Here’s hoping that Karate Claus brings all the law-abiding kiddies shiny new copies of Breakdance Breakdown and Peanut Butter Panic. In the meantime, make yourselves a cup of cocoa and check out Dr. K’s trailer:
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Just How Indie Is Team2Bit?
Team2Bit is so indie, we only make games while we’re camping.
Team2Bit is so indie, we’re making a game for the ‘Next Gen’ Texas Instruments computer.
Team2Bit is so indie, we invented the urinal controller.
Team2Bit is so indie, we bundle our games with baked goods. Sorry, we don’t ship, but you can stop by to pick up on weekends.
Team2Bit is so indie, we’ve been making video games for 25 years and it never occurred to us to show them to anyone before.
Team2Bit is so indie, we know video games could never be art.
Team2Bit is so indie, our day jobs are lumberjacks.
Team2Bit is so indie, we only know one guy who wants to be an actor.
Team2Bit is so indie, we created the triple stick shooter genre. It’s revolutionary, but not very fun.
Manhunter Musings and Ramblings
Way back in the late ’80s the pioneering graphic adventure studio Sierra Online released 2 games in the dystopian, alien invasion Manhunter series. These games mixed point-and-click adventure with arcade gameplay and relied on heavy doses of humor and horror to keep the player engaged. Somehow in our youth we landed a copy of Manhunter San Francisco and devoted loads of time solving puzzles in a stylish cloak, avoiding rat-human hybrids, and trying to decipher the meaning of “bat vomit”. In fact, I played Manhunter SF so much that years later after moving to northern California I discovered that I had already acquired a fairly decent handle on San Francisco geography (Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid are real? Videogames taught me something!). Looking back on the Manhunter series now, I’m impressed by the incredible indie feel these games have. Maybe it’s the slightly offbeat humor and dark themes, the strange non-linear gameplay (you never knew what sort of puzzle or challenge might get thrown your way), or the inclusion of the game developers taunting you at every misstep (authorial expressivity and fourth wall breaking on par with Parker Lewis Can’t Lose). Personally, the Manhunter games played a large role in developing my aesthetic preference for games with fringe appeal and atypical aspirations. Bottom line: get yourself an emulator and kill some orbs.
The Tough Choices of a Game Developer
Every videogame project starts with two surprisingly tough decisions: choosing a platform and choosing development tools. At present, developers are flooded with a ridiculous number of choices. Xbox, Playstation, PCs, web browsers, mobile phones, and pads are all viable platform options. Hardcore fans are even making new games for discontinued game systems like the Atari 2600 and the Colecovision. To complicate things further, after choosing a platform, gamemakers have a massive array of languages and development tools to choose from. A browser game, for example, could be implemented in Flash, Javascript, or HTML5 using anything from sophisticated, high-end authoring software like Adobe Creative Suite to bare-bones, rudimentary apps like notepad. In the end, you’re left with a sprawling, confusing decision tree with hundreds of nodes to choose from.
This leaves me at my current conundrum. As an indie gamemaker, what platform and what development tools should I be focusing on? No matter what, our first release, Fist Puncher, will be developed in XNA and released through XBLIG. However, subsequent projects are a little more open-ended. I don’t feel that we’re necessarily shackled to any specific platform or development tools. Ideally, we want to enjoy the development process and get our games into the hands of as many people as possible. Our experience in XNA is surely an asset, but will it continue to be a viable indie game option? Can XBLIG support a growing indie community? Will developers start packing up shop and leaving for the greener pastures of Steam? On a personal level, how do I find the motivation to code in Visual Studio for 8-10 hours at my day job and then come home to XNA development in, once again, Visual Studio?
This is all a little overwhelming. Currently I’m working on a Fist Puncher web browser game in Flash. For me, Flash offers a fun, flexible development environment and differs enough from my day job that I can actually sit down and code for long stretches without burning out. Regardless, Flash certainly has a hazy future at best and doesn’t have a very good track record with mobile devices. As more and more gamers trend towards iPhones and iPads, Flash could end up as a casualty of progress. Dumping time and energy into learning a language or a development environment that may soon be extinct is simply not a realistic path to success. You really need to sit down and carefully consider the long-term state of the industry. I’m not saying this is easy. In fact, it’s downright tough. Still, with all of the choices out there and all of the changes happening in the industry, it’s in every game developer’s best interests to make sure that they don’t commit to a lost cause. That being said, I guess I better go buy an iPhone.
-MattKain
[Below: Flash Development, XNA Development in VS2010, Stencyl Development]
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Hella Fistgerald Virtual Trading Card
I was actually at the Roller Derby just last week and saw the Harbor Hellcats take on the Lake Tahoe Derby Dames so I guess it’s fitting that the latest virtual trading card is Fist Puncher’s own derby girl, Hella Fistgerald. And for those wondering, Warrant did not play at half-time and there was no crocodile pit used during over-time ties. The Roller Derby sure has changed since I was 12.
-MattKain
Fist Puncher: Independent Games Festival Submission Update
It’s official. Fist Puncher is in the mix at the 14th annual IGF this Spring in San Francisco. Visit
the Fist Puncher IGF page for more details. This year’s competition will include nearly 570 games! If nothing else, the indie scene is bursting at the seams. Congrats in advance to everyone else who put in those long, seemingly endless hours to get their game submitted before the deadline. Check out www.McFunkypants.com for a complete rundown of all 568 IGF games with thumbnails.
Fist Puncher: Independent Games Festival Submission
Let’s go back in time for a minute, way back in time. The first video game I can remember ‘making’ was a slot machine simulator on a Texas Instruments TI-994A computer. I put ‘making’ in quotes because I think I copied the BASIC code out of the instruction manual. Still, it was a great feeling seeing those cherries get drawn on our black and white tv because I had taken the time to do the data entry that would make it happen.
Through the years I made, or attempted to make, countless games on my own. JM Invaders, Trojan Horse (honorable mention at the East Troy middle school science fair), monochrome Batman, a Tetris clone, and international tennis with player names that sounded suspiciously like Boris Becker and Michael Chang. After high school I got away from making games, I moved to California and decided there were better ways to spend my time.
About five years ago I felt the urge to transition from making electronic music to a more mature artistic pursuit. I found all these free tools to make video games, and fell in love with rudimentary computer animations all over again. Whether or not video games were a more mature outlet or a step back towards my youth, I invested seemingly endless hours with AGS and Gamemaker trying to create games that matched the tone of my Ableton mixes.
Being a bit of a hermit, I had no idea the indie games phenomenon was exploding all around me. I stumbled upon XNA and started working on an Xbox Live Indie Game to focus my efforts. An internet search one night introduced me to the Independent Games Festival (IGF). Living in the Santa Cruz mountains, I couldn’t believe my good fortune to find such a prestigious indie game event was taking place in my own backyard. I slicked my hair back, combed my beard and took a day off work to experience the GDC floor and the IGF.
9 months later Fist Puncher has been submitted to the IGF, the first attempt at competing with the most talented competetion the world of indie games can offer. Limbo, Castle Crashers, Octodad, BITTRIP.RUNNER, Monaco, Bastion, Retro City Rampage, World of Goo… I could go on and on with the amazing titles that the IGF has honored over the years. This year the storylines range from Fez to Pirate Kart to Twitter flame wars. For us, Fist Puncher is the story. I pushed myself right up to the midnight 10/17 deadline and uploaded the best game I could. Win or lose, nothing could be more exhilarating than entering and competing with the best. Thanks IGF!
– Jake
Guerilla Marketing
Marketing. It’s easily one of the hardest things about being an indie. Making a unique, original, fun game is one thing, but actually getting people to play it is another. Like many, we’ve started the process of establishing an online Team2Bit presence through all the standard channels (website, twitter, facebook, youtube). So you sit back and twiddle every day, but what next? I suppose that’s where you need to be a little creative. This past weekend at IndieCade we made our first pass at guerilla marketing, covertly stashing Fist Puncher trading cards strategically around conference sites (maybe “randomly” is more accurate). Maybe next we’ll make Fist Puncher cupcakes.
-MattKain
[Below: Kid Justice and Dr. Karate cards at IndieCade]
The Continuous Scroller: To Code or Not to Code
A few months ago I played Kung-Fu Fight on XBLIG for the first time and immediately thought, “I want to make a game like that!” I have no problem confessing to my source of inspiration – I loved the simplicity, loved the gameplay, loved the look, but most importantly I was really turned on by the idea of a continuous scrolling platformer. Now this idea isn’t new. A game like Moon Patrol is almost 30 years old and is one of the pioneers in the genre. SMB3 was famous for its continuous scrolling levels. So I began tinkering with graphics and ideas in both Flash and XNA trying to come up with the right look, theme, and gameplay. However, this past weekend’s IndieCade left me feeling a tad hesitant. After seeing talks by people like Gaijin Games and Adam Saltsman, I started worrying that perhaps there are already too many indie powerhouses in this genre (games like Canabalt and BIT.TRIP RUNNER). When is a genre played? When do you move on? I really don’t have an answer. I guess for me, I just want to make the kind of game that *I* want to make regardless of what else is out there. Anyway, T2B did some brainstorming and we have a list of ideas that could potentially put a new spin on the genre so we’ll see… Heck, if Pac-Man would have been the last of the maze games, then we’d never have seen K.C. Munchkin. Wait… that argument doesn’t sound right.
-MattKain
[Below: Kung-Fu Fight, Moon Patrol, Canabalt, BIT.TRIP RUNNER]
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Back from IndieCade
We’re back from IndieCade, and a bit of the Monday gloom is starting to sink in (like many indie devs we have day jobs). Nonetheless, I’m hoping I can feed off of the IndieCade inspiration for as long as possible. As first time attendees, the chance to just be around other people who have similar aspirations is pretty incredible. There was too much great content to mention it all, but I thought the Richard LeMarchand, Steve Swink, and Adam Saltsman talks were particularly notable. As for games, I didn’t get to play them all, but here are a few that left a lasting impression: Deepak Fights Robots, Fez, PewPewPewPewPewPewPewPewPew, Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure, The Witch (bummed that I didn’t get to meet the developer), BasketBelle (never managed to even play it but loved the visuals), The Bridge (incredible art), Skulls of the Shogun, and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. Anyway, thanks to everyone who made IndieCade possible and we’ll see everyone again next year.
-MattKain
