#bitsmith

[thejoshcshow]

Brit Smith SETS the record STRAIGHT!

New Video Up On My YouTube Channel

[gaustudios-blog]

Frank "Yupfrank"Duran gives you a preview of the game that really teaches you to use your head, FranknJohn.

Play FranknJohn here & support the kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bitsmithgames/franknjohn

Check out http://www.gaustudios.com for all the latest and greatest video game previews, reviews, and commentary!

[linuxgamenews]

Kickstarter roguelike FranknJohn coming to Linux, Mac, PC

FranknJohn, the head-swapping roguelike that allows you to smash in funhouse freaks with your magical noggin, has just landed on Kickstarter. Having been influenced by the early Nintendo days with games like Zombies Ate My Neighbours and Ghoul Patrol, to more recent games like Dark Souls and The Binding of Isaac.

Young FranknJohn is a failed experiment of a deranged scientist, Dr Harmin. He wakes, with no memory, bursting from his grave, with a head that can only stay on his body with the help of a chain. FranknJohn is far from helpless however, as his flaw becomes his strength - he can swing his head wildly round to smash away the plethora of strange creatures that roam the mansion. 

Features:

Fling FranknJohn's chained head around with full 360° control

Experiment with dozens of Skullcaps that alter gameplay in many different ways

Randomly generated sprawling levels packed with items, collectables and secrets

Swappable body parts allow you customize your stats to your playstyle

Original Soundtrack by the wonderful Ben Prunty

Battle through four horrifying worlds and piece together the dark history of its occupants

Perma-death, challenging enemies and powerful bosses will keep you on your toes.

BitSmith Games is looking for £30,000 (roughly $50,000 USD) to finish the project, which is slated for a release on PC, Mac and Linux. Pledge over £8 ($13.30 USD) and you get to download an arena build of the game pretty much immediately. Pledge over £500 ($835 USD) and you get to become a random NPC. The final game will have music by Ben Prunty, incidentally. That's the man who scored FTL. That's a hearty combination of talent. Even the alpha footage is looking impressive. So we here at Linux Game News are keen to see more from BitSmith Games, especially with a playable build for backers.

[vidyaireland-blog]

The devs at Qcon

[vidyaireland-blog]

Qcon: Kicking of the Vidya!

So Qcon's twentieth birthday was last weekend and what a birthday it was! I  went up with my partner in crime GameDevelopmentIRL to cover the event and what possible teachings can be taken from it's bosom. On arrival we were greeted by a group of cheery cos-players all participating in a game that involved dodging each others karate chops while pulling poses. (Anyone have a clue on the name if they recognize it?) Inside the convention was set among the  floors of the Student Union building across from the uni, each floor had various events but two were set up for a constant, it went like this:

Ground Floor: Used for registration, coffee and the game developer panels (This post is focused on them)

First Floor: Games Tournaments and general video gaming

Second Floor: Bar and Pool as well as screenings of films

Third Floor: Merchandise, Manga and Card Tournaments

Basement: Bar, disco, Rockband and stand up comedy

There was of course more events on show about the building in these areas but I mostly hung around the interview and panel areas to hear the craic with getting into or starting up independent development and the gaming scene in Ireland. I will not lie however I made sure to go test out the games on offer to.

The Magic Gaming Panel!

The team at Qcon managed to get together some very big names in Irish game development and even beyond. They had a team of folk who work in the soundtrack side of things and a team specifically for concept art and comic art in the mix to. Chipzel was also about! Here's a few of the fellows involved. Two recognizable faces there would be Owen Harris from bitSmith Games and Caspian Prince from Puppygames.

So these fellows where one of the panels getting the torrent of questions aimed at them. That being all well and good I'll focus on a few points Owen and Caspian made in their talk before doing a panel. I think they're necessary and interesting to hear to have your mind more sharp on the industry today.

Ideas are FREE..... 

Although to some this may seem quite obvious in a way but sometimes you do need to sit and work out a whole lot more than a good concept. If you want anyone to take notice on your idea then you're going to have to put the time in and work on it. Owen made it clear that with the amount of idea suggestion emails that he receives and other companies is ridiculous and basically... They all get ignored.

A great point he made would be to understand the game business before making a stab at it. This is not so much in the sense of just researching up on games and successful games etc. but more so even designing and developing your own card game, or big group game just to have a fair grasp on how things can work. Doing that will give you a good thought on the design of rules and what people react to more. He also said he's a massive Netrunner fan and is open to all challengers.

The Demo is Dead

As Caspian said this caused a bit of an initial backlash when this was mentioned the first time he said it online, admittedly at first I was of course, a tad skeptical. The unfortunate thing is he had the statistics back up what was saying, after taking down all available playable demos down after looking into it they found then that they where making the same amount of money than they were before that.

One point he made on it is that most people now either look up lets plays or just generally want to see some footage of gameplay and make their decision based on this. Advice he made on that would be that if you are developing and plan to make a video out then you have to get the gameplay within the first five seconds otherwise they tend to lose interest that quickly.

Kickstarter Advice from the Predestination Crew

Creators of the turn based strategy game gave a talk on Kickstarter and how to keep people interested in your game and not flake out on you.

The key they say to keep everyone on to you is decent updating! By keeping everyone in the know about what you've been up to during the week in terms of development and progress is essential. By sticking images, videos or even just a quick update if you're stuck for progress in that week. Being honest with the folk that are backing you is a big thing as it gives out a good ethic which backers appreciate.

A snippet on pricing was mentioned, if you keep an option open for £25 and offer something along the lines of "free DLC for life" or just something that genuinely defines why that is worth the extra bit of cash and people will gladly pay it. In terms of contribution they said the biggest percentage was of people who payed the £25 mark.

A final point they made would be to watch what game publishers offer as often they will ask a chunk of the business and you may end up with something along the lines of 13% more revenue but at too great a penalty in the long run.

Wellity, Wellity, Wellity...

So that was my coverage of the game devs talk. Keep your eyes out here for a video covering Qcon as a whole that myself and my partner GamesDevelopmentIRL shot.

I hope you enjoyed reading it and some things I covered were of use, feel free to pop me an ask about anything or something you may like me to cover or just general game chat.

Keep it Virtual Reality!

[sean-hogan]

Kú: Shroud of the Morrigan launches on iPad

It's always great to hear about success stories in the Irish game industry. With that in mind, I'm glad to write that Dublin based bitSmith Games launched their first game yesterday. Kú: Shroud of the Morrigan launched on the Apple App Store for iPad yesterday and as of writing, Kú is #1 in the Irish charts for paid apps.

Based on the Irish legend the Táin, Kú boasts a Celtic/punk aesthetic with hand drawn art and a full Irish translation.  The game seems pretty ambitious from the gameplay trailer, having much in common with other isometric games like Bastion and Deathspank.

The Irish Times wrote a brief review of Kú, summarising the game as "Imperfect, but effective, Kú is a hugely promising debut". Sadly I don't have an iPad to check the game out with, but if you want to support Irish game developers then Kú looks like a good place to start. 

Kú is also on Steam Greenlight, a platform for indie developers to get their games  onto the Steam Store.You can vote for it here.

Kú: Shroud of the Morrigan is available on the iPad App Store for €3.59 and is rated 12+.