Rob’s Terrible Tomb Of Tat

…and you will know me by the typing of the dead.

  • MNOZ: My Nuclear Octopus 2

    A good chum of mine is working on an absolutely beautiful arcade game right now. I adored the first My Nuclear Octopus but Jeff’s got the follow up on another level, it’s the full Minter. Have a look at this work in progress video! It’s glorious!

    Wishlist MNOZ on Steam!

    But wait, there’s more. I did a tiny bit.

    I’m not kidding when I say I love the original and well, you know what I’m like when it comes to cosmic aquatic beasties with lasers anyway. So yeah, I can only apologise as yes, that ridiculous comic strip in the intro was written and drawn by me (narrated, thankfully, by Jeff).

    This is the original version, which I had to tweak a little bit so Jeff could use it in game. It was drawn, originally, as fan art but I’m happy to say that it’s made its way into the game. I adore so many forties sci-fi comics and I freely admit, I spend way too much time drawing my own versions for fun (I’ve got a handful of Death Ray Manta and SYNSO ones I’ve doodled for my own amusement as well) so I’m made up that one has finally managed to unexpectedly sneak its way into an actual videogame.

    I did offer up another version to Jeff, which rather than have it never see the light of day, is featured here too. Again, this was doodled primarily for my own amusement only instead of a forties pastiche, I was aiming more for a late seventies/early eighties comic strip advert thing. Both were cracking fun to do.

    The Key Art (or cover art, if you’re old fashioned like me)

    I’ve been contributing a few bits of cover art here and there recently for games and whilst I’m nowhere near on the same level as … well, most people whose cover art I admire … I am at least enjoying myself in the process regardless.

    Unlike with the comic strip which has only just really found its way into the game, Jeff asked me pretty early on in development to contribute the box art. At this point, Jeff hadn’t worked in many of the cast of characters you’ll see in the game now so I did my best at bringing the couple he had done into the piece. I was largely thinking of 16 bit software box art for this one, pushing myself out of my usual “dodgy cassette art” comfort zone.

    A couple of things didn’t make the cut into the final key art as Jeff didn’t fancy his octopus having a big clownlike red nose and felt the eyeball didn’t look eyeball-ish enough so I tweaked those to fit. As is pretty common with key art now, it was fired over to Jeff so they could easily move parts around to fit the multitude of different image sizes stores require these days, along with an octopus with no nose (how does he smell? – Ed) and the required tweaks to the eyeball.

    The final arrangements on the store pages and logo are Jeffs work as I try and avoid having to do logos myself as I’m pretty garbage at the things. I really like how it all turned out under Jeff’s steady hand too!

    Now I just have to wait for Jeff to wrap the game up, As ever, these things take time but I’m grateful to have been able to contribute a few small things along the way to help it all along.

    And like I say, do give the game a wishlist!

  • comics4Gamer

    Being perpetually skint gets exhausting so I’m branching out into gaming webcomics, hoping to have the merch and conventions going by the end of next Tuesday because I think that’s how it works. See you at TOTX in Home Bargains, I’ll be doing a meet and greet in the seasonal aisle. Autographs extra, soz. Merch is on sale by the washing up liquid. About half three, yeah?

    a comic strip called “comics4Gamer” it contains the same guy in three panels, his pose only shifting very very slightly. the first panel, they are saying “grand” the second, they are saying “theft” the third? “FARTO Hahahaha ahahaha haha hah *chokes* so funny

    I have no idea who that dude is even supposed to be. I’m portly, old and have a grey beard so it’s definitely not me. He just emerged from the hair and here we are. Maybe it’s my gamersona?

    a three panel comic strip of The Calmest Gamer In The World panel one: “corps are clearly oushing for a future where us gamers don’t actually own anything” panel two: no words, just a dude with a flat expression panel three: “I’m not particularly concerned about the shift away from physical media towards a rental based model”

    On second thoughts, perhaps a different career would suit me better.

  • Thoughts after Blood Dungeon (Steam)

    Blood Dungeon is pretty much what if you were trying to play Vampire Survivors but someone was shooting at your feet then a Satyr fell on your head minutes after you’d killed a giant skeletal worm with a laser and there was blood and bats everywhere and then you drowned.

    Not to worry though, you got your dog a bone or a few hundred.

    Generally, I am largely in Camp Brendy (subscriber link, but you can get the gist without) when it comes to autoshooters (though I have been thinking recently just how far ahead of its time Neon Wars was), I generally find them -at best- an okay way to pass the time and at worst, I would wish them into the infernal heat of the sun for being little more than a loose wrapper around gambling mechanics and a spreadsheet.

    I don’t really care for the “are they a game?” argument because ultimately, it doesn’t matter to me one way or another, I just find them pretty shitty in general, whatever they claim to be and they could claim to be a banana for all I care.

    Also, I am really tired of being asked to pick an upgrade from one of three things. Really tired.

    Blood Dungeon falls into the earlier category of “an okay way to pass the time” for me, which for anyone else is probably “woah, love this videogame so much”. It is, in essence, an attempt at mashing the autoshooter into Spelunky-ish platforming and at that it is largely successful. By necessity it leaves a lot of the comedy cruelty of Spelunky behind in favour of chaos but it is not without its moments.

    The introductory stage, the catacombs, is pretty forgiving even with its armed sentry doors and time gated walls, however once you start adding tighter spaces, different (and destructible) environments into the mix a bit later on, there are more ways to get yourself in a pickle and a panic. Having managed to lock myself between two time gated walls, whilst underwater and with my oxygen depleting, during a particularly vicious banshee attack, reader – I swore. I did, I did, I did.

    Having spoken to a few people about this sort of thing, I realise this is not an entirely universal experience with autoshooters but I find the spreadsheet and incremental upgrade dominant play kinda flattens a game out in ways I struggle to enjoy myself with too much and so, it’s the same here.

    When I play something like, I dunno, Tempest 2000 I am genuinely enjoying my time with it, I play it more not because it’s designed to keep me playing but because it thrills me – the movement, the lights, the sound, the game, all of it thrills me! Geometry Wars thrills me. Devastator, Bezier, Evil Egg thrill me. And obviously this is different strokes for different folks here but none of any of the current batch of autoshooters I’ve tried come close. Blood Dungeon is on the higher end of the scale compared to, well, pretty much most of the ones I’ve tried to date and yet still my mood goes no higher than “barely interested for a bit”

    A lot of it is I struggle to give a shit when it comes to having to choose incremental upgrades. Plenty is certainly that I resent games built around traps and time wasting but as I say, Blood Dungeon is mechanically at least trying to be more than that and it has a character with a swinging pixel nob out as well so bonus points there too.

    So yeah, I won’t say I don’t enjoy my time with Blood Dungeon because that is certainly not true, it’s just the amount of joy I can extract from any of these things seems to have a hard cap pretty much across the genre. And you know, that’s fine, not every genre has to be super exciting to me! It’s fine to not be that tense or involved, I just sometimes wish I could enjoy them more than I do. Alas, it is not happening and so it is for Blood Dungeon too.

    It’s a perfectly fine thing, I just can’t get too excited about any of it. Maybe some day, someone will crack that one for me but as most people seem intent on just replicating the showiness of slot machines without any substance, maybe they won’t either and this is as good as it gets.

    Which is a long way round of saying you’ll probably really like this here videogame.