Darkest Dungeon on Kickstarter

Kickstarter has been the home to many successful games and now a new title has captured my imagination with it's haunting campaign video; Darkest Dungeon.

Pulled directly from the Red Hook Studios press page; 

Factsheet

Developer:
Red Hook Studios Inc.
Based in Vancouver, Canada

Release date:
January 2015

Platforms:
PC, Mac, Linux, plus TBA

Website:
darkestdungeon.com

Regular Price:
TBA TBA

Description

Darkest Dungeon is a gothic roguelike RPG dungeon crawler about the psychological stresses of adventuring. You will lead a band of four heroes on a perilous side-scrolling descent, dealing with a prodigious number of threats to their bodily health, and worse, a relentless assault on their mental fortitude! Five hundred feet below the earth you will not only fight unimaginable foes, but famine, disease, and the stress of the ever-encroaching dark. Darkest Dungeon focuses on the humanity and psychological vulnerability of the heroes and asks: What emotional toll does a life of adventure take?

History

Darkest Dungeon was conceived as an antidote to the loot-piñata RPG experience which focuses solely on a character's numerical capabilities. Squad leaders and sports team managers have to contend with the human factors as they strive to maximize effectiveness--why not in RPGs? Combining this concept with a Lovecraftian-inspired grim setting, the game was born. Full development began in May 2013 after assembling a veteran team which had the artistic ability, system-based game design experience, and technical versatility to deliver a game that would meet the ambitious vision while also being entertaining to play.

Features

• Manage a team of heroes through the physical and mental stresses of adventuring. Try to stop paranoia, greed, anger, depression, and more from crippling the party.
• Affliction System: Make the most of character flaws and strategically construct your party to overcome hardship.
• Innovative turn-based combat with a nostalgic feel
• Striking hand-drawn 2d gothic art style
• Original score by Stuart Chatwood, composer for eight "Prince of Persia" games and founding member of multi-platinum Canadian rock band "The Tea Party."
• Meaningful consequences and permadeath deliver heightened tension and provide for truly heroic moments.
• A Lovecraftian-inspired story of greed, fallen greatness, and redemption.

If you're looking for an adventure in a cruel and unforgiving world and they carry unseen wounds of gruesome battle on their hearts and minds, then consider backing Darkest Dungeon. 

Symbiotes, Robots, and Bears.

A little gift for my lovelies.

Hey everyone out there!

I haven't updated in a while, and I wanted to remedy that! And to do so, here is a lil' sketch I did of Marvel baddie Venom! Enjoy!

Now, if you don't know me, you might not know I have some health issues; namely my heart.
Nothing too bad, but enough to screw with life every so often. This time, it was looking like I had a valve going out. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. The valve is still weak but instead of getting cut open again, I'm just taking a pile of pills and "taking it easy" for a bit. Speaking of Valve and valve-related things...

Though that did slow down my whole "make a game a month" plan.
Which might be a good thing, considering more and more of game ideas that I thought were totes original are coming out as beautifully polished indie games. (See Matador reveal trailer below; its gonna be amazing!)

Matador is an upcoming perma-death-adventure (read: rogue-like) by Stellar Jockeys and gausswerks featuring isometric action and giant gun wielding robots and one life before starting it all over again. What's not to love about this game?! Can't think of anything? Then you must be a bad enough dude to vote for it on Steam Greenlight. They seem like awesome dudes, so give 'em some love!

Now some of the last news from me. 

Even though my "make a game a month" plan has kinda fell through, some of my friends have agreed to help me press forward with a lovely little game I had pitched years ago. Its an action-y, arcade-y little shin-dig where you enforce the law with massive, fuzzy claws of justice! *Cough cough* bearcop *cough*.

Originally I was going to produce and finance this game (completely tapping me out every month), but once these medical issues reared their ugly head again, I got a new pile of debt really fast. My friends agreed to help in their free-time and have already helped so much.

Once we get a good alpha, we might shop it around to get those who worked on it the money and recognition they deserve.

Until next time,

Dave

(Psst, I heard you like making games. If you want to make games with me, send me a message.)

Holiday Gift - PREVIEW

So I'm working on a fun little holiday greeting "card" for all of you so check back on the 25th to get your present! Woot!

Until then,
-Dave

Pocket Prison: Kim Jong Un - Update!

So Andrew Talarico, the lead programmer for Pocket Prison, has been putting the finishing touches on the game for the last couple of days and we're just waiting to see if Apple accepts our little game on their devices!

In the mean time, enjoy these screen shots of the game!

Kim is happy for food!

Quiet contemplation of his surroundings...

These shots are from the PC version, which we'll be sharing with the world to enjoy free of charge! It's coming out really soon! Woot!

Until next time,

-Dave

Fisticuff Gentleman - Update!

Hey there!

So you know how I kinda announced a little project called "Fisticuff Gentleman" that I had just started working on about 2 days ago? Well here is the first update!

Like an 8-bit Downton Abbey, huh?

There you go! I have a scene set up to help establish the art style and scale of the game. I decided to create an artificial letter-box as well as using speech cards for dialog in order to help re-enforce the old-time aesthetic. The other thought I had was to apply a film grain over the entire game when it's complete, but that sits in the realm commonly referred to as feature creep. That's what happens when features that sound cool might need to be cut in order to meet deadlines, ie if the feature will take 1 week to implement but you only have 3 days to finish, that feature will be cut due to creep.

Oh and I figured out what I'm going to do with this game! So I originally called it a beat-em-up/fighter, but I think I'm going to change it up a little and make it into an interactive story/fighting game and save the beat-em-up version for a possible sequel with multiplayer. But for now, here's my little check list for development!

• Fully implement main character animations
• Get melee system to work properly
• Implement health system
• Create and add enemy sprite and animations
• Create and add Lady animations (sprite done)
• Create speech cards for in-game dialog (story WIP)
• Get someone to make me some old-timey music to rock out to while punching faces
• Test level out (Note: Must be fun! If not, start over.)
• Share with world!

As you can tell, I'm not that organized, but I get stuff done!
Check back in a couple days and I'll probably have more of the game to show you!

Until next time,
-Dave
Who knew making a game all by myself would be so much fun? Well, fun for me...

BROFORCE! - A game you want; trust me.

Think of a video game that lets you run around and be violent as all heck as your favorite action movie stars?

Can't think of one, can ya'? Well do I have a surprise for you!

Watch this!

Running around, blowing up enemies and raze the environment in BROFORCE! 

It's described as "A ridiculously violent platform game about being awesome action heroes from the 80s and 90s while slaying satanic terrorists and aliens while unraveling an evil plot to destroy the planet while dealing with being awesome action heroes from the 80s and 90s." 

This game is be Free Lives Games and is currently pretty fucking awesome even in its "brototype" phase!

Which you can download and play right here! BROFORCE BROTOTYPE!

There is only one problem; the game needs more lovin' from the community so that everyone can enjoy its majesty! How do you give it more lovin's you ask? Go to Steam Greenlight and let them know you want this bad mam'a-jam'a! 

I may just be stating the obvious here, but if you don't love this game and want it so bad it makes you wheep a single manly tear, than you don't love video games.

Yeah, I went there.

...

And you should go here. Vote for BROFORCE!.

Until next time,

-Dave

I'll be showing off more of my low-poly models soon. I'm just lazy about taking screen shots. 

SUPER TIME FORCE!

TIME OUT! with Super TIME Force Trailer! from CAPY on Vimeo.

So, I'm a huge fan of indie games, pixels, and explosions. Actually, I'm a huge fan of a buncha stuff.

But when I first laid eyes on a screen shot of this freakin' game, I needed to know more.

The game is "Super TIME Force!" by Capybara Games, makers of Super Brothers: Swords and Sworcery EP and Critter Crunch.

So far, all I know about this metric ton of bad-ass is that it's coming out on the XBox Live Arcade in 2013 and that it looks freakin' awesome! Considering Capybara Games history with releasing titles across many platforms and making fans super-freaking happy, I'm thinking we should see Super TIME Force also coming to PC either with the XBLA release or soon after!

I'm all giddy for this one; for realsy this time!

Until next time,

-Dave

Monaco: What's Yours is Mine

A little known fact about me; I love sneaking around in games!
From cutting throats of a ruthless, yet unsuspecting samurai warlords deep within their fortress to cowering in a dark corner to hide from disfigured monsters looking to kill me, I think stealth games are amazing!

I think it came from when I was a child, running around my forested backyard, climbing trees and rocks, pretending to be a super-secret ninja warrior or setting traps while imitating "Ahneld" from one of my favorite films, Predator.

Eventually, as my teenage years crept up to me, laziness, games, and 14.4 kps powered internet took a hold and prancing around in the woods, hiding from imaginary bank guards and aliens became less and less appealing. But that void of stealthy adventure has been filled time and again by different video games. And since more games are leaning toward over-the-top set pieces and explosions, stealth has barely whimpered recently, that is until now. I've nearly lived through my 20's and 30 is right around the corner, I'd say I need to regain that youth of the sneaky-sneaky.

And that awesome sneaky-sneaky I look forward to is Monaco: What's Yours is Mine

Monaco: What's Yours is Mine is a 4 player online or split-screen co-op stealth/action game coming to XBLA and PC early 2013.

With it's unique graphics, brilliant music, a colorful cast of characters, and game play that has been described by Bytejacker's Anthony Carboni as "quite possibly the best co-op ever.", Monaco is definitely worth checking out.  

Monaco: What's Yours is Mine is created by Pocketwatch games. Founded in 2005, this indie studio was first known for creating the IGF Grand Prize nominated ecosystem-sim game Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa and the subsequent game Venture Arctic. 

I'm gonna buy it. Just sayin'.

Until next time,

-Dave

Snowman Builder Game Development

Hey there everyone!

So as some of you know, I'm a full time student and part time social media intern.

Well, my internship was initially slated for "a couple of weeks" before it was stretched to 3 months.
And then 3 months came and went and now I've been an intern for nearly a year!

In that time, I've helped develop and maintain all of their social media outlets, develop and publish contracted author's posts to their blog, completely re-worked their children's site, along with create hundreds of art assets and photo-manipulations for web advertising across all of their sites. It's been a lot of work!

Recently, while being tasked with updating their blog and site regularly, I was also given the task to create a new game for their Kid's Zone site and have a release to go along with the holiday season. Now, as anyone who has tried to make a game knows, this is no small task. And on top of that, it needs to be developed to work with mobile devices as well!

So the game that I came up with that will fit in the tight dead-line and should satisfy the requirements is a simple snowman builder game made with the Construct 2 engine. I've made some progress getting it to work the way that I want, along with creating assets needed for the game.

Check out below! It's a screen-shot of what I have built up so far!

Looks pretty sweet, huh?

Anyway, I just felt like sharing this little guy with my tens of readers! I'm using the Construct 2 engine to build it up and I'm using a personal license that I got until the company I'm interning at can get me one of those fancy business ones! 

Until next time,

-Dave

(Yay for developing simple kids games all by myself while under tight dead-lines! Woo-Hoo!)