Kickstarter- New Game by Former-S&F Artist Andrew Bado

[S. Thompson]

I wanted to share this with anyone who is interested. Our old artist Andrew Bado started a kickstarter to crowdfund his long-in-development labor of love project - Legend of Iya.

He has been working on this on and off over the past ten years handling all of the programming and artwork. Having seen a lot of his pixel art over the years, I can safely say that this project has some of his best work both in terms of animation and shading. This project is being developed using the GameMaker tool, so it will only be initially available on Windows-based machines. Who knows what the future holds though?

Take a look and open your pocketbook if you are so inclined to: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/523 ... end-of-iya

- Steve

[Specially Cork]

Looks good. Any reason why it's a 12 year old girl? Strange idea to have a decade-long passion over

Anyway, I'll throw in $10 for a copy of the game.

[S. Thompson]

Looks good. Any reason why it's a 12 year old girl? Strange idea to have a decade-long passion over

Hah! I don't actually know all the details of the story myself, but I am sure there is a method to his madness.

- Steve

[Christuserloeser]

Looks REALLY awesome! What about the odds of this coming to Dreamcast ?

[Juan]

Gamemaker says "little to none". Same for linux I guess.

[Christuserloeser]

Damn somehow I missed the GameMaker part.

[S. Thompson]

Gamemaker says "little to none". Same for linux I guess.

Supposedly, an enhanced version of Gamemaker can do compiled binaries for mac/linux. A Dreamcast release is pretty much impossible as far as I understand it though.

Either way, thank you to all who have checked it out! Back when he was doing artwork for Inhabitants, Andrew was already working on this project, so it's been under development for quite a long time.

- Steve

[cube_b3]

So I checked it out, I probably won't invest in it cause I won't play it.

I will say however that his hard work can be seen, the sprites are really nice. Especially the part where she jumps on ladders, it is shown several times in the trailer so I guess he is proud of those animations as well.

I hope he gets his funding, I supposed people like me would have funded it, if it was targeted towards Dreamcast.
But then again, Dreamcast nuts just buy games they never plan on playing so this way at least it will be funded by people who would actually like to experience the product.

[Specially Cork]

Unfortunately it seems like funding is drying up...these kinda things tend to drop off quite quickly after the first few days and he's not even halfway done yet.

[S. Thompson]

Unfortunately it seems like funding is drying up...these kinda things tend to drop off quite quickly after the first few days and he's not even halfway done yet.

Yeah, I have checked his page the past few days and it's lingered in the high 20k range. Unfortunately, it might be the case that not even press from Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun can push this thing where he needs it to be.

I don't think 75k is unreasonable, but it is very high for what I consider to be a very specialized type of game in the current era.

- Steve

[cube_b3]

The music is starting to grow on me.

Don't know about Rock Paper Shotgun but Kotaku isn't a good site for promotion. It is updated every hour and news posts can get berried under dozens of news posts in a day or less. Retro game sites are the target demographic and the best place for the game to shine.

[S. Thompson]

Oh yeah! This DID end up being funded - about 2k over.

Here's hoping he can deliver with an awesome game.

- Steve

[cube_b3]

Good for him, he really deserved it.
He worked pretty hard to get it.
Lots of updates and even a demo for non backers.
After going through the Demo I would've loved to have it on Dreamcast, it seems like a fun project.

I hope it gets the recognition it deserves.

[S. Thompson]

After going through the Demo I would've loved to have it on Dreamcast, it seems like a fun project.

It's a cool idea, but since everything has been done in GameMaker, I feel like it would basically take a rewrite to get it to that point. I know Andrew was a huge supporter (as we all are/were) of the Dreamcast, but he might have some reservations regarding the viability of releasing Iya on Dreamcast at this point in the game.

Who knows though? It's a great idea. I hope Iya can live up to the lofty expectations it now has. I know the artwork and design stuff will be solid, but a few friends of mine commented on how they didn't feel like the game had a selling point that made it stand apart from other games in the genre enough. I know Andrew has mentioned several times that there is a big twist in the plot and stuff, so hopefully that will be enough.

- Steve

[cube_b3]

I wrote a reply but somehow it wasn't posted. Weird.

Anyway Irides and Fast Striker were removed for Fast Striker where as they sold out multiple print runs on Dreamcast.

Pier Solar is great but it probably would have been completely forgettable had it not been on the Genesis.

When a game is on a retro console, especially if it is a retro style game it becomes an extension of the system or brand name.

Like Beats of Rage was associated with Sega hence the Dreamcast. It has been ported to every platform but people continue to think of OpenBOR as a Dreamcast tool. So it maybe worth the time and energy porting it to Dreamcast. It would be a part of the systems history and legacy where as it wouldn't even be a blip on modern platforms.

_______________________________

That said, I would just politely whisper again:

inhabitants remastered 2014

[Specially Cork]

I wrote a reply but somehow it wasn't posted. Weird.

Anyway Irides and Fast Striker were removed for Fast Striker where as they sold out multiple print runs on Dreamcast.

Pier Solar is great but it probably would have been completely forgettable had it not been on the Genesis.

When a game is on a retro console, especially if it is a retro style game it becomes an extension of the system or brand name.

Like Beats of Rage was associated with Sega hence the Dreamcast. It has been ported to every platform but people continue to think of OpenBOR as a Dreamcast tool. So it maybe worth the time and energy porting it to Dreamcast. It would be a part of the systems history and legacy where as it wouldn't even be a blip on modern platforms.

_______________________________

That said, I would just politely whisper again:

inhabitants remastered 2014

If the game is good, it will stand-out. There's plenty of excellent retro indie games on mainstream platforms that do really well. This is why I really don't care for commercial homebrew on retro consoles - there's too much focus on the gimmick of it being exclusive to niche device.

If you've got a good game to make, just make it and get it out there on PC, console, iOS...let as many people enjoy it as posible and make a bit of coin while you're at it.

[cube_b3]

But then how will NGDT charge the prices that they do?

Given that it costs 3$ to produce a disk, cover and manuals.
They sell it for 30$ as a re-re-release. On the other hand they release it on iPhone for 1$ it pisses off the people who bought the game for 50$, I can't even imagine how the Neo-Geo cart purchasers would feel.

[Specially Cork]

Few indie games on PC/PSN/XBLA ever charge beyond $14.99 - anybody who slaps down $50 for something like Pier Solar has gotta know the bulk of that money is going toward the novelty of having it on a cartridge.

Anyway...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/573 ... -linux-and

Didn't even hear about this, but I think it proves my point about making stuff mainstream.

A nice crisp HD version of the game with extra bells and whistles for less than half the price of the Genesis version.

[DaMadFiddler]

Looks like this just squeaked in.

I remember seeing a recent-ish post by WaterMelon (the folks who made Pier Solar) stating that they need more pixel artists for their next two games, Project N and Project Y. (N is a Zelda-esque SNES game based loosely on the Greek myth of Orpheus; Y is a Genesis brawler with RPG elements.)

Perhaps Andrew would be interested in that? Not only would it get him wider exposure for his work (Pier Solar sold through three print runs for Genesis, and the HD version was a runaway success on Kickstarter), but he'd get to see his work running on actual SNES and Genesis hardware.

[|darc|]

If the game is good, it will stand-out. There's plenty of excellent retro indie games on mainstream platforms that do really well. This is why I really don't care for commercial homebrew on retro consoles - there's too much focus on the gimmick of it being exclusive to niche device.

If you've got a good game to make, just make it and get it out there on PC, console, iOS...let as many people enjoy it as posible and make a bit of coin while you're at it.

Personally I feel a lot of them just put together modern games that take advantage of modern effects but use a pixelated, retro art style. And for modern game development, this is honestly just the easy way out.

To me, video games are not only about the gameplay and storyline, but also about the game development itself. Programming is an art and code is poetry. A well-written, efficient algorithm is every bit as beautiful to me as a though-provoking haiku. But modern platforms are so powerful and SDKs so high-level and robust that the developer can get away with doing anything, and that's really not technically interesting to me at all.

There's just something special about the technical achievement of creating a game world, story, and overall experience with 3.58MHz and 64KB of RAM. I love to see what developers can do, how far they can push the hardware. I love to read about what technical workarounds they used to create an effect within the limitation of the hardware. All with little-to-no or outdated tools.


Sure. Most people just want to play the games. But for the last ten years of my life, it's been the development that excites me.