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Hey, For almost a year I've been working with some friends on a pretty interesting game. Its a sandbox with Mario Galaxy style gravity, physics oriented building, and a bunch of game modes we're building on top of it. Here's a short demonstration we recorded. The game is still pretty early in development, so there's a bunch of cool stuff we'll be adding. I'll post updates here on and off, if you don't mind. We're also running a Kickstarter campagin at the moment. You can check it out here: http://kck.st/Tkak5d

Um... It may come to that, lol. A donation based alpha release isn't out of the question.

Yeah. Kickstarter has been a really interesting and emotionally draining experience. I think we could have done very well if we had garnered some press, especially considering how well we're doing on Greenlight. We've been working on this, part-time, for almost a year. I quit my job to pursue the project. So we'll at least give it the best shot we can. The response we've had has been really positive and encouraging so far, although not large enough in scale. Crowd-funding is just one approach, however, and we are looking into other options

Added some new toys! Check it out :

The Kotick story was a definite return to form. Glad to have Idle Thumbs in my ears once again.

Thanks To answer your questions in order. + A definite yes to the first. We will use the same technique to save contraptions as part of world states in the single/co-op campaign. Blueprint sharing sounds like a great idea, too. + We have talked about building a cool modding interface. It's definitely something we'd love to do if we have the opportunity. A level editor would take top priority.

Also this:

We started building it as a multiplayer prototype first. We want the sandbox stuff to mesh directly with moment-to-moment gameplay. And we have a very modular game mode system that we're planning to extend into several goal oriented multi-player and single player modes.

Thanks guys! Yeah, that's a development level we're using for testing features. The next thing we'd like to do with level design is to build some really large environments with orbiting planets. But we're probably going to focus on features and the more involved systems first. You'd be surprised how many basic, established methods we've had to build from scratch to work in arbitrary gravity situations. But, its a really fun challenge and the idea of building all sorts of cool simulations that interact with the wacky physics really appeals to us

Hit fingers with hammer to increase difficulty.

Difficulty can fall into so many categories, too. For example, the type of difficulty you will encounter in an adventure game greatly differs from what you'll be up against in Halo. And within each category of difficulty, the criteria for what constitutes a good and rewarding difficulty curve and possible design pitfalls leading to frustration, are completely different. In a shooter, like Halo, control limitations could be interpreted by the player as perceived difficulty. In an adventure game, illogical puzzles can lead to player frustration and also be interpreted as difficulty. In my opinion "good difficulty" is that which is surmountable by a progression in player skill. And the game should be teaching the player everything he needs in order to reach that goal, whether that involves training reflexive twitch responses or instilling a particular style of puzzle logic. People are extremely adaptable and they'll even get used to bad controls and bad mechanics. Where frustration tends to arise is wherever a game does not meet player intent. Games do train player intent, to a point, by responding to input in a consistent and systemized way. And players do expect (from experience) that each game will feel somewhat different and allow them different levels and types of interaction, so they're receptive to the feedback-training loop. A breakdown of this loop, through lack of information, bad logic, or inconsistent feedback, will cause frustration. This makes the game difficult to play, but not necessarily difficult relative to an attainable level of skill.

Hi. I'm a long time podcast reader, first time forum goer, independent game developer, and a shitty Wizard. I really like the uniquely sophisticated, in-depth discussion about the majesty of video games, interspersed with bird noise and psychedelic, Goldbloom-themed phoneme cascades.