In Shops Now!

News

So we can cross another cheevo off the list: Revenge of the Titans is now available in actual physical form, in boxes lovingly drawn by Chaz, in actual shops! If that isn’t cool enough, said boxes also come with a double-sided hi-res poster inside and also the full-length music EP and also a free Steam key and also the Mac version is included as well!

How cool is that eh? I’ve got 3 of them here at home, still wrapped in their cellophane.

Many thanks to Iceberg Interactive for publishing the game phyically for us. We’re hoping that they make a bunch of money on it, because we’d like a nice simple retail partner we can turn to when we need them, and if this works out, it will be them.

Follow Up : For A Buck

A very interesting selection of responses to our previous bit of bloggage about selling games for a buck. Just to cure any wild speculation about things, I should say there’s no way we can sell games for a buck – it costs us $1.50 to process a single sale as it is*, so we’d actually be paying you money to, er, take digital goods “away”. This would lead to brain meltdown and financial apocalypse.

Even assuming we could process the fee for nothing, we don’t actually get enough visitors a day to sell enough copies even at the (very unlikely) conversion rate of 100% to make minimum wage. Obviously minimum wage might be ok if you are 21 and live with your parents but unfortunately I’ve got an entire family to look after in good old Blighty and it’s not getting any cheaper to live here!

Still, it was interesting to see the number of people who would impulse buy a game based on the strength of a video and / or a review of the game from some trusted source somewhere on teh internets. There were a few people who won’t even throw a dollar at anything – presumably not even a bag of crisps – unless it’s a dead cert, but I suspect that though vocal these people are absolutely a minority and I’ve got the figures to back it up! Revenge has been selling on Steam for 3 months now without a demo just fine. And just ask Apple how their pricing policies and refund policies have worked out for everyone. So, sorry guys, but if you won’t even throw a dollar at something to try it out for yourself, your options are becoming increasingly limited and at the end of the day you’re probably just cutting your nose off to spite your face. Well done! You saved a dollar! You can watch TV tonight all night again as a reward.

* We’ve just been informed that BMTMicro, our payment processor, are going to be able to reduce their fee from about $1.50 to 70c on games priced under $5 – so we’ve updated the price of the Ultrabundle and the games within to $4.97 to see what happens!

Paypal, Amazon Payments and Google Checkout

If you’re reading this then chances are you’re a fan and already bought something from us anyway, but BMTMicro have now added the ability to buy our games really easily using Paypal, Amazon and Google Checkout! Unfortunately right now Amazon are still insisting on getting address details but BMT I think are working on convincing them they don’t need that info for a registration.

What We’re Doing Now

So: Chaz is moving house, so he’s going to be incommunicado and otherwise busy for a month or so. While he’s doing that, I’m tarting up the Ultrabundle games, making them finally display in fully freely resizable windows (about time eh!). Droid Assault has gotten a much more thorough working over, with varying levels of zoom depending on droid scanner ranges, and tweaks to gameplay, weaponry, droids, and difficulty. I’ll be releasing the new Droid Assault update soon.

I think it’s ok to tell you that the Ultrabundle games will be available on Steam at some point in the not-too-distant-future, and like Revenge of the Titans, you will be able to get free Steam keys for them as soon as they’re released. So don’t let that get in the way of buying the Ultrabundle now 😉

After I’ve gotten the Ultrabundle games sorted for Steam, we’re going to start work on a new game. This isn’t the game we were originally planning to do next – we think that game is going to take about 2 years to get to releasable state and we’ve only got money for a year left. Instead we’re going to resurrect Treasure Tomb and attempt to do it justice with new hi-res graphics and other clever things. In particular we’re keen on making an integrated level editor that ordinary players can use, to, er, make all the levels for us with. Heheh.

Somewhere amongst all this I’m going to slowly chip away at Steam SDK stuff and get the achievements into Revenge of the Titans. And probably the Ultrabundle games as well. Busy busy busy!

45 thoughts on 'In Shops Now!'

  1. I can’t wait for a new game. But the question is, will the Ultrabundle be on Desura? It seem it’ll be soon available on Linux, so that would be amazing!

    1. All depends on Desura support.

      Also funny you should mention Desura, I’m just fiddling with it now, trying to figure out how to upload the latest version of Revenge of the Titans there for Humble Bundlers. And indeed make Revenge of the Titans actually available to buy from Desura.

  2. Hi, i bought the Ultrabundle for Windows half a year ago, just after the RoTT release. Now I consider my desktop to be a Linux and the question is, how do I buy the Ultrabundle for Linux? When I click the button on the main page, it automatically redirects me to the BMT gate with Ultrabundle for Windows in cart.

    1. oh it just says Windows, but it’s actually for all OSes. Which means you don’t actually need to buy it again. All our games work on all OSes, on all your computers, forever.

      1. Hm…what a difference between this and Capcom preventing you from erasing your save state on the new Resident Evil title.

        1. That’s because CapCom are “Teh” Douchebags of game developers. They are not the same company that released those MegaMan games everyone was so fond of years and years ago. They are now strictly run by douchebags. They aren’t even insulted by that fact, they own up to it. So take solace in buying from “Teh” indie developers! They aren’t “Teh” biotchez like some of those mainstream developerz out there who are just full of “Teh” bullshit.

  3. You’re referring to the bundle, doest this mean only the bundle will be redeemable on Steam, or will this be available for each title ? I just bought Droid Assault as it’s the only one I wanted (ROTT already on Steam though :)).

  4. The Ultrabundle is actually just “the three games”, it’s not a separate package or anything. So buying the Ultrabundle just means you can activate all three games on Steam.

  5. Have you considered something like Kickstarter for funding the year you are missing to complete the new game?

    Other studios have had successful results with this. I know I would chip in 🙂

    1. Not really… it’d feel a bit odd taking external money, even if it is crowdsourced. Anyway, we should make just enough money from the next game to ensure that the New Game is definitely going to get finished, and we’ll be proud to say we did it all by ourselves.

      1. That’s great! But in case the going gets tough, remember there’s a community of gamers around Puppy Games who would be willing to fund. And it’s not like you’d be taking our money from us, we would be investing into it and getting something in retun 😀

    1. I imagine it’ll be in some shops somewhere. No idea which ones though.

      I must say the box does look rather cool 🙂

      1. I would love to get a Boxed copy of RoTT but sadly I doubt it showing up in canada.

  7. beautiful work on revenge of the titans. i’ve played it through a couple times now and it’s just an awesome game. i know there was plenty of split ‘n polish that went into ROTT and as a result it really shines. having said that, i did notice some bugs 😛

    after the announcement on the droid assault facelift i’ve started playing it again, and have further thoughts/comments.

    i’m really glad to hear about the zoom thing because that screen is just too small. there’s so much going on, and sometimes i feel like i’m looking through an empty toilet paper roll. and what’s up with the bots off screen? why don’t they like fighting? are they quietly doing their taxes? also, a general group command that would effect all of your bots would be helpful: fall back – attack – defend! – get the ef out my way! and why can’t they move out my way? i’m tired of being extra stealthy only for some slow in the cpu friendly to walk in front of me and block my shot. they’re robots. they should be able to move out the way and friendly fire on me a little less. different power ups would be fun. to be able to see the upgrades on the actual bot would be helpful, so in the heat of battle you could quickly beam to the specific bot of choice. yup… i love droid assault.

    1. As it happens the cleverer and more expensive droids do avoid shooting through each other wherever possible (anything over sec. level 4 or with a Multicore brain if I recall). I’ve made the captured droids somewhat more agressive now too.

      1. and did you say captured droids last longer? nothing more tragic than letting go of a bot with a rainbow of upgrades under it’s belt.

        1. Yes, once captured droids are tougher, which sort of counteracts the fact that lots of transfer points are now rather harder to come by.

          I’ve just put in a tweak that makes droids invisible if you can’t see them. Veeeery interesting. Game becomes much more panicky.

          1. awesome. excited to play it. i’m glad to hear droids are less expendable.

      2. …collecting upgrades at the ends of levels is annoying me a little bit. what if you could collect upgrades/powerups/money with your beam? right now, i either use the faster bots to collect them, and the slower droids don’t get no love, or i don’t even bother getting all the power ups (since droids are so expendable, why bother beefing them up?) if your droid’s stayed with you longer in the fight it might make it more worth the while to upgrade them.

    2. ..cuz i have more than two cents: what if different droids had different aiming speeds? some of the firing rates on bots are frustrating and i figured beyond upgrades it might be cool to have an increased firing rate offset by slower aim. i’m imagining the players selected bot to have a “sight” similar to the turrets in ROTT, that “chase” the cursor, and on some bots the sight would move very fast, slower for others, to give the feel of a more weighted, heavier gun.

      the multiplier would be even cooler if it increased the more kills you made without damage (damage from the bot you’re currently playing) and stayed at x10 until fired on (kinda like titan attacks). this would promote a slower more skillful game rather than merely seeking out the bots that inflict kills the quickest.

      i don’t really care for any of the rapid fire droids.

      i like that you can beam back and forth between two or more droids and enjoy continuous firing but it doesn’t make sense. the player should really have to find a “fresh” bot to attack with.

      i wish targeting was a little more functional. so when you target an enemy it causes more damage (as appose to firing at a wall and accidentally hitting a droid) or maybe a “lock on” target would be cool, or something. perhaps for another game.

      1. emp droids shouldn’t destroy other droids. they should just render enemies powerless/useless, so you can take them over or use them as barricades (for a period of time or the remainder of the level.)

  8. Hey, one more question: Does the Ultrabundle work on offline PCs now? Because the lack of offline activation was the reason I requested a refund last time I bought it.

    3. Other games have features for this, like Mount & Blade, Crimsonland etc. Mostly they generate some offline key that you have to enter on an online computer to get an activation key, so that you can activate the game. I hate this system and I don’t like DRM that relies on online activation, so I normally don’t buy any games that have online activation anymore. But if the Ultrabundle can be activated offline, I maybe could make an exception.

    4. So, that means you still can’t activate the game on offline PCs, doesn’t it? (Hehe, by the way, it’s great I got Revenge of the Titans in the Humble Indie Bundle so that I won’t have to bother with any DRM).

        1. No, I think last time I bought the Ultrabundle was December 2010 or so. If it works now (you gotta be able to confirm that, just try to activate the game with disabled Internet connection), I’ll consider buying it again (maybe next month). I wanna have the latest versions of those games (like Revenge of the Titans, where I’ve always downloaded the latest versions from my Humble Indie Bundle page).

          1. Especially since you’ve implemented some new features into the Ultrabundle Games recently.

            1. One other thing I tried last time I bought the Bundle: Activating the game and carrying some file that contains the activation key to my other PC didn’t work, because I couldn’t find any files related to the DRM (actually, this means it’s pretty good). I can contact you via E-Mail to talk a bit more if you’d like (I’ve already done that before, but you should have my adress from this comment).

    5. But, you see, if I can’t activate them at home they’re useless to me. I don’t care about online highscore tables (which don’t work offline), I just wanna play the full games.

    6. Hehe, one more suggestion: Release the Ultrabundle in a Boxed Version like Revenge of the Titans. That’d really be cool. Maybe like the boxed compilation Introversion sell (with all their games, nice manuals etc.).

  11. RE: “For A Buck”

    Maybe one day near-free payment processing will be possible with something like Bitcoin…

    Sorry i know it’s over hyped at the moment, but this is one of the main advantages of a decentralised digital currency, it doesn’t cost anything to move money electronically, it makes such tiny transactions economically viable.

    Currently of course it only makes sense to add it as an option because it’s not widespread enough… but that option could be the price of the game minus normal processing… possibly increasing sales O_o

    Then converting the currency to GBP is pretty much free also (of course there is an average exchange rate to take into consideration)… being an experimental currency you probably wouldn’t want to keep too much of your earnings in there for long, that said BTC seems to be earning interest of about 1-2% a day on average as the currency is still establishing itself… but like i said experimental so it’d probably be wise to purge it once a week or something.

  12. Hope the RoTT sandbox mode is still somewhere on your to-do list cas.

    I know lots of us would gladly put up acouple bucks for it.

    1. It is; I’ve got someone starting to look at it (coincidentally the guy who did half the music and bot noises from Droid Assault)

  13. on droid assault, not being able to pick up a emp or laser protection upgrade if you already have one would be nice too.

    1. A good idea. Actually I’ve been having a think about DA and the upgrade mechanic and I was wondering about instead of powerups, dropping some sort of “upgrade points” and letting the player upgrade droids at upgrade stations and between levels. Still thinking about that. Makes it more of an RPG and less of a manic arcade blast, which is a little bit how it’s heading anyway with the new stealth stuff.

      In other news I’m tarting up and enabling the in-game map editor this week. Am wondering how I might make it so there’s an online repository of maps and such.

      1. i like it. i’m sure they’ll be plenty of manic blasting to go around. i had a similar thought with powerups, that after pickup they should be executed at the players discretion. i would miss the moment when you’re bot’s almost through with fight and then stumbles over a rampage or shield and just keeps kicking butt.

        on that note, it would be helpful if rampage temporally made you a little stronger. i can’t tell you how often a weakened droid picks one up and immediately dies 🙁

        btw the whole health/chassis thing is confusing, i still don’t know fully how it works (what’s up with the lighter shaded chassis bar, and why does it deplete my health with a health powerup?) anyway, it would be cool to transfer health between droids at upgrade stations.

        yeah this game is just begging for a map editor. what a tease.

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