Adam the Artist

I just finished Mass Effect 2, and was scratching my head over what I played before that. Then it hit me: Skyward Sword. It’s not often I forget a 20 hour game, but this one never really grabbed me. It had a lot of clever ideas, but I thought it was just okay for a Zelda game. I never knew flying could get so boring.

Mass Effect 2, which I’m incredibly late getting around to, has the best final battle I can ever remember playing in a game. You have all these choices, and if you choose wrong your friends die. It builds a real tension as you make your way through the mission, one that isn’t usually there. No one’s afraid of dying in a game; you just restart at a checkpoint and try again. But I was afraid of choosing wrong and screwing up the story. Story consequences. I like that. I’ll be picking up the third one in March fa sho.

All I’m playing on iOS is the Outwitters beta. I’ve been playing this thing forever, and I still get excited to check my turns. I’m proud we made this.

Alex the Codesmith

It’s around the holidays I tend to get involved in more games than my usual starcraft 2 and battlefield 3 affairs. I think a large portion of my childhood was dedicated to Tribes. So when I heard Tribes:Ascend was coming out I was all over it. There’s currently a beta going on that I’m playing with a few friends.

The game is shaping up to be a really solid tribes game. Despite their design choices for more diverse classes and loadouts the game still feels like a more robust version of Tribes: LT. LT was a mod of previous tribes where loadouts were restricted to light classes only, and as a result the CTF game had a very team-deathmatchy feel to it with a flag thrown in. It had the positive effect of allowing a shrinking community to still have intense close matches, but the game felt more shallow because the pool of players that specialized in certain niche roles were harder to find. I haven’t played in any high level scrims or anything in Tribes Ascend, but from the pubs I have played in, the game does seem to share a certain feel with LT. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but I do kind of miss the whole ‘heavy offense’ aspect of the game. It was a secondary objective to keep the enemy base down, and it ultimately led to more flag captures. It was crippling when you lost your generators, and probably a bit too harsh in this mainstream game design climate. But now looking at their design choices, they really are advocating fun pub play on both sides (destroying the enemy base is less crippling, turret placements are easy to destroy with tactical strikes, etc). Although the result is your actions have less of a lasting impact on the game at hand. There were certainly games in the Tribes of old where you spent 15 minutes screaming and crying because the enemy has your base so thoroughly owned you could literally not do anything constructive, so maybe it was for the better. It certainly made competitive play extremely enjoyable though.

Another game on my radar is Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. I’ve only played a few hours in, but I’m liking it so far. Although, having played every Assassin’s Creed game before it, I’m starting to sense my interest is waning. And it’s certainly not waning because the game isn’t as good as the previous ones. It’s again, simply a matter of having more engaging games to play in the time I do have to play them. Maybe after Outwitters is done I’ll marathon this one through.

The last ‘new’ game I’m checking out is the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO. This thing is massive in every sense of the word. It excels in giving the sense of atmosphere one expects in an epic Star Wars game. But the finer points are lost. Each class has an extensive single player campaign you play through, fully-voice acted Mass Effect 2 style, but the fidelity of it is pretty low compared to a focused, dedicated single player game. It’s not often I play a game to ‘escape’ or immerse myself in a world, but SWTOR can certainly fit the bill when I do have those cravings, despite it’s lackluster gameplay mechanics.

Thanks to Mike Berg of We Heart Games for helping us get this new site design online! It’s the same great taste, just with a nifty new wrapper. If you notice anything’s broken, let us know and we’ll patch it up.

December is over, and so is 12 Indie Apps for Christmas. We kind of pigeon holed ourselves by dragging Christmas into it. Can’t really keep that kind of thing going past December. Anyway, we’re thrilled to report that over $10,000 was raised for Child’s Play and Doctors Without Borders! (Our portion is headed to Child’s Play.) Big thanks to anyone that supported the effort, or who felt bad for not participating and donated a dollar here.

This Year at OML

The doctors say 2011 likely won’t make it past the new year, so with a heavy heart we bid it farewell. We may not have anything to show for it yet, but 2011 was hard work. Outwitters has required a lot of learning. New tech, new work flow, new genre, universal device support… It’s no wonder our release estimate was so far off. But we’re both really proud of the work in progress, and we can’t wait to see the rest of the bells and whistles fall into place.

Our New Years Resolution

The App Store hasn’t heard from us in a while, and we aim to change that in 2012. Outwitters should hit the store sometime before the end of March, after which we have a few content updates planned.  Hopefully by year’s end we’ll be neck-deep in some kind of Game III, maybe even releasing it.

Thanks for keeping tabs on us this year. Don’t drink and drive, and we’ll see you guys in 2012 WITH ACTUAL GAME CONTENT FOR YOU TO PLAY.

The following is an actual excerpt from a textbook called Game Development Essentials: Mobile Game Development. I was asked about my vision for the future of mobile gaming, a topic I think about pretty much every day.

We’re still experimenting with some balance tweaks as more of the menus come online. This time we’re playing with unit pricing. Where everyone but the special guys used to cost the same, we’re going to try making the weaker, more mobile guys cheaper to build than the heavy hitters. Bases have been a bit too easy to defend vs. attack, so making slow, defensive guys more expensive should help even things out.

In other news, we finally have a sound engine in place! Alex took it upon himself to collect placeholder sound effects, including some of the most annoying filler I’ve ever heard. For example, when an Adorables heavy jumps to a new space, he now shouts “DERRRRR… WHERE’S DA PRINCESS?! A-HURRR HURRR.”

Every time he moves.

We’ve joined forces this month with eleven of our colleagues in a little charitable venture called 12 Indie Apps for Christmas. We’re donating 25% of our December earnings from the original Tilt to Live to Child’s Play, a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in a network of over 70 hospitals worldwide. And if you already have Tilt to Live, which is pretty likely, check out the roster of 11 other apps you could buy to support the cause. Or just go to the Child’s Play website and give them some money directly. These are all good things to do for sick kids on Christmas.

Of course if you are a sick kid reading this from a hospital, this post is not for you.

Alex is slowly funneling more users into the Outwitters beta, including other devs like Michael Bean of Disc Drivin’. How can you get in on some of this Outwitters beta action? You could submit your udid and device info here with the topic “Beta Request”, and hope very picky Alex picks you. We don’t have many slots available, so no promises.

It’s looking like fog of war is getting a thumbs up (from me and Alex at least). The element of surprise adds some tension to the gameplay that wasn’t there before. Not to mention the thrill of setting little traps in the dark.

Next week we’ll still be slowly working to get more menus online and old ones revised. I only recently got an iPhone in front of me with my menus running, and man those buttons are tiny. So that’s all gotta be retouched. We’re also going to try adding a full game replay, so you could watch your match start to finish without fog afterward… which is yet another menu to put together. Outwitters is still slated for release early next year.

New Adorables and Scallywags base designs.

The funny thing about Josh Trumper’s fan art submission is that I have an eerily similar page in my Outwitters sketchbook. I couldn’t have done a better job assigning roles for the Tilt to Live power ups myself. In fact, I didn’t… His are more clever.

In his own words: “The Red Dot Destroying Arrows are a team of silent types who enjoy nothing but setting off power ups and killing red dots… and they’re all out of dots.” I kid you not, Josh has 3 paragraphs of very specific ideas for his Vortex special character, an invulnerable sinkhole that consumes friends and foes alike. He even suggested a 3 turn countdown before the Vortex activates, just like Tilt to Live. Someone has a bright future in game design ahead of them.

Your Artwork Here

For his time and effort, Josh is getting the item of his choice from our Tilt to Live store. If you have some One Man Left fanart & are over the age of 13, send it over to contests[at]onemanleft.com. If we like your stuff, we’ll post it and send you a free item from our shop.

We got hung up on the topic of predictability this past week. As in: is it a good thing to see your opponent coming a mile away? Alex had a pretty neat idea for including fog of war without having to add any character stats. So we diverted attention to a prototype, and are now in the process of running a “wonder-what-he’s-doing” build through the ringer. The response has been good so far; it feels like a completely different game. Time will tell if there are any dominant strategies or other unfairness, but having secrets is fun.

While that’s being tried and debated, we’re returning to menus and other odds and ends of a tedious nature (from my perspective, anyway). After a meeting yesterday, we do have a much clearer understanding of what’s left to do. Now we just tick our way down this list to the finish line. Outwitters is slated for release early 2012.