not even any sound effects yet), but we did put together this peek at one of the game’s gauntlets.
Probably the most important decision we make when designing a Tilt to Live game is: What will the custom tilt position button look like?
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These are concepts for a new enemy type called a Switchblade. He was either going to end up like a robotic hammerhead shark, or a wider version of Tilt to Live 2‘s Skewer knives, (which will also make an appearance in this game).
In Gauntlet’s Revenge, we’re evolving the dots into a whole new race called the Dot Bots. They’ll still fire themselves at you as bullets, but so far we have no plans of loosing individual dots at you. Obviously, the story and airtight internal logic is what everyone plays Tilt to Live for. This should hopefully make our enemies about 1,000x more interesting to draw.
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These are sketches for our first gauntlet, Lockdown. The plan is to have a few different gauntlets to choose from, each with their own enemies and traps. You might recognize the “three circle” symbol on the gears as a callback to the original Gauntlet’s gametype select symbol, and the gear motif is something we also used for Tilt to Live 1’s Gauntlet background. Tilt to Live 2 saw the dots get some robotic technology in the form of bosses and enemies, so this game pushes that a bit further.
Gauntlet mode first appeared in the original Tilt to Live. Rather than hopping from weapon to weapon, it was about navigating a parade of deadly traps with precision and good timing. It was a fun mode, but there were a few things we wish we’d done better. The difficulty was fairly flat, and the enemy formations lacked variety. We retooled it for Tilt to Live HD as a single screen bullet hell mode, but we always wanted another crack at that “precision endless runner”, “tilt platformer” feel.
When it came time to think up a second DLC for Tilt to Live 2, getting a chance to finally do Gauntlet justice was high on our list. Once a few enemies and track pieces were in the prototype, all sorts of interesting ideas came up. What if you could reach some kind of bonus room if you survived long enough? I have a lot of leftover obstacle ideas; what if we did a few different Gauntlets?
Rather than cutting our ideas down to make DLC for Tilt to Live 2, we’re running with them in our first Tilt to Live spin-off: Gauntlet’s Revenge. Development is already underway for iOS and Android, and we expect to be ready for release later this year. You can keep up with our progress on this blog, or sign up for an email reminder when the game is released.
We sat down for a long discussion about Tilt to Live 2‘s 2nd DLC recently. The prototype is fun, and there’s so much more we could do with it if it wasn’t just a gametype within Tilt to Live 2. So why not flesh it out a bit? DLC 2 has enough going for it that it could be our fourth game: a spin-off that’s unlike any Tilt to Live game we’ve made. We’ve got to nail down a few details before we’re ready to formally announce the project, but good stuff is coming.
Our more astute fans may have noticed that Tilt to Live 2: Freedonkulous is no longer available on any stores. It must be true, because I didn’t even make the name a link to anything just now. We had some issues with the app, and made the decision to pull it from the store until we could figure out how to fix them.
But dry your teary eyes now. Because to make it up to anyone that missed out on Freedonkulous, the REAL non-lite versions of Tilt to Live 2 AND the original Tilt to Live have both been set to free on the App Store for a limited time! This is not a thing that happens, so act fast before you miss out. One caveat for our Android fans: we don’t actually have a way to set a game from paid to free and back on Android, so we’ve reduced the price as low as it can go for you.
Our second TtL2 DLC has taken a very interesting turn, so check back for news on that next week.