Captain Bubblenaut - 1-touch arcade action from BioShock/Dance Central dev

Discussion in 'Upcoming iOS Games' started by Dean Tate, Sep 13, 2013.

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  1. Dean Tate

    Dean Tate Member

    Sep 12, 2013
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    indie game dev


    Hi everyone! I'm about to launch my first iPhone game later this month and wanted to show it to you folks.

    Here's a quick overview of the game:

    You are "Captain Bubblenaut", daughter of the war-mongering space alien Admiral Pop. Being a perfectly circular space-being, your mission is to destroy the square-shaped abomination PLANET ERF and all of the ERFLINGS that inhabit it!

    Captain Bubblenaut is an action-packed arcade game with unique gameplay and controls. You play the game by using touch to slide the ground back and forth, and indirectly control the movements of Captain Bubblenaut as she bounces around the screen. ERFLINGS are constantly spawning into the world, and it's up to you to direct the Captain's bounces so that she obliterates those ERFLINGS as fast as possible.

    Things get tricky when ERFLINGS wearing hats show up. Don't land on those hats! To take them out, get the Captain to land on the crest of hills and "swoop" along the terrain (think "Tiny Wings") so that she comes in from the sides. The difficulty then starts to ramp up as other types of ERFLINGS appear: with shields, with explosive weak points, and with wings!

    There's a detailed explanation of how the game works here:

    http://captainbubblenaut.com/2013/09/12/how-to-play-captain-bubblenaut/

    Every game is different, with enemies randomly spawning, many different terrains to play on, and many locations to invade.

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    The game is custom built for iPhone, and is the perfect waiting-for-the-bus/train/plane/spaceship game. Short play sessions, very simple to pick up and learn, but very deep. I've been playing for a long time now and am still finding ways to edge up my score...

    About the team/development:

    This game started out as a side project by myself and Owen Macindoe. I focused on art, Owen on code. This is my first project as an indie developer (and I'm now completely independent and want to make more stuff like this). My background is in large-budget dev. I was a senior design on the BioShock series, and design lead on Dance Central. Owen was a grad student at MIT studying for his phd while we worked on the game. The game was a very heavy collaboration between the two of us, and we both shared equally in designing the game. It took us around 3 years of development, seeing as we were quite busy with our day jobs at the time, which I think really helped the mechanics mature nicely.

    Sound effects are by Danny Baranowsky, whose name some of you might recognize. He was the composer on Canabalt and Super Meat Boy. Our music is by Chris Remo, who has done music for a whole bunch of really awesome indie stuff such as "Thirty Flights of Loving" and "Gone Home". He's also quite well known as one of the hosts of the Idle Thumbs podcast. Lastly, additional coding was done by Brian Chan, a former colleague of mine at Harmonix (and also a designer). He covered work on the game's shell and Game Center support.

    Website: http://captainbubblenaut.com/
    Twitter (game): @capnbubblenaut
    Twitter (me): @iamdeantate (follow for info about the game and occasional photos of my adorable corgi Poe).

    The game will be out later this month. Would love to hear what people think about what they're seeing here and I'm happy to answer any/all questions!
     
  2. Cynuyt

    Cynuyt Well-Known Member

    Neat! Followed this game twitter. Look forward it.
     
  3. _Max_

    _Max_ Well-Known Member

    Apr 19, 2012
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    Look fun, grats for first launch.
     
  4. TheFrost

    TheFrost Well-Known Member

    Nov 18, 2010
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    Will buy this on launch, looks amazingly crazy! Cant wait :)
     
  5. Dean Tate

    Dean Tate Member

    Sep 12, 2013
    8
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    indie game dev
    Thanks guys! Glad you're looking forward to it :D
     
  6. Won-O-Soft

    Won-O-Soft Active Member

    May 30, 2010
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    Game Developer
    Wow! It looks really cool. Looking forward to trying it out when it's out.
     
  7. CygnetSeven

    CygnetSeven Well-Known Member

    Feb 6, 2010
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    Awesome arcadey fun! I'm in!
     
  8. ROGER-NL

    ROGER-NL Well-Known Member

    May 21, 2012
    4,030
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    Gamer.
    THE NETHERLANDS
    Looking forward to your game.
     
  9. Owen Macindoe

    Owen Macindoe New Member

    Sep 18, 2013
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    Hi folks! I'm the programmer on the project. Thanks for the positivity! We released the game on the app store today. You can get it from here.
     

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