Just found out about a new iOS game coming soon from one of my favourite game developers of all time, Llamasoft! So I thought I'd post a thread about it 'cos I'm excited. The game's title isn't finalised yet. Apparently it is nearing completion. It's the first game in a possible series of games... oldschool arcade shoot-em-up style. This one is Atari VCS themed. It has a couple different main game modes: Deep Space Minotaur Madness.. Like Space Wars crossed with Asteroids (shoot large rocks, which break into smaller rocks, also to be shot, with enemy UFOs appearing frequently, also to be shot), with added Minotaur rescuing for weapon powerups, etc. Solar Minotaur Rescue Frenzy, which is similar to Deep, but with a gravity sun to deal with/avoid/prevent anything going into it. The sun also bends your bullet stream, like in Llamasoft's last game Gridrunner Revolution. There are also a couple other extra game modes, Tanks and Jets. It's single or multi player: 1-2 players on iPhone/touch, 1-4 players on iPad. (players sharing the same device) That's all I know about it yet. Thanks to MedwayPVB for info and screenshot. Interesting interview with Jeff Minter, showing lots of gameplay footage: Controls look really good. I'm looking forward to this one a lot. Looks great fun if you love oldschool shooters with a trippy modern edge (and full of beasts). I certainly do
Great news to see Jeff Minter making apps. With him and the Bitmap brothers making apps, all we need now is Cinemaware and we can relive the 80's.
Excellent news! I've been waiting for Minter to start working on the iOS. Still play Tempest 2k on my Jag occasionally.
I quite like the current title. I'll be looking forward to this one. Now all we need is a price, release date, and gameplay video on a 2G Touch!
Wow! I've been lucky enough to have been sent a test build to play (thanks Jeff!). It's fun, liking it heaps so far. Classic Llamasoft game design. Starts getting really difficult around level 10.. (15 is as far as I've made it so far.. dunno how many levels there are).. different enemies start appearing.. little UFOs flying around dropping homing mines and stuff. Weird things happening like all the graphics going all "echoey" and the sun in the middle of the screen seemingly increasing its gravity field strength and going invisible (not sure what triggers that yet - EDIT: ah! it's because too much stuff has fallen into the sun and it's imploded into a black hole! of course ). Gets nice and hectic I love using the sun's gravity to curve my bullet streams. Lots of neat little touches.. the graphics are beautiful in a minimalist, gently trippy way... everything leaves subtle, pulsing, glowing trails. It's like an idealised dream of a late 70s game played on an old TV. The controls are great. All you need is a single finger or thumb, gently stroking the screen. For anyone who's played Bit Pilot.. well, this is quite different, but does share the whole "flying a tiny ship through a field of asteroids" thing. I love Bit Pilot, but I'm finding the controls in Minotaur Rescue a lot more fun / less frustrating - just to give a vague idea. It's got that whole "it never feels unfair when I die" thing going on..
An early build?? Oh you lucky bastard. Bit Pilot is one of my favorite games of all time, this game is definitely at the top of my list.
Just heard that this has now been submitted. Awesome! It now also has a survival mode (for both Solar and Deep Space games) which takes place in one big endless level where you only have one life. Good addition for a quick blast - a full game can last for quite awhile. Survival mode is hardcore!
What does Jeff Minter mean by "...built on top of Neon 2"? Also, are the minotaurs mandatory to collect, or do they just supply bonus points? Is there a penalty for avoiding minotaurs? Is there a Minotaur meter of sorts? Does it still feel like a party once the minotaurs appear, or do they tend to hang back and be more like wallflowers? Will people think "now that's one heck of a Minotaur," or say, "oh, so that's the Minotaur." Where ever did that minotaur app go, a few days before we cry no-show, o Minotaur, Minotaur, for me and every other average Joe?
While I have absolutely no idea where you are going there, Grubjelly, I completely agree! I say the AppStore gang will have to have their vacation cut short and RAM Minotaur Rescue out the door ASAP! How can they visit family, open their Christmas gifts, and have toddies by the fire when MINOTAURS ARE SUFFERING? How long do you think they can simply hang in the vacuum of space? Sure they're tough, bull-headed, and often carrying a big double headed axe, but, dangit, they have feelings too!
haha Neon is the name of his "lightsynth" engine - basically the thing that makes trippy graphics happen. He's been making such software for years.. I think the first one was Psychedelia in 1984. Neon is what powers the music visualiser in the Xbox 360.. Neon 2 is the newest version for Win/OSX/iOS afaik. I haven't had the opportunity to use it myself, but from what I understand, as well as just doing automatic visualisation of music, it's a true synthesiser, but of graphics rather than sound.. user controllable / programmable. You build up effects and patches by putting different modules together, changing parameters etc, then you "play" them like an instrument. (talking about the actual Neon editor there *fingers crossed for an eventual public release!*... games which use the engine have pre-built effects..) The minotaur game only uses the trippy effects very slightly.. for examples of heavier use see Space Giraffe and Gridrunner Revolution. Rescuing the minotaurs increases your ship's firing rate. It's quite subtle..took me awhile to notice it was happening. After awhile you start feeling all badass and powerful, blowing everything up with the greatest of ease.. The penalty for failing to rescue the minotaurs is that you feel a bit bad about it.. poor minotaurs, all falling into the sun
Alright, someone else is going to have to set up the lawn chair. I'm done stalking this app. Staring at the app store won't make it get approved any faster. I read up on this guy in wikipedia and saw an interview - the oodles of code he's written over the years - no one is in his tree. When I first read the TA article, my first thought was "Tina, come get some ham," but I had no idea he had made over 30 games for a bunch of systems and wrote assembler and all that.
Jeff Minter is a very misunderstood games designer... For over 30 years he has done pretty much the projects he wanted to do. Some were successes and some were failures. One of the reasons I got into making games, way back in the 80s, is that I read an article, which was in one of the popular computer mags at the time, that he had wrote talking about making games. And I'm not the only one - there's a lot of UK coders that got into the games industry because of this man. It looks like this game, from the videos, is Jeff Minter back at his best. I like the concept of basing a series of graphical style games around old hardware. And hopefully Llamasoft will do well from it.
While I can't claim to be an expert on his life's history, I picked up from way back he makes the game he wants to make and really couldn't care less about the trends of the week or their commercial viability. I've always seen him as something akin to a mad scientist playing around with interesting code and occasionally popping out a game for the masses.
He seems too optimized and lucid to be scientifically mad, but mad artist perhaps. If he's playing around, at least his history (i.e. from what I just gathered - not researched) with low-level code puts him closer to the horse's mouth, so to speak. If anyone should get to make amusing retro games featuring ruminants, it should be he.
Sorry to double post, but it's OUT NOW: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/minotaur-rescue/id408475782?mt=8
