A wild Toxic Bunny HD appears!
Whoa, looks like this is done: http://www.lazygamer.net/review/toxic-bunny-hd-review-point-squeeze-mop-up
Review scores aren't the best thing ever, not really sure how Mr Bulford is going to take that. Fair, not fair? Oppinions?
Review scores aren't the best thing ever, not really sure how Mr Bulford is going to take that. Fair, not fair? Oppinions?
Comments
The nostalgia and the proudly SA factor is cool and all, but I doubt that I'd give it a whirl because of that, simply cos it doesn't appeal to me. Another platformer, and a re-make at that - is difficult to make me sit up and notice when stuff like Super Time Force is on the horizon.
I don't believe in scoring games myself, at least not in a final score kind of way. Games are always much more than a score, and giving a score definitely removes people from the rest of the stuff people are supposed to read.
@dislekcia what's your opinion?
To be honest, I'm a little confused about some of the choices behind the game's approach so far, mostly business/marketing type stuff. I've emailed Travis to say congrats and ask him questions ;)
I'm not certain about the boxed copy approach, these days that feels like a hindrance more than anything else, although I do get that having someone handle distribution for you is much better than covering your living room floor with boxes and packing tape.
I'm interested in the choice to show the game off at rAge, especially just when I'm making the business decision not to go this year, given how little it moves the needle for us. I'm keen to hear how that works out, Toxic Bunny's strongest marketing position is definitely here in SA and pushing the message of "Hey, we did this before and we're back" is a good strategy in that position. I'd like to see how it does, given the size of the local market, and if they manage to break out of that market.
I think there's a lot to learn, so I'd love it if Travis and co would hang out here. I do know that one of the major advantages of this community is in helping polish games before they release, so in some ways the game already being out means that there's not too much to learn from the dev side of it, but the marketing/sales/business stuff is also something we have to do as indies, so let's share about that ;)
There's a lot of commentary I want to pass on the game itself (as opposed to the business and marketing), but I've realised that a lot of it is moot until I see action. Otherwise I really just have the review score to go on, and if we're going to look at this from a critical (developer) perspective, it seems unfair to allow our impressions to form second-hand like that. Especially since, being what looks like a "purist" platformer of sorts, the motion, actions and controls are such a vital part of understanding and appreciating it.
It's a shame we can only look at this from a postmortem perspective, but I'd still like to analyse it on that level.
Agreed on the video, that would be powerful.
Oh and hello. Been too busy to see whats going on. This looks like a great initiative, well done to those driving makegamessa.
Certainly not offended by any of the reviews of our HD remake. Heck someone takes the time and effort to look at our product and give us some suggestions and thoughts its an investment of there time and if we are to grow and succeed we must listen. Some of the issues are things we could do nothing about since were were still constrained by the old system. Some issues we agree with and are considering a possible patch to assist. Some we consider out of our hands to solve since we don't have the sort of budget required solve.
Pretty sure we made the right call on Boxed product just a point. From the more business perspective Toxic Bunny HD is aimed at old fans but also the young market same as before. That market needs to see the game to purchase it. To see it it needs to be in a box. Not many 10yo with credit cards. Would happily field and answer some questions on all this and more all I ask is coffee OFC. Hope fully Nick and I can come visit your next JHB meet and chat.
We currently aiming at Europe where we did 150,000 units previously (without any local advantage I might add). Yes we certainly planning some digital distribution too.
You should also read some of the other reviews such as
http://www.el33tonline.com/past/2012/10/6/toxic_bunny_hd_review_pc/
As for how internationals would look at the game removing the local aspect I have no reviews of the HD version yet but take a look at this more recent international hobiest review of the original.
http://blogsquirrel.blogspot.com/2010/02/toxic-bunny.html
Comments, abuse and coffee welcome.
http://makegamessa.com/discussion/213/event-joburg-community-meet-up-09-oct-2012#Item_8
When is the next one? Do you have a date yet?
It'd be really cool if you could bring the game for people to try out and ask questions and stuff! :D
How many people from the team or should I just try drag everyone along?
Is there a place to set up pc etc. Perhaps we should take this off the forums and plan via email. Either is fine. Booked in my diary for the time been. Excited although happy to have a few weeks break show off the bunny.
Travis
There is a podium with relative easy access to a vga port connecting with the projecter and the sound system of the room. There was a talk about maybe setting up a table to put PC's for people to play the games, but I don't know if that has happened yet.
The meetings usually have a casual feel to them.
We like casual, projectors on the other hand we don't like depends on the resolution. More into people playing it then simply watching us play.
Will bring a kit along 27" monitor perhaps 2 kits we can set it up and leave people to play the game.
Maybe @Elyaradine or @edg3 can help organise a table for demos like this? We can probably talk about it tommorow at the meetup so it's ready for the next meeting.
We've got a system going at the CT meetups: We get other people who haven't played the game before to come up and play it while the creator's talking. Works really well and deals with the whole "Play and talk same time hard brain argh" problem :)
When, oh when will they make a semi decent projector for gaming. Is there such a thing. I would love to know.
Not a complete issue either way. Just makes our art team sad if people cant appreciate there work.
I don't know what your setup looks like in CT but recently we have been doing the meetups in absence of any tables. Which is great for the talks...everybody can face the front and more people can squeeze in, but there is no place to sit down and play stuff. Which is bad.
I don't think that much of the feedback here is "cold" or "analytical", people keep saying "OMG! I totally loved this or that part" and then go on to explain why they loved it, which is always hard to do in actual playtesting sessions with crowds: Running after someone and asking why they laughed right at that bit there and not the other part after it is a bit of a strange thing to do.
Playtest sessions are different to demo sessions. I kinda think playtests are usually best when organised just for your game - doing stuff like putting a PC down at a university somewhere or just getting a bunch of friends of friends over to play something works wonders. Trying to squeeze too much into the events might be a bit of a problem, but I know that there's probably not too much of a barrier there to doing playtesting, you just have to drive it for your game instead of it being something that's "pre-organised" for you.
Also, laptops are win. Almost as much win as iPad games.
But yeah, I get what your saying. It's probably not as useful as a more focused approach. But it's so much fun :D I think it also depends on the crowd. If you give it to fellow developers, you want more elaborate feedback because you can probably get advice about specific things. Where as if you give it to casual gamers you wouldn't spend too much time on asking specific things and rather just listen to their general feelings about the game.
Where do you draw the line between playtest vs demo?
Personally, I consider a playtest a controlled environment where I put someone in front of the game and don't give them any other information. The goal is to see what they do and what they enjoy/dislike without any preconceptions. Not jumping in when they hit a bug or a poor bit of puzzle/interface design is really, really hard.
A demo is a carefully selected section of a game experience designed to promote the game to specific people. It could be for press, players or even investors. The idea is that you want people to go through a mini-experience of your game so that they want to play it again and/or tell other people how awesome it is. Sometimes that means you need to build a little progression story arc in the game (tiny heros journey!) or maybe you need to start off with a pile of awesome explosions. The approach that works well for DD is to lump players into a not-too-hard dungeon and then watching them play again as soon as they die - or challenging them to try a harder dungeon if they win. We've built custom versions of the game for GDC, E3 and IndieCade before. The responses to the demos have also helped us refine what we'll use for the game demo itself...
That said, there's a spectrum here. Informal testing is wonderful and I think we need to do as much of it as possible! I know that we've had playtest-like results from demos (you won't believe the number of bugs people found on the show floor at GDC last year, so stressful) and generally just having other people look at your game is always going to give you useful feedback. The two examples above are either extremes of that scale.
I'm glad that the devs are hitting their milestones and all, but why not show us the game in action either way? It could make for a really cool discussion.
I'm also one of those unfortunate buggers stuck in Cape Town with no way to see the demo at next month's Joburg meetup.
About the video. I'll see what I can do when I get home after the meetup tonight. Not that I'm part of the team or anything but after rage I do own a copy :P Anything specific you want to see?
Or would you rather see a developer demo type thing?
So, uh, what would basically satisfy me is just seeing any few minutes of gameplay (heck, just the first level, even). You don't have to do anything fancy, I wouldn't ask you to put in too much time or effort -- would be a grand favour and convenience until we can see an "official" dev video. :)
Sweet!
As for the video, we have been working on an intro with game play elements. I don't think its the sort of thing you mean though.
With regards to animations keep in mind we were limited by the original frames cut low then for memory sake. There are a few things that were beyond the scope of our HD revision. Level design meaning tools used or meaning ideas and concepts. Would be a fairly long video to show off a single level.
Also, what's so tricky about starting up FRAPS and just capping a few minutes of gameplay? Sure, you probably really do need to do a more polished marketing trailer, but you've got to start capping stuff somewhere, right?
P.S. That reminds me that I should really upload the short DD gameplay thing I put together for PAX.
However that's when I will be down in CT, the offer is there. I could look at staying in CT for a day or two extra meet some of you guys. It seams improbable that your meeting would coincide with the trip. But since I don't actually have a time you never know it might.
Ofc I love CT so time and budget willing a trip down another day is also possible. Just Nick and I should be there for this trip so would be nice to bring him along too.
Also. Ack! Halloween does seem like an awkward date for a community meetup.
And though this probably isn't particular to the HD remake, I'm interested in some of the level design choices. Do the "quest" activities need to be done in sequence (noticing the anchor bit)? If so, is there a way to gate player progress so that they don't accidentally get all the way to the end of the stage before realising that they turned left instead of right and missed the alien crash site near the beginning? Open-world level design is always cool, especially when there's Metroidvania-esque unlocking techniques.
The occasional clusters of pickup resources are also something I'd draw attention to, if only because they seem designed to slow down player progress rather than reward good flow (ie. they're usually clustered in a ball that requires several stationary jumps to collect rather than an "arc" which represents perfect motion). Considering how there's a distinct "run" state on Toxic, I'd imagine that maintaining momentum and graceful motions would be a good player incentive, and it may be something to consider for any other platformers further down the line.
I like all the little animated details that have been added to the environments -- moving vines, slow background scrolling, and lots of light source effects. I think I'd notice even more on a high-quality vid, but these elements already struck me as adding greatly to the idea that the levels you're going through are truly "alive". Very nice from a content-based point of view (I assume, at least, that none of these elements were present in the original, they seem a bit advanced for DOS-era stuff).
Thanks for the feedback. I wouldn't underestimate the value of constructive criticism. We still doing some enhancements for a patch and our international version will have some of those too. Anything we release internationally will be patchable locally.
Some of the sound effects did get an HD upgrade some didn't. I can be sure if its video quality you picking up or the sounds could be either.
There are mechanics that make sure you can't progress too far before you have completed tasks. Players can not break the quest chain by design.
I hear what you saying about the collections, but its in our play goals. Patience is rewarded where just running past everything at a blurring speed is not. This is both in terms of cool things to see on the level as well as having enough cash to purchase cool goodies. The levels don't have a linear design so you back and forth a few times over different parts. Toxic Bunny was never meant to be a Sonic or Jazz where its a racing plat-former.
The lighting was part of the DOS era stuff but the rest most certainly wasn't. We really regret that we could not bring the level more to life, but at some points we had to draw a line between HD remake and new project.