THIS IS WHAT THEY HAVE TO SAY - farbsfan123
Development Blog
Can you create the raddest spaceship? Captain Forever Remix is the spaceship builder roguelike. Voyage across the Solar System and blast apart randomly-generated enemies for spare parts.
This is an officially-licensed re-imagining of the indie classic Captain Forever.
Visit captainforeverremix.com
We launched! How was your Weekend?
Captain Forever Remix launched on Friday! We had a really great launch and a really great weekend. Brian, Emeen and I are floored by the reaction we’re seeing to the game, and having an absolute blast watching people play on Twitch and YouTube. Everybody who grabbed the game, tweeted, streamed, put up a Let’s Play, or just told their friends about this weird little Saturday Morning Cartoon video game about building rad spaceships: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
Right now we’re working on fixing the most common bugs and putting out an update for that before we move on to more meatier stuff.
Don’t forget that we’re still got our 15%-off launch sale going. You can grab the game using the Humble widget at the top of this page, or on our Steam page:
store.steampowered.com/app/298560Already got the game, and want to talk about it? Got bugs to report? Here’s the place to do it:
steamcommunity.com/app/298560/discussions/Last two things! check out this great LP video from Northern Lion:
And the pièce de résistance is this GROSS piece of King Kevin fan art from @ekanaut!
Go build rad spaceships! Get your butt to Pluto!
-Dean
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CAPTAIN FOREVER REMIX IS NOW AVAILABLE ON STEAM EARLY ACCESS!
Captain Forever Remix is now in Steam Early Access for PC/Mac/Linux. Tell your friends!
Build rad spaceships and save the solar system! Get your butt to pluto!
store.steampowered.com/app/298560Here’s the launch trailer!
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Want to stream Captain Forever Remix? Go for it!Do you like to play video games in an entertaining fashion and letting other people watch you play said video games?Have you often thought: “Wouldn’t it be super awesome and fun to build spaceships and take them on an adventure across the solar system?”If so, maybe you should be playing Captain Forever Remix. And now you can! Because we’re giving explicate permission for you to do so! Here, look:Pixelsaurus Games LLC gives permission for anyone to stream or record gameplay footage of Captain Forever Remix and share it on YouTube, Twitch or other video sharing or streaming portals.This permission also covers: Monetization. You may monetize any videos you record of Captain Forever Remix, provided you link to captainforeverremix.com in the description of the video.In the unlikely event that you get a Content ID match on a Captain Forever Remix video, please let us know at either @capforeverremix or on email (support at pixelsaurusgames dot com) so that we can chase down whoever is issuing it.We’re now starting to hand out Steam keys to streamers who are interested in Captain Forever Remix. If that sounds like you but you haven’t heard from us, there’s an easy fix! Ping us at support at pixelsaurusgames dot com and tell us about your channel. We’d love to have you check out the game!
Want to stream Captain Forever Remix? Go for it!
Do you like to play video games in an entertaining fashion and letting other people watch you play said video games?
Have you often thought: “Wouldn’t it be super awesome and fun to build spaceships and take them on an adventure across the solar system?”
If so, maybe you should be playing Captain Forever Remix. And now you can! Because we’re giving explicate permission for you to do so! Here, look:
Pixelsaurus Games LLC gives permission for anyone to stream or record gameplay footage of Captain Forever Remix and share it on YouTube, Twitch or other video sharing or streaming portals.
This permission also covers: Monetization. You may monetize any videos you record of Captain Forever Remix, provided you link to captainforeverremix.com in the description of the video.
In the unlikely event that you get a Content ID match on a Captain Forever Remix video, please let us know at either @capforeverremix or on email (support at pixelsaurusgames dot com) so that we can chase down whoever is issuing it.
We’re now starting to hand out Steam keys to streamers who are interested in Captain Forever Remix. If that sounds like you but you haven’t heard from us, there’s an easy fix! Ping us at support at pixelsaurusgames dot com and tell us about your channel. We’d love to have you check out the game!
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Tomorrow is the day, folks! The game will go live at 10am PST. We can’t WAIT for everyone to finally get to play this thing, and join us as the game just gets better and better in Early Access!
Tomorrow is the day, folks! The game will go live at 10am PST. We can’t WAIT for everyone to finally get to play this thing, and join us as the game just gets better and better in Early Access!
Us folks making weirdo video games about the 90′s and space aliens and Saturday Morning Cartoons need to stick together! And that’s why Captain Forever wants YOU to back the ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove Kickstarter!
’s only 50 hours to go, so jump over to Kickstarter, chuck in a few bucks, and hey, even if they’ve already met their goal when you do, you’ll get to play ANOTHER funky 90′s roguelike when the game is done! Prett-teeeeeee good deal I’d say.-Dean
Us folks making weirdo video games about the 90′s and space aliens and Saturday Morning Cartoons need to stick together! And that’s why Captain Forever wants YOU to back the ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove Kickstarter!
There’s only 50 hours to go, so jump over to Kickstarter, chuck in a few bucks, and hey, even if they’ve already met their goal when you do, you’ll get to play ANOTHER funky 90′s roguelike when the game is done! Prett-teeeeeee good deal I’d say.
-Dean
toejamandearl
kickstarter
90s
videogames
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Four days until blastoff!
Four days until blastoff!
This is it! Launch week!
This is it! Launch week!
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Anonymous asked:
I am hoping that this game will run standalone without Steam. I have not used Steam, have had problems trying to install it on my work PC. It's a very cluttered messy website and the forums are loaded down with complaints about installing Steam, product delivery, being hacked/hijacked or other security issues. I just prefer to avoid using a seemingly risky service unless I have no other options to play CF-Remix since I already bought it.
We’re still working out the details of where/when a DRM-free version of the game will be available. It’s something we’d definitely like to do. We’ll share more news on that front once we have it!
Anonymous asked:
How do I make a game like this?
We’re making the game in Unity, and thus far have been using the free version of that engine and toolset. Which is amazing - it’s never been easier to jump in and start making games. Unity is highly recommended, as is Unreal, and Gamemaker is also really great. There’s a really awesome series of tutorials for Gamemaker that Tom Francis (Gunpoint, Heat Signature) has been making:
www.gamasutra.com/view/news/233707/Make_A_Game_With_No_Experience_Tom_Francis_begins_Game_Maker_tutorials.phpWE’RE LAUNCHING ON STEAM EARLY ACCESS MARCH 27th!
We finally have an exact Steam Early Access release date, and it’s March 27th! That’s the end of next week. That’s really close. Whoa! Are we gonna make it? Yep, we will. So next Friday you’ll be playing Captain Forever Remix!
We can’t wait to finally have the game in the hands of all you Captain Forever fans out there, both new and old, and have you all join us as we continue to build this crazy thing. It’s been just over a year now since we started the project, the game is in amazing shape, and it’s just going to keep getting better. It’s so amazing that Early Access is going to allow us to have you along for the ride. We can’t wait for you to join us.
-Dean
videogames
gamedev
indiedev
coolgifs
space
science
captainforever
earlyaccess
steamearlyaccess
joinus
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Anonymous asked:
are you hiring?
We’re always looking for new people to work with! We are a small team though, and in fact the game is being made by two separate single-person companies. There’s me, Dean (AKA Pixelsaurus Games), and then there’s Brian (AKA Future Crayon). Then you’ve also got Emeen doing music/sound. So we’re not “hiring” per se but we’re always on the lookout for new collaborators!
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GDC and The MIX
Captain Forever Remix was out in full force at GDC last week! We showed off the game to various press folks at The MIX showcase, hosted at IGN. It was really gratifying to be included in such an eclectic and high-quality collection of indie games (including our personal favorites Reassembly and Duskers!).
Here was our demo station at The MIX, which came together decently if I do say so myself:
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Dean put together a last-minute video of the game that we played on loop on a second screen. This turned out to be a huge win, as the video features lots of pretty explosions and exciting sound effects to lure unsuspecting passersby.
After The MIX, we spent the rest of the conference in meetings (both planned and impromptu) with developers, press, and other industry folk. We barely attended the conference proper; for both of us, having worked in the industry as long as we have, GDC is a sort of bizarre multi-family reunion, as well as a huge mixer where you’re constantly meeting new people. Through it all, everyone offered super-helpful feedback for our game. We’re grateful to be part of such a friendly, gracious community of developers!
We’re looking forward to finally getting Captain Forever Remix in players’ hands when we launch to Steam Early Access later this month, so that we can expand our collection of feedback and continue to improve the game!
-Brian
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New trailer! With many explosions! And much Pew Pew!
Come see us at The MIX tonight!
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Happy #giffriday, everyone! Pew pew!
giffriday
gamedev
indiedev
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GDC - come play Captain Forever Remix!
Brian and I are both going to be at GDC next week to show the game to press and gather feedback from other devs. Come check it out! There’s a couple ways that you can do that.
Brian will be demoing the game to press at The MIX on Monday March 2nd. There are details about the event here.
We’ll both be around the convention center on Thursday and Friday. We’ll be tweeting about where we’re demoing the game then, but if you’d like to book a demo ahead of time, just hit me up: dean-at-pixelsaurusgamesdotcom
Twitter links:
iamdeantate@bchansays
@capforeverremix
In slightly unrelated news, yesterday was my birthday and my good friend Chandana Ekanayake made me this sweet piece of fan art!
I spent the entire night grinning ear-to-ear. If I had a mantelpiece, that’s where this would be hung. Instead it’s going in my office where I can glance at it multiple times every day.
-Dean
gamedev
indiedev
Oh ho ho HO HO! It’s the new trailer for Captain Forever Remix!
Our Early Access launch is NEXT MONTH! We’ll announce the exact date as soon as it’s locked down.
In the meantime, check out 9 whole minutes of me building rad spaceships and having many close calls with death (the trailer could’ve ended early so many times!).
gamedev
indiedev
captainforeverremix
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It’s time to finally reveal the hero of our adventure…CAPTAIN FOREVER!
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One quiet Saturday morning Natalie Norberry, tenacious middle school student, was settling in for a long morning of cartoons. Without warning and before she’d even finished her first bowl of Kosmic Krunch cereal, the maniacal KING KEVIN appeared and totally screwed up the entire Solar System!
Aw, man!
Now it’s up to Natalie to build the raddest ship ever and become CAPTAIN FOREVER! But who is King Kevin? Why did he screw up the Solar System? And why does he refer to Captain Forever as “Big Sis”? Find out next episode!
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-Dean
gamedev
indiedev
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Doing Crunch Right
I used to crunch. A lot.
CRUNCH
verb
1. To spend all of one’s time working, usually on video games or software, often for extended periods of time. “we’re in crunch mode. Sorry I can’t hang out.”
When I was a teenager, every second of my spare time was spent making levels for Starcraft and making MODs for Unreal Tournament. Late nights lead to many days in highschool with my head on the desk and my eyes half open. Then when I started making games for a living, I moved into an apartment right across the road from Irrational Games in Australia. I loved living so close to the office and having the option to work at odd hours, and often for very long hours. Throughout my 20’s I worked extremely hard and crunched a lot. Especially on BioShock 2. On that project I fell into a deep obsession with my work and basically lived at the office for 9 months. It was AMAZING. I loved it. Every second of it. Being so excited about my work, being full of ideas, and having the freedom to explore them and put them into the game was just the bee’s knees. My brain wouldn’t let me concentrate on anything that wasn’t the game. And then when my work on the project finished, a fog lifted. I’d forgotten what I used to do in my spare time. My friends hadn’t seen me in months. I felt unhealthy, and had gained 30 pounds. I felt old.
I vowed to never, ever crunch that hard ever again.
Which is fine, but what do you do when that passion and creativity threatens to take over your life again?
Now I’m indie game developer, and my office is two flights of stairs down from where I sleep. For most of my time on Captain Forever Remix, I’ve kept a pretty good work-life balance. But now I’m starting to hit that point on the project where a) we’re getting close to shipping on Early Access and b) I’m getting really, really excited about the game. I mean I was excited before, don’t get me wrong, but it was the sort of excitement where I was able to keep space in my brain for “things that are not the game I’m working on”. But I think sometimes, when you’re psyched about a project, a little flip switches in your head and it becomes really hard to think about anything *but* your work. And that can be really dangerous.
That little switch has flipped in my head for Captain Forever Remix.
Other indies have talked plenty about the very real dangers of crunch, especially when there’s potential for there to be such a small separation between your work-life and your life-life as when you’re indie. Alexander Bruce has talked about his entire life being swallowed up for years as he worked on Antichamber. Recently I thought this post from Mike Bithell was very sobering. This article from earlier in the week has a bunch of developers commenting on this industry’s crunch culture. And there are plenty more out there.
So now that this little switch has flipped in my head, what should I do? Do I start crunching my butt off until the end of the project, putting the state of my mental and physical health at risk? With the potential that there isn’t any actual upside for the game?
This time around, I’m going to be a little more careful. Extra hours are being spent on Captain Forever Remix, but not all of the hours I have. And I’m being more thoughtful about what I spend those hours on. If I work on the game at night, it’s on stuff that is fun to work on, or doesn’t tax my brain too much.
It’s alright for that little switch in my brain to flip. In fact it’s pretty great. The feeling of excitement and obsession with your work that it can lead to can be intoxicating. I’m privileged to have the opportunity to do work that even allows for the possibility of that.
Now I’m experienced enough to know the consequences of extended crunch. The type of crunch where your life splits into two halves: work, and (sometimes) sleep. I know that it’s not the best thing for myself, and it’s not the best thing for the game.
And that’s why this time, I’m going to try to do crunch right.
-Dean
gamedev
indiedev
indiegames
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Saturday Morning Video Game
When Brian and I started working on Captain Forever Remix we didn’t know what it would be about.
I mean, we knew it’d be about building rad spaceships and getting into battles with randomly generated enemies. All the stuff that made the original game so fun. But apart from that, we didn’t really know what Captain Forever Remix would be *about*. We just knew that we wanted it to be more than “a fun video game about building spaceships”.
For a while we explored some pretty vague concepts. Maybe the game should have a nautical feel layered on top of the sci fi stuff? A little bit like Battleship Yamato? Maybe the game should actually have character portraits for the dialogue? The chatter in the original game was really fun to read and gave you a sense of a world, but we wanted to actually put names to faces in our game. But whose faces would they be?
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(early character portrait sketches for Captain Forever Remix. Notice the lack of a consistent theme)
Eventually I started to notice that the character drawings I was doing for the game were similar to the random drawings I made when I was a kid. I used to draw a TON when I was a kid, mostly weird random faces and characters from my favorite games and TV shows:
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And dinosaurs. So many dinosaurs. Sketchbooks filled with dinosaurs:
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Sometimes there were Dinosaurs hanging out with my favorite characters:
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(The Sonic video games were fun, but do you remember how good the two Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon series were? SO GOOD! I prefered the more “serious” one that featured Sally Acorn and a rockin’ intro song)
I loved that I could watch cartoons on a Saturday morning and then take those characters and come up with new stories for them. I’d draw those stories in my sketchbooks. Sometimes I’d go out into the backyard, assign roles out to my little brother and sister, and we’d act out new episodes together (in case you were wondering, I was always Donatello, because he’s an inventor and that’s really cool).
Brian had shared the same experience growing up, filling pages and pages in his sketchbooks with characters he loved:
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And just like me, Brian had taken those characters and used his imagination to put them into new situations.
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So we had this shared experience from our childhood, and something felt right about applying that to Captain Forever Remix. It was the missing piece of the puzzle, the “other thing” that the game could be about. We wanted the game to be about Saturday mornings in front of the TV and the new worlds they opened us up to. A garbage can strapped to your back could become a turtle shell. A jelly bean could give you the power to jump here, and there, and everywhere (just like Gummiberry Juice). We wanted it to be about the idea that Saturday morning cartoons could spur your imagination and allow you to enter hidden worlds.
So that’s what Captain Forever Remix is about. You know, other than building rad spaceships.
And now that Saturday morning cartoons are apparently not happening anymore, I think we could all really use a Saturday Morning Video Game.
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Composer and sound designer EMEEN joins the team!
Hey gang, we’re thrilled to announce that Emeen Zarookian is joining the team and will be doing music and sound effects for Captain Forever Remix!
Brian and I both worked with Emeen back when we were all at Harmonix, working together on games like Dance Central, Rock Band 3, and Rock Band Blitz. We knew back then that Emeen was an amazing artist, and fun to work with to boot.
Danny B is happy to be handing the reigns over to Emeen, and is moving on from Captain Forever Remix purely for personal reasons. We’re sad to see Danny go, but happy to give him the time he needs.
Moving forward, we’re psyched to see where Emeen takes the soundscape of Captain Forever Remix!
If you’d like to check out some of his work, you can visit his website here:
Emeen.com
And his bandcamp here:
spiritkid.bandcamp.com-Dean
Early Access Release Plans! Steam Forums Open!
We have a Steam Store Page! <- clicky clicky!
It’s a weird feeling finally seeing Captain Forever Remix listed as “Coming Soon” on Steam. It’s like the game is real now, like “really-real”. And soon, very soon, it’ll be so really-real that you can actually play and enjoy this crazy thing we’ve been working on for almost a year. Which is crazy exciting for us.
OK! So…
You can now hang out and chat about Captain Forever Remix on our shiny new Steam forums! Will you be the first to post, and will that first post read “first post!”? This is important.
We’re aiming to release on Early Access this coming March! There’s a ton more detail on the Steam page about pricing, what state the game will be in when we launch, how long it’ll be in Early Access, and more!
There are new screenshots! Real ones, from the game! I shot them myself, while having fun playing the game.
So go check out the store page, hit “follow” or add the game to your wishlist (this’ll make us so happy), and add some tags (these help us a TON and make it easier for people to discover the game on Steam. My suggestions are things like “Rogue-like”, “Space”, “Rogue-lite” and “Raddest Game” but you can make your own too!). If you’re a curator and would like to list the game on your store page, we’d love to hear from you.
And as always you can visit our website to pre-order the game for the cheapest pre-release price and join our mailing list.
captainforeverremix.com/SO EXCITING!
-Dean
A lazy Saturday afternoon spent building lopsided ships that still fly straight is strangely satisfying. -Dean
A lazy Saturday afternoon spent building lopsided ships that still fly straight is strangely satisfying.
-Dean
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Awkward scuffle off the coast of Jupiter.
Awkward scuffle off the coast of Jupiter.
screenshotsaturday
indiedev
gamedev
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Happy Humpday everyone! Uranus is pretty far into the solar system. Do you think you can make it that far?
Happy Humpday everyone!
Uranus is pretty far into the solar system. Do you think you can make it that far?
gamedev
indiegames
wednesday
uranus
space
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Gaming FTL did a short preview of the game. Check it out!
-Dean
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New screenshots to celebrate our submission to IGF!
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Hey gang! It’s the Captain Forever Remix pre-alpha trailer! JOY!
-Dean
indiedev
gamedev
indiegames
games
captainforeverremix
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Happy Saturday! I skipped #screenshotsaturday last week so here, take 4 new shots. That’s DOUBLE what’s usually posted on a SINGLE Saturday! You are totally getting your money’s worth here at Captain Forever uh…Central…?
Animation! Effects! PARTICLES. These are the things that make you feel good when you look at a game. And now, there are 900% more of them in CAPTAIN FOREVER REMIX. That’s why Brian and I have been so busy.
-Dean
screenshotsaturday
indiedev
indiegames
gamedev
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It was really hard to get these guys to pose for their photos. They were all very fidgety (except that fish. He just kinda sat there staring out into space…). -Dean
It was really hard to get these guys to pose for their photos. They were all very fidgety (except that fish. He just kinda sat there staring out into space…).
-Dean
screenshotsaturday
indiedev
gamedev
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It’s been a busy but productive week!
Bchan and I spent a whole bunch of time looking at the state of the project as a whole, sorting out what work remains and getting a better sense for the scope and shape of what the final game is going to look like. In other words, we did a bunch of boring, slightly stressful, but incredibly important production work, like great big grown ups. We are both so proud.
Whenever we weren’t elbow-deep in Trello, we both wanted to do something fun. So we started creating the mutated menagerie that you’ll battle across the solar system!
I’m glad that enemies now talk back instead of just silently and diligently blasting away at you.
-Dean
screenshotsaturday
indiedev
indiegame
mutants
dumbpigeon
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Earth has already been totally busted up so…this is not a game where you save the world. Sorry.
Earth has already been totally busted up so…this is not a game where you save the world. Sorry.
screenshotsaturday
indiedev
indiegames
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Mmmmm….space donut….
Mmmmm….space donut….
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No spoilers yet on @capforeverremix ‘s story, except one: Australia is JUST FINE. Not sure about the rest of Earth.
No spoilers yet on @capforeverremix ‘s story, except one: Australia is JUST FINE. Not sure about the rest of Earth.
indiedev
indiegames
gamedev
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Making space more colorful while I wait for Destiny to unlock.
I promise myself I’ll work until midnight, and then only play for an hour.
-Dean
indiedev
indiegames
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destiny
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PAX was great, and I wanted to thank everyone that dropped by to play at SIX!
This was the first time the game has been shown in public and to completely new players. And it was EXCELLENT. I was reminded of just how genius FARBS’ original concept for Captain Forever really is. Usually you go into these things suspecting you’re going to find that your game makes ZERO sense to new players, but instead I ended the day feeling overwhelmingly confident that the game is on the right track. Everyone who played the game “got it” and immediately had a blast building crazy ships while their friends watched on.
I got to show the game to a mix of people who had played the original web-based game, and some who had not. There were also a bunch who’d heard of REMIX and came by to check it out.
Fans of the original game were very excited about the additions we’re making to REMIX, which was a huge relief! I’m back to work now and feeling completely revitalized, as tiring as PAX can be (I did at least dodge the PAX POX this year).
I’ve been on vacation for Australia for a few weeks too, and while I was gone Bchan was chipping away at the game, adding lots of polish, and experimenting with some structural changes to how the game flows. We’re exploring those ideas more deeply now and they’re very exciting. Can’t wait to show more very soon.
-Dean
gamedev
indiedev
indiegames
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Come see us at SIX during PAX! six.seattleindi.es
I’ll be showing off Captain Forever Remix at SIX during PAX Prime on September 1st. SIX is a very short walk from PAX this year, so come on over, check out the game, and say hi!
SIX is Seattle Indies Expo. I’ll probably be sneaking away from the booth at some point to check out Crawl…
-Dean
indiedev
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seattleindies
This week, on Captain Forever Remix: Death by Homing Missile!
indiedev
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screenshotsaturday
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YOUR SHIP IS MY SHIP. GIMME! i.imgur.com
This week we added special character perks. This guy is the “sniper” archetype, and his special ability is that all weapons have laser sights that show firing direction + range.
Click the title to check it out (the gif is a little too large for poor ole’ Tumblr)
How we make our spaceships!
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In Captain Forever Remix, you hand-craft a killer spaceship from various types of modules—lasers, missile launchers, twin boosters, shield modules, you name it. Enemy ships, however, are generated procedurally. Here’s a summary of the simple but effective process that creates enemy ships.
The goal of this system is to populate the game world with a diverse array of enemies. Ideally, the nuances of combat will differ from encounter to encounter, such that you’ll feel compelled to assess any given enemy’s threat based on its module composition, and switch your tactics accordingly.
Our system is intended to handle a variety of ship types—basically, unique “blueprints” for ship-building. To keep things simple, let’s walk through the construction rules for the most common ship type, the “mirrored” ship (named so because its pieces are always mirrored across its vertical axis).
Step 1: Start with the command module.
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Step 2: Add bulkheads to form the ship’s skeleton.
Bulkhead modules are attached at various randomly-determined positions, from the command module outwards). These pieces are mirrored across the vertical axis of the ship. The number of bulkheads we add is randomly picked (from within a range), such that ships vary in their overall size and shape.
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Step 3: Add the standard laser/booster.
So that every enemy has basic movement and combat abilities, we always attach a laser to the very front-middle of the ship, and a booster to the very back-middle.
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Step 4: Decorate the wingspan with weapons and boosters.
From the pool of all possible module types, we select a small subset that will be used to build the ship. We make selections via weighted random choice, allowing us to control the relative rarities of the various module types.
At present, we’ve tuned things such that each ship will feature a relatively low number of module types, which tends to specialize a ship’s function. This, in turn, requires the player to counter its particular threat with specific tactics.
We attach the chosen types of weapons and boosters along the wingspan (the horizontal axis of the ship). We move along one wing, then mirror the results on the other wing. These modules always face up or down, depending on whether they are “above” or “below” the wingspan. This process is random, but constrained by quotas (for example, we might mandate that at least 30% of modules along the wingspan are boosters).
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Step 5: Add “wing caps.”
As a finishing touch, we attach a pair of horizontally-facing (left/right-facing) modules on the “wingtips”—the extreme left and right sides of the ship.
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And that’s our basic process for ship-building. Fairly straightforward stuff, but powerful—all the ships seen here are created by this process!
(A note on how this approach came about. Captain Forever Remix is based on the original Captain Forever by Farbs, so the majority of the ideas presented here originated in Farbs’ code. We’ve tweaked a few things to suit the Remix’s purposes, and we’ll continue to experiment throughout development.)
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Crypt of the Necrodancer is out on Early Access! necrodancer.com
Crypt of the Necrodancer is available today on Steam Early Access! Huge congrats to Ryan Clark and his team, including Captain Forever Remix composer Danny Baranowsky. If you haven’t gotten the game yet, go grab it while stocks last (hahah just kidding it’s digital).
Get the soundtrack version. Trust me.
-Dean
This week I spent some time tuning game difficulty. Bchan added a bunch of new controls for how ships are constructed, and how they’re spawned into the game. He also added the concept of “minibosses”: very tough, very large, high-level ships that are optional bosses. If you destroy one in a sector, you get a bonus when you move to the next sector (and get the chance to salvage high-level modules after the battle). They’re really cool, and not only make the game feel tougher, but also much more interesting seeing as they’re optional. I played the game a whole bunch on Friday and found that I tended to wipe out around sector 5. It feels good to not be able to beat my own game!
Later this week Bchan will be posting more on how enemy ships are constructed. Some really exciting changes went into the game recently, and we’re now a much wider variety of ships to fight!
-Dean
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GNAT ATTACK! We’ve started adding new enemy types to Captain Forever Remix.
GNAT ATTACK! We’ve started adding new enemy types to Captain Forever Remix.
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Last night we streamed new gameplay footage & had a special surprise guest star: FARBS! (uh, the guy that made the original Captain Forever. He’s the best).
* “Special Surprise Guest Star” should be Farbs’ nickname.
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Captain Forever Remix is coming to Steam & Early Access! Pre-orders open!
We’re psyched to finally announce that Captain Forever Remix is coming to Steam Early Access later this year and you can pre-order now for 50% off the retail price! Check out the Humble Widget at the top of the page or over at our website.
In celebration of this we’ve got a bunch of new screenshots to share, an update on how development is going, and this Wednesday at 7pm PST we’ll be streaming new gameplay footage at
!
I’m new: what is Captain Forever Remix?
Captain Forever Remix is a 2D action roguelike where you create a spaceship and blast apart randomly-generated enemies for spare parts.
You better build a pretty tough ship, because you’re gonna need it. Your mutant little brother is being a total butthead and must be stopped! He froze the Sun, poked out Jupiter’s eye, drank Neptune’s oceans, and cracked Earth like an egg! Set off across a messed-up Solar System to put a stop to the big jerkface once & for all!
Why pre-order?
You get 50% off the final retail price. You’ll get a Steam key and be able to play the game once it’s up on Steam Early Access later this year. Then, you’ll also get a copy of the final game once it’s released on Steam (and you’ll have gotten it for cheap!). We’re pricing pre-orders at $9.99 which is 50% off the retail price, but that price will rise towards the final retail price of $19.99 as we get closer to release; we’re planning to bump it up a little once the game is available on Steam Early Access.
Our philosophy is that pre-ordering should be discounted because a) you’re taking a leap of faith that the game will be good (thanks for trusting us!) and b) the Early Access builds you get to play will be unpolished and missing features (thanks for putting up with our mess!).
We are very thankful to anyone that pre-orders, and so we’re not asking you to pay full-price just yet (we’ll save that for when the game is done). We’re also excited to get the game out there as quickly as possible on Early Access and start gathering feedback!
Who is making the game?
We’re a small, independent team. There’s only three of us: Dean Tate (Pixelsaurus Games) as artist, Brian Chan (Future Crayon) as coder, and Danny Baranowsky doing audio and music. Development is completely self-funded and we hope to keep it that way. By offering discounted pre-orders we get a better idea of how many players to expect once we go up on Steam Early Access, and the knowledge that people who gave us cash early also get a copy of the game. That makes us happy!
What sort of game is Captain Forever Remix?
Captain Forever Remix is a roguelike in the vein of modern classics such as FTL, Spelunky, Nuclear Throne, or Risk of Rain. Those are games that have a single “mode” of play: you fire up the game, hit “play”, and then see if you can make it all the way to the end. It’s super-hard to beat these types of games and it probably ends up taking you weeks before you finally do it, but every time you play, you learn something: a new strategy, a new tactic, or most times…a new way to die. One day, with a bit of luck, and a TON of skill, you finally beat the game and feel SO COOL! You are just the coolest, and you tell all your friends, and they’re jealous. And then you try to beat it again with a totally different spaceship build, and then you try to speedrun it, and then you try to do it without attaching any modules to your ship, and then you try to do it while carrying an eggplant (no, wait, that’s Spelunky), and so on…
That’s the sort of game we’re aiming for Captain Forever Remix to be. Every time you play it, it’ll feel totally different. You’ll have to adapt to new challenges on-the-fly and become a master improviser. You’ll never be able to just breeze your way through to the end using the same tactics or ship design. Enemies will be randomly constructed, you’ll have access to different module types and bonus perks, and a few other surprises we have in store.
We want to build a game where you want to swap ship building strategies with other players just like in the old days (by talking to them) or maybe by using this fancy-new “Twitch” thing. You’ll share tactics for picking apart enemy ships to get the most salvage from them, and tell tall tales of that time you finally made it all the way to the end and defeated the boss that one time (yeah, sure you did, buddy). It’ll be a game that the community works together to get really good at.
What’s new in the game?
We’re in the midst of adding new features to the game that weren’t in the original browser-based Captain Forever. This is a highly-experimental stage in development and we still count it as “pre-production” meaning that everything we’re adding right now might change drastically or end up on the cutting room floor, based on how it fits into the schedule and whether it makes the game better (some ideas are great on paper but then turn out to be duds when you put them into the game).
Here’s what we’re currently trying:
New module types that you can use to expand your ship including new weapons (the RIPSAW is a new favorite. Guess what it does?), new booster types, bubble shields, health kits, and light-weight girders.
A new “bonus perks” system: as you progress you get to choose from randomly-selected perks that give you some kind of advantage. Some are one-shot (eg. “heal all my modules”) and some are permanent (eg. “Shots can land critical hits” or “Killing enemies heals you”).
A completely new game flow that *feels* like the original game, but has some pretty major tweaks to how you progress, how enemies spawn and behave, and how the game ramps up in difficulty.
There’s a lot more to come, and we’re eager to show off the next batch of stuff we’re trying as soon as it’s in and working.
Come see the new stuff this Wednesday 7pm PST on Twitch!
We’ll be showing off the current batch of stuff later this week, so tune in this Wednesday at 7pm PST at
! We’ll get a recording of the stream up onto our YouTube channel right after the stream:
www.youtube.com/pixelsaurusgamesThanks for reading & we hope you’re as excited to play the game as we are to make it.
-
iamdeantate & @bchansays
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Big update coming next week for Captain Forever Remix! Enjoy some pizza this weekend.
Big update coming next week for Captain Forever Remix! Enjoy some pizza this weekend.
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Viewing space from…space (er, Unity).
Viewing space from…space (er, Unity).
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"The Tearjerker"
"The Tearjerker"
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Testing player death particle effects. My technique = some questionable ship building:
Explosions off the orbital coast of red dot planet.
Explosions off the orbital coast of red dot planet.
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Happy 2014th Birthday, America! Love, Captain Forever. Pew pew!
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The Heartbreaker. #giffriday
The Heartbreaker. #giffriday
First-ever footage of Captain Forever Remix gameplay is now LIVE. Check it out, share it with your friends, start planning how you’re going to build spaceships of your own, take some screenshots & print them & frame them for the living room wall. Go go go!
Twitch Streaming! Tomorrow! Tune in!
Tomorrow we’ll be streaming the very first glimpse of ACTUAL GAMEPLAY. Come watch Dean fly around, build amazing spaceships, watch them get blasted into a million pieces, build a new one, watch it get destroyed too, and maybe eventually even beat his own game! It’ll be fun & informative.
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Today was spent making pretty particle effects & things go boom.
Today was spent making pretty particle effects & things go boom.
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Explosions off the celestial coast of New Australia.
Explosions off the celestial coast of New Australia.
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I made a ship that spins & is unstoppable, like that scene in Equilibrium. I call this ship “Bale”.
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#giffriday #epicspacebattles #spacewizards
#giffriday #epicspacebattles #spacewizards
Look how many ships you can build! These ones, and infinity more of them! #shipshipsships #space
Look how many ships you can build! These ones, and infinity more of them! #shipshipsships #space
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#knifefight #spinfight #captainforeverremix
#knifefight #spinfight #captainforeverremix
#meow #space #captainforeveremix
#meow #space #captainforeveremix
#giffriday #captainforeverremix
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I’ve been finding ways to make the game feel alive by adding lots of movement and atmosphere to our backgrounds. I want space in our game to feel alive and real, and to feel like it’s got tons of depth. An endless vacuum filled with lots of dust & grit. Space is super dirty in Captain Forever Remix. It’s gross and you need a shower after going on even a short spacewalk. The gif above is of course time-lapsed. There’s a lot of stuff going on, and at some point I’ll write a longer post breaking down how our backgrounds are constructed. But right now I can sum it up pretty quickly: “Particles spawning particles that are being spawned by particles and if you look closely it’s particles all the way down”.
I’ve been finding ways to make the game feel alive by adding lots of movement and atmosphere to our backgrounds. I want space in our game to feel alive and real, and to feel like it’s got tons of depth. An endless vacuum filled with lots of dust & grit. Space is super dirty in Captain Forever Remix. It’s gross and you need a shower after going on even a short spacewalk.
The gif above is of course time-lapsed. There’s a lot of stuff going on, and at some point I’ll write a longer post breaking down how our backgrounds are constructed. But right now I can sum it up pretty quickly: “Particles spawning particles that are being spawned by particles and if you look closely it’s particles all the way down”.
Dev Diary #4 is up! This week: Background Elements.
Although exploration wasn’t a huge part of the original Captain Forever, we want players to feel compelled to explore space and be rewarded for doing that in Remix. So I’ve been working hard on coming up with lots of ideas for the sorts of things you’ll see float in the background as you fly around in search of new enemies to fight (and modules to add to your ship).
I want the stuff you see in the background to be really fun to look at, to tell a story, and to give you a reason to not stick around in the same place for the whole game. There might end up being gameplay reasons to cover as much space as you can in a single game, but before we start to look into that, it has to be fun to explore even just in the sense that you’ll end up seeing cool stuff, maybe something you didn’t expect, and something new every time you play. Such as the massive, planet-sized husk of a tardigrade’s long-since shedded skin, clutching the side of a star that has been dead for many millenia. Yeah, something like that, maybe?
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Captain Forever Graph Paper sketches by a fan
cptforever.proboards.comI had to post this because it’s so cool.
Captain Kirana posted a bunch of graph paper designs for various Captain Forever spaceships and modified Command Modules.
This stuff is rad and really shows off the amount of creativity players have in designing the spaceship of their dreams. SO COOL.
My favorites are the really close-up shots of the interior of a Command Module (love the tight scale on that thing) and the action shot of a bunch of ships going to battle.
Some of the larger ships are suitably epic and I can’t wait to try out building them in Remix to see how they fare!
Direct link (you can also click on the post heading):
cptforever.proboards.com/thread/182/captain-forever-sketches-graphing-paperDev Diary #3 is up! This week Dean chats about his process for creating a new look for the game’s spaceship modules.
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This week’s development diary video is live!
We got a whole bunch of stuff done in the game this week. Bchan has been exploring various art tech issues, and as a result we’ve now got some very rough bloom (or glow), procedural coloration of ship modules (um…that just means ships show up in different colours) and a few other bits and pieces. We’ve also now got basic “leveling” for ships (that means that more and more powerful enemies appear as you play).
Next week, I’ll be showing off the exploration I’ve been doing into how our ship modules are going to look.
Thanks for watching, spacepunks!
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If you say “Tardigrade” three times, one will appear on you somewhere, but you won’t know it.
If you say “Tardigrade” three times, one will appear on you somewhere, but you won’t know it.
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Hullo spacepunks! Dev Diary #1 (“The Game So Far”) is ready to check out.
It has been a good week. The announcement seems to have piqued the interest of many Captain Forever fans, as well as a bunch of people who are new to this whole thing. Bchan and I are very gracious for this.
We got some nice words on Rock Paper Shotgun and Bchan will forever be referred to as B-Chain from now on. PC Gamer was psyched too, and a Reddit thread has popped up.
This video covers where the game is at right now. Currently we’re working on a bunch of fun art tech stuff: working out how far we can push various effects, how nice we make all of the ship modules look, and how much we can make the screen shake when things go boom without making players want to run to the bathroom. More on all that very soon.
tumblrbot asked:
WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?
You’re not real! You’re a bot!
My earliest memory is of playing with my Matchbox Car Cargantua
I remember it being about as tall as me, but I think it’s really only a foot tall or so (maybe that’s how tall I was).Anyways, it was pretty badass. It had roads for arms that cars could fly down, you could keep cars strapped to its limbs, and it was called “CARgantua”, geddit?
I’m giving #GifFriday a try, because making gifs is fun, and things that move are fun to watch.
I’m giving #GifFriday a try, because making gifs is fun, and things that move are fun to watch.
ATTENTION, SURVIVORS! Welcome to the Captain Forever Remix development blog! I’m PSYCHED to finally have this thing announced. Brian Chan and I have been hard at work on it for a little while now, but no longer shall we toil in the darkness…we can finally share development of this thing with the world! With this game we’re trying something that hasn’t been done before: we’re doing a “remix” of a game that already exists. It’s something that’s done all the time in music, so why not games? I want to see more artists’ and designers showing their unique perspective on their peers’ work! So we’re taking the amazing game concept “Captain Forever” (link) by Farbs (link) and giving it our own spin. We want to use this blog to be very open about development of the game, so stick around and we’ll show you cool stuff (and maybe some not-so-cool stuff. If we’re experiencing developmental pain or grinding through hard issues, you guys will see it here, warts and all). We want to stay true to what made the original game so amazing (basically, being a bad-ass space Captain who makes their self-designed ship more powerful by stealing parts from enemy pilots), while adding our own flavor to it: you’ll meet weirdo spacepunks, discover mysterious star constellations, and get to experience a whole bunch of new ways to play the game. There’s tons more info here at the website:
captainforeverremix.com/ Follow
iamdeantate and @bchansays You should also check out the original “Captain Forever” by Farbs:
www.captainforever.com/captainforever.php Glad to have you aboard, spacepunks. This’ll be fun. -Dean
ATTENTION, SURVIVORS!
Welcome to the Captain Forever Remix development blog!
I’m PSYCHED to finally have this thing announced. Brian Chan and I have been hard at work on it for a little while now, but no longer shall we toil in the darkness…we can finally share development of this thing with the world!
With this game we’re trying something that hasn’t been done before: we’re doing a “remix” of a game that already exists. It’s something that’s done all the time in music, so why not games? I want to see more artists’ and designers showing their unique perspective on their peers’ work! So we’re taking the amazing game concept “Captain Forever” (link) by Farbs (link) and giving it our own spin.
We want to use this blog to be very open about development of the game, so stick around and we’ll show you cool stuff (and maybe some not-so-cool stuff. If we’re experiencing developmental pain or grinding through hard issues, you guys will see it here, warts and all).
We want to stay true to what made the original game so amazing (basically, being a bad-ass space Captain who makes their self-designed ship more powerful by stealing parts from enemy pilots), while adding our
own flavor to it: you’ll meet weirdo spacepunks, discover mysterious star constellations, and get to experience a whole bunch of new ways to play the game.
There’s tons more info here at the website:
captainforeverremix.com/Follow
iamdeantate and @bchansays
You should also check out the original “Captain Forever” by Farbs:
www.captainforever.com/captainforever.phpGlad to have you aboard, spacepunks. This’ll be fun.
-Dean
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Re.mix.
Re.mix.
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Attention, survivors.
Attention, survivors.
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