Big news: WE ARE DOOMED is coming to Xbox One! I’m going through paperwork with Sony as well, so hopefully that will happen too. Since its release, I’ve continued to work on We Are Doomed. I’m reworking, polishing and adding to it. It’s not quite a sequel, more of a v2.0.
The other big news: I quit my day job, and founded Vertex Pop as a proper company. So yeah, Caffeine Monster Software is dead, and this indie thing is my full-time job. I’ve been meaning to do something with the name for a while now, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Caffeine Monster was fun, but Vertex Pop feels more me.
That’s about it. I’m very excited, but also losing a lot of sleep over whether this is going to work out. But mostly excited.
You can follow me on Twitter at @mobeenfikree for all the behind-the-scenes fun, or @vertexpop for less frequent updates and blog post links.
I’ve updated WE ARE DOOMED with a few technical and aesthetic improvements.
Top of the list is improved game controller support. We Are Doomed now supports a much wider range of (dual analog) controllers. You can also have multiple controllers connected and select the active controller in the menu.
Next up are aesthetic changes for Trinkets and Missiles to improve contrast & visibility. You can see what I mean via the magic of animated GIFs.
“COLLECT!” hints no longer appear on wave 11 or later. While they are useful early on, they can get distracting in the later waves.
Finally, there were some instances where the excellent in-game music would stop playing. These bugs have been squashed.
WE ARE DOOMED v1.02 is already out on itch.io, and will roll out on Humble and Mac App Store in the coming days. Feedback is greatly appreciated, as always.
WE ARE DOOMED is now available on Windows & Mac! Visit the website for more info, screenshots, and of course, to buy it. I’m so pleased with how everything turned out.
If you’re press and are interested in covering WE ARE DOOMED, please get in touch.
I was also thrilled to attend PAX East to show WE ARE DOOMED at the Indie MEGABOOTH! It was such an amazing experience, filled with magical little moments throughout. I met a group of cool indies, and a diverse crowd of people who played and totally loved the game.
In short: exciting times!
I’ve been busy these past few months going back to the basics and working on a twin-stick shooter called WE ARE DOOMED. I debuted it at the Seattle Indies Expo (to some very positive feedback) over the first week of September. I did mention this was belated, didn’t I?
WE ARE DOOMED covers a well-worn genre, but it’s not exactly straight-forward or predictable.
Giving the player a massive, overpowered laser beam weapon was the catalyst for booting up Xcode and prototyping away. Even when it was just a doodle in a notebook I knew it would survive the development process, even as everything from the controls, to the look, to the enemy behaviours changed dramatically.
However, it quickly became apparent that an overpowered player was going to make the game too easy. So I threw lots of enemies on screen. I wanted to avoid making a “bullet hell” game, so most enemies don’t shoot at all and are quite weak. The challenge for the player is in the overwhelming number of enemies, and the general trickiness of their movement patterns. This means the play style is less hyper-accurate dodging, and more strategic and dynamic crowd control.
This became the fundamental hook for WE ARE DOOMED: the interplay between the player being overpowered and the enemies spawning at an overwhelming rate.
Apart from the mechanics, I was interested in exploring vector art styles. I love the glowy vector look as-made-famous by Geometry Wars, but there’s so much unexplored territory. I surveyed far and wide, and settled on rough, glitchy geometry with an emphasis on motion and colour.
I initially pegged the release date for October. Unfortunately, that turned out to be very optimistic. Early 2014 is looking more likely. I’ll make sure to post screenshots and videos along the way though!
For now, you can visit the WE ARE DOOMED website and follow me on Twitter.
