Speedrunners
321tapBeta Build is Up!
Posted by Cas | Filed under SpeedRunners
Finally! Yesterday late in the evening (well, night actually), we uploaded the Beta Build to Steam. Today, we're rolling out the Keys in batches, so keep an eye on your inbox/spam folder if you've signed up for the Beta.
Enjoy!
New trailer & Announcement(s)!
Posted by Cas | Filed under Speedrunners, Steam, Trailer
Hi all!
Get ready for an interesting post, as we're making not one, not two, not three, but four (that's right, I said it, four!) announcements! We don't post often, but when we do..
Anyway, I can finally say what I've been wanting to say for quite some time:
WE ARE NOW ACCEPTING SIGN-UPS FOR BETA TESTERS
Yay! After working on the online multiplayer code for a long time, it is now finally getting to a point where we're (semi-)confident that it's robust enough to start letting some early playtesters in. So if you're interested, sign up for the Beta via the link below!
Before you do that, though, we have a couple more announcements for you. First up:
WE'VE PARTNERED UP WITH FELLOW INDIE DEVS TINYBUILD GAMES,
who are known for 'No Time To Explain' and 'Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar' (which are really awesome, so check them out if you haven't heard of them yet). The guys at tinyBuild are helping us with the promotional aspects of the game. That includes doing the promotion & marketing stuff (making a trailer, talking with press, etc), but also improving the looks & identity of the game. Speaking of a trailer, here's announcement no. 3:
WE HAVE A NEW TRAILER:
In it, you can already see where tinyBuild is helping us out. For one, the trailer looks flipping awesome with neat animations and funny jokes and all that, but we've also added a few new characters and improved the overall artwork!
And finally, one more announcement:
SPEEDRUNNERS WILL BE AVAILABLE PRE-LAUNCH VIA STEAM EARLY ACCESS
For those of you who don't know what Steam Early Access is; it's a pre-order channel within Steam where you can pre-order ...
Changes in Speedrunner's Multiplayer Rules
Posted by Cas | Filed under SpeedrunnerHD, Design
Hi all!
Today I'd like to talk about some of the changes I've made so far in the rules of Speedrunner's multiplayer mode. The inspiration for writing this post came from seeing this video in which four enthusiastic French players play a couple of exciting multiplayer matches. It's a really fun video, as the guys all even dress up as their game character!
Anyway, seeing that video made me attentive to the small changes I've made in the rules of a speedrunner multiplayer match, and I wanted to share these changes with you, so that you can already give me feedback if you think those changes are for the good or for the bad.
Moving!
Posted by Cas | Filed under Update
Hi all,
a quick update today, letting you know that we're (finally) moving to an actual office! In fact, I'm typing this post from there right now. For those who don't know; Gert-Jan and I were previously working out of our homes, which were some 100km apart, which made collaborating a bit difficult at times.
The office is located in the Dutch Game Garden, which means we're sharing the building with cool game developers like Ronimo, Vlambeer, Game Oven and others. Also, we're sharing this office with Ludomotion, so we can work together with Koen on mondays.
Working alongside each other has many advantages, all hopefully increasing our productivity. In the context of speedrunner's development, there's an additional advantage, in that we can now more quickly and easily test out our new multiplayer levels. Previously, when I was working from my home all alone, I couldn't easily test my new level designs; I had to organise whole playtesting sessions (i.e. invite over some friends), which was quite cumbersome (since I don't have any). Now, I can easily grab Gert-Jan or Koen or some other game developer and get quick feedback ...
Speedrunner updates (3)
Posted by GJ | Filed under SpeedrunnerHD, Award
Last week, Casper asked me to explain why online multiplayer is taking us so long to get done. But before I do so, I would like to begin by mentioning that Speedrunner HD won the Dutch Game Award for Best Game Animation! The Dutch Game Awards are sort of the Oscars for the Dutch game industry so naturally we are pretty excited. Here’s a picture of all the award winners holding their giant golden cyborg owls; you can see Casper in the bottom left looking happy and a bit overwhelmed. Congratulations to Frank Post, our animator, and to the other winners as well (yes, even to Ronimo who bested us in the ‘Best PC/Console Game’ category)!
Anyway, the now (physically*) ‘award winning’ Speedrunner HD has become a bit of a victim of it’s own success. We started DoubleDutch Games back in 2010 with SpeedRunner as our first game. We never expected the flash game to do as well as it did (it has actually surpassed 10 million views by now!). And we also didn’t expect people to enjoy the local multiplayer as much as fans tell us now. The Xbox version of Speedrunner also opened the door to Steam, so all in all Speedrunner is doing much better than we had ever dared to hope it would.
Speedrunner updates (2)
Posted by Cas | Filed under SpeedrunnerHD
Hi all,
as promised (though a bit late as usual), here's another update on Speedrunner's progress.
This week I come with some bad news and some good news. Starting with the bad news, this friday we had a little talk with our friends/competitors of Ronimo Games (specifically Joost van Dongen, who maintains a very interesting blog). Since they developed the aptly named Awesomenauts, complete with online multiplayer, we figured they could probably have some interesting insights to share with us. And so they did, in a very humbling talk that made it clear to us that we still have a lot of work to do with Speedrunner. So much in fact, that we're doubting whether or not we'll even be able to finish the game in 2013..
Yes, you've read that correctly, we're now thinking of a release date somewhere in 2014.
However, I also said we had some good news. The good news is that we've found someone to help us with development; a teaching colleague of mine from the Hogeschool of Amsterdam named Koen Bollen. Koen is a very talented programmer, currently also working with other collegues from the Hogeschool ...
Speedrunner updates
Posted by Cas | Filed under SpeedrunnerHD, Award
Hi all!
So.. the development of Speedrunner's online multiplayer component is still taking a while, but I know you're anxious for some news. Unfortunately, we don't have a release date yet - and we're also not sure when we'll start beta testing. Sorry! We're working really hard on it, and we're even looking to add an additional member to our team for this. I think we've underestimated a bit just exactly how difficult it was going to be to implement online multiplayer in a fast-paced platformer like Speedrunner. I guess that's why I haven't seen it in many other games yet ;)
Anyway, I do want to provide you guys with some news, so I've decided to write some things on the new features that you can expect in the PC version of the game, and to post these once a week.
So, let's start with a new feature we call 'Hardcore Mode'. I've written briefly on this before; basically it's similar to Super Meat Boy's Dark World in that it provides an alternate version of each level, unlocked by collecting a gold medal. These alternate version ...
Chaos Battle at Indigo
Posted by Cas | Filed under Chaos Battle
Hi all!
I'm happy to announce today that Chaos Battle, our new game, will be playable at Dutch indie gaming showcase event Indigo! Any Dutch fans in the area (Utrecht) are welcome to come by Saturday the 29th of September to check it out!
Our previous game, Speedrunner, was also showcased at this event a little over a year ago, and we're happy to be standing there for two years in a row!
More info here.
See you there!
Announcing Speedrunner HD for Steam
Posted by Cas | Filed under News, SpeedrunnerHD, Steam
Hi all!
Today, I'm very excited to finally announce that, yes, we are bringing Speedrunner HD to the PC, and yes, it is coming out on Steam!
Since the game was first released on Xbox Live Indie Games, we've been receiving a lot of requests from players who would like to see the game on PC so that they could play against their friends online. Well, we couldn't agree more!
Readers of our blog might have already known that we were working on bringing the game to PC, but now the rest of the world will know as well, including the fact that it's actually coming out on Steam.
Besides offering more content and an online multiplayer mode, we're also working on implementing an advanced leaderboards and ranking system, which will allow players to really show who is the best Speedrunner in the world!
Now, with all the work that still has to be done (and the other game, Chaos Battle, that we're also working on), it's difficult to say when the game will be finished, so we don't have an official release date for you yet.
But stay tuned, we're ...
Status Update
Posted by Cas | Filed under SpeedrunnerHD, Chaos Battle
Hi all,
it's been a while since our last status update, so you guys must be wondering what's going on.
Well, we're working on two projects nowadays, so we're actually really busy. First of all, we're still working on porting Speedrunner HD to the PC. I've already added quite a lot of new levels and content (we're up to 30 levels now, all of which have "extra difficult" versions, similar to the Dark World of Super Meat Boy, so that's basically 60 levels), and Gert-Jan added support for online multiplayer as well. However, there's still a lot that needs to be done before it's shippable, and Gert-Jan is also busy with moving to a new apartment, so progress is going a bit slow. We hope to have the PC version finished before the summer, but only time will tell.
Secondly, I am busy working on our next game, Chaos Battle, together with talented artist Robin Keijzer. A few weeks ago, I was struggling a lot with the design, but I'm really happy with how the game is working now, so hopefully I'll be able to show you guys ...
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