atte

[Release] Bogost in the Shell

Recommended Posts

Jam end edit: Game is here now: https://atteo.itch.io/bogost

 

Bogost in the Shell


I started thinking about a potential cyberpunk game a couple of weeks ago, and while I didn't do any concrete development pre-jam (well, I did do some small audio experimentations), I now have a pretty clear and complete picture in my head what kind of a game I want to do.

 

MegaCorp Global Dynamics is about to activate their newest product, huge mech codenamed BigGod. BigGod is clearly fundamentally dangerous to the notion of culture, so you as the expert hacker Major Bogost, must shut it down before it's too late. Ghost hacking straight into the BigGod's brain is not possible, instead you must travel through several host bodies to reach your goal.

 

Here's a concept image (I had some appropriate graphics to use as a placeholder)

BitSconcept1.png


There were two Bogosts in the first Wizard Jam, fierydrake's BitS had a really nice look! https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam/rate/24532

I have always been a big fan of this title - I made this silly mashup last year.

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh wow, I hadn't seen either of these! Looks amazing as always!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thank you! My ancient computer crashed in a scary way today, I hope it doesn't completely die on me during the jam (my personal cyberpunk motto seems to be 'Low Tech, Low Life')

Anyhow, here's rough wip versions of the first three scenes (there will be 5 in total, I already scrapped one). In the next post I will write more about the gameplay and progression.

 

BitS_areaWips.png

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Although this looks a bit like somekind of an action platformer, it's more like a simple adventure game where you try to find a way to progress into the next area. There probably will be no fail state / dying, maybe somekind of grading in the end.

 

I now have constructed early versions of all the scenes in Photoshop. Next I will start building the areas in Gamemaker and see if I want/need to make some changes to the progression of the game.

ps: I love that Bogost in the Shell's acronym is BITS!

 

BITS_sceneProgression.png

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 23.11.2016 at 2:18 PM, dibs said:

Show us ur bits.

That's what the private Slack messages are for dibs.

 

Here's a song that plays faintly in the background in the alley scene (the bassline imitates a certain appropriate song)  BitsRave.mp3

 

And two BitSGIFs:

bits select.gif

bits glitch.gif

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

All the interactions and gameplay will probably be working in some form in about 3 days, then rest of the jam is about adding sound, more graphics and random tuning and fixing. Here's some more gifs.

 

Hacker's different levels of alertness (you can see the player getting hit in the radar!):

bitsHackerActions.gif

 

Storage area's light puzzling:

bitsStorage.gif

 

Transitioning to next scene:

bitsGlitch2.gif

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Skeleton of the game is done now, I can play through it from beginning to end but there's endless amount of details and extra stuff I'll start adding now. I'm not going to show/explain much more what the game contains, because it is all about finding and looking at all kinds of different (hopefully sometimes amusing or interesting) lightly interactive stuff. Still here's new street ads (I traced from those source pics).

 

adScreens.PNG


...and speaking of ads:

 

Make small fake pop-up ads for me!

 

I have a crowdsourcing idea: I need lots of fake internet ads. These would start to fill up a screen area that is 960 pixels wide and only 124 pixels high. The game's cyberpunk setting could be reflected somehow in the ads ('Hot Scandinavian love bots are waiting for you') but they don't need to be referential or humoristic necessarily (player probably doesn't even have time to see them clearly).

 

Your contribution could be a rough concept with some text and a image (can be in separate files) or a fully realized ad. I will edit them, if needed, to fit the game. Here's some examples of the type of ads I'm thinking about:

 

- I make 4000€ in a day. find out how

- Play discreetly my lord

- one weird trick...

- 10 things you didn't know about.

- online betting, get 500 free credits now

 

And here's an early example with Mythalore's NatureBitz ad and a banner composed from things dibs sent me. I would like a variety of styles, from flashy neon horrors to plain and boring office aesthetics.

 

display.PNG

__

edit: ok, the ads idea was not that interesting - still, that dibs banner made that idea worth having.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Love this. Looks great atte.

Going to have to find some time to dig into the games from this jam, for sure.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

BitSpromo.PNG

https://atteo.itch.io/bogost

 

Phew, I got pretty much all I had in mind into the game in time (though I had to do one update already where I turned off the debug level selecting (+ a tiny sprite fix)). I will do some post jam work for this for sure, at least make the fullscreen view scaling better and fix possible crashes and bugs.

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh man, it's so good atte. Totally blown away. I got two different endings, not sure if there's any more.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thank you, thank you! You are my trusty QA guy, now I can go to sleep with some peace of mind.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Love the theme and the art looks amazing. I'm dumb though, what do I have to do on the second screen? I picked something up, disguised myself, approached the hacker, he starts shooting at me, and then-- how do I continue? :) 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This game's got some SYSTEMS, man. So much complexity packed into such a tiny game. Good job Atte, once again you deliver a jam game that leaves me wanting more. :)

 

Sloane, look at the minimap in the lower right corner, it'll show you where you need to go to hack into the next body/location.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This is gorgeous! Lovely graphics and audio, a rich world, nice cyberpunk presentation and really sweet simple little puzzles.

 

My only criticism is that, as far as I can tell, if you mess up with the bottles it's a dead end as they don't replenish.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I found the third screen (arcade) a little impossible. I could no longer see a robot, it was in a language I couldn't read, and nothing I did seemed to change the room at all. And then I figured that I would exit out and see if the solution was in this thread but I couldn't even exit out of the game. Even Alt-F4 did nothing. And then when I tried to CTRL + ALT + DEL out, it crashed my computer.

 

Which is maybe a meta-game, given the subject matter. Regardless, given the bug I am wondering 1) how many of my difficulties on the arcade stage were by design and how much were bugs and 2) if I should try to play the game again, or if it will just crash again. 

Did this happen to anyone else?

 

EDIT: Took a chance, played it again, I see what happened. (there's a jump button!) Also maybe the crash came from being in fullscreen, as I was able to easily exit out this time while windowed.

 

THIS GAME IS DOPE.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, at least a couple of us on Slack were stuck at that bit - it seems if you can't see your character you forget there's a jump button! Perhaps having the box rattle when you do stuff would alleviate that?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now