New Interviews: Developing Slamjet Stadium

Well, it's been an exciting week at Aitcheson towers. I've been preparing my talk for next week's GameHorizon Conference, and I woke up this morning to discover that Slamjet Stadium is in the App Store's Tabletop Games feature in the UK App Store.

I also had two interviews I did recently published online. They were really fun to do so I hope you enjoy reading them!

Thunderbolt interviewed me about the design behind Slamjet Stadium, and why genres and trends from the past - including local multiplayer - are seeing so much new innovation from the indie sphere.
Read the interview here

I also spoke to HeyUGuys Gaming about my history as a game developer, my inspirations and motivations.
Read the interview here

Slamjet Stadium Lite Version Arrives Tomorrow!

UPDATE: Slamjet Free is now available! You can download it from this link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slamjet-free/id626161502?ls=1&mt=8

Like any good developer, once the game's out that doesn't mean I've finished with it! Recently I've been working on Slamjet Free, a trial version of Slamjet Stadium to allow people to try out the game for free before buying the fully-featured complete version.

Slamjet Free contains two teams from the full game - Jetpack City and the Space Hogs - and one arena to play in multiplayer. By upgrading to the full version you can access the single player mode, the full roster of characters and all the arenas.

Slamjet Stadium's continuing to capture people's interest, which is great! Padvance recently selected it as one of their Top 5 Same-Room Multiplayer Games for iPad, and also gave it a perfect score in their review.

Slamjet Free will hit the App Store worldwide on Thursday 18th April 2013, and will be available from this link

Designing for Chaos

Slamjet Stadium's been out for almost a month now, and has received some great responses from the games press. One comment I was particularly excited about was in PocketGamer's Top 10 Games of March 2013 article.

"own goals are inevitable, power-ups are over-powered, and stealing your opponent's players is practically encouraged… It's chaotic, fast paced, unpredictable, and insane. As long as neither player expects a fair fight, you'll have a blast."

I was really happy with this statement. Something that I'd made a big deal of in Slamjet Stadium had clicked with players. It's meant to be chaotic, it's meant to be unpredictable, and cheating isn't just okay - it's encouraged!


In that respect, one of the exciting freedoms of creating Slamjet Stadium was that I could make it intentionally unfair, and powerups could be intentionally overpowered.

What would be an issue in any other kind of game actually improves the player-vs-player experience, and I find that particularly fascinating.

Starting with Systems

In many ways this is a big departure from how I used to think about game design. When I was making Greedy Bankers I was fascinated by systems - by the way game mechanics interact with other game mechanics to create a complex web to explore. With that came the belief that no mechanic should be overpowered, lest it render the other mechanics redundant and a single optimal strategy emerge.

New & Noteworthy around the world!

The excitement continues for Slamjet Stadium! This Thursday I got the exciting news that the game was in the New & Noteworthy Games section in the following countries:

Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, El Salvador, Spain, Finland, France, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, Mexico, New Zealand, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Venezuela, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Malta, Macau, Lithuania, Latvia, Ecuador, Estonia, Honduras, Bulgaria, Bolivia, Brunei, Cyprus, Cambodia, Laos...

... and the UK!

That's 60 countries! It's also been New & Noteworthy in the USA on launch, and was selected for What's Hot in Japan and Canada.

Hopefully this means lots of people are getting a taste of the game!

The game was also selected by The Guardian as one of their five recommended indie games for the Easter weekend.

And it made its way into PocketGamer's Top 5 shared-iPad mutiplayer games. Always exciting to see people getting excited over the game!

Slamjet Stadium is available on the App Store for £1.99/$2.99/€2.79

More information, trailers and screenshots are on the website

More Press for Slamjet Stadium!

Slamjet Stadium's been gathering reviews and interest as it's been rolling along since launching last week. Here's a few more of the reviews it's been getting so far!

"A fantastic example of the kind of innovative gaming that could only really work on a touch based tablet"
4 stars - 148Apps

"Alistair Aitcheson’s air-hockey remix is scrappy, silly sporting madness."
EDGE Online

"Slamjet Stadium is a must-buy for fans of frantic, action-packed sports games with a killer multi-player mode for when you’ve got company"
Dial-a-Phone

And The Guardian selected Slamjet Stadium as one of their 30 Best Apps for the week

Also, you may be interested in the article I wrote for Gamasutra a couple of weeks ago, which was selected as a featured article. I hope it's of interest!

Time for Multiplayer to Get Physical - On Gamasutra

Slamjet Stadium Launches - Gets New & Noteworthy!

Wow, it's been an exciting end to the week! Slamjet Stadium launched, as promised, on March 14th and is now available for iPads worldwide for £1.99/$2.99.

Not only that, but I took a look at the US store and saw this: it's been selected for New & Noteworthy!

It's also listed in the New & Noteworthy section of the Games listing, as well as a banner and a listing in their Tabletop Games feature. It goes without saying: I am overjoyed!

There's been some fantastic reviews too.

"This is anarchic, free-wheeling indie gaming at its finest, and shows just how far a bit of innovation can go"
9 out of 10, Gold Award
PocketGamer

"It’s impossible to describe how much chaos can be involved and how competitive games can get"
8 bruised, bent and broken thumbs out of 10
CalmDownTom

"Tons of action-packed twists every way you turn, and that frantic addictiveness of a great arcade game"
4 stars
GameZebo

Let's hope the game can build on this momentum. Looking forward to keeping you posted!

Talk: Developing Slamjet Stadium as a One-Man Studio

I gave a talk about the building of Slamjet Stadium at a recent Best of British gamedev meet in London.

I talk about how the development process reflected the small nature of my studio (can't get much smaller than one man!) and the important of pushing a message and an ideal in the design. I also give my thoughts on the benefits I have received from making friends within my industry, and how as indie developers we need to help each other out as best we can.

Best of British is an open group of indie studios based in the UK. We originally teamed up to put together a "Best of British" games bundle for iPhone, and have since run two game jams, releasing two collaborative minigame collections for iOS. We meet up on a regular basis and are always looking for new ways to help each other out, cross-promoting each other's work, passing on connections and contributing a regular column to PocketGamer.biz. 

BoB is free to join for all UK-based studios and we're always looking to get new people involved - the more the merrier! 

Visit the website, or get in touch with Jake Birkett, the current chief BoBBee, if you'd like to be a part of the group.

Slamjet Stories - The Commentators

Writer Leon Osborne, who contributed the first Slamjet Stadium fiction to the blog has come up with some more fantastic work, which really captures the setting I'd envisioned for the game. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have!

A member of the Astro Marines team, as depicted in the game

Part 1

Rikk: Howdy there Sports Fans. Rikk Slinger and Takei Coates here. It looks set to be another beautifully brutal game of Slamjet today.

Takei: That’s right, Rikk. And we’re gonna be here bringing you all the action for Tyrant TV. Today’s match sees the Fanboys go up against the Astro Marines.

Rikk: Ha. There’s gonna be a definite weight advantage going on in this game!

Takei: Too right, Rikk. Slametric data, stretching back decades, will tell you that the Marines have won 90% of the games when facing the Fanboys and have always won on the injury infliction score.

Rikk: Not that we condone the injury infliction score of course as does no one else employed by Tyrant TV.

Takei: You said it, Rikk. Tyrant TV and its associated sponsors promote clean and family friendly hyper violent blood sports. But we’re well aware that many fans-

Rikk: And book keepers.

Takei: -That many enthusiasts take a keen interest in all statistics associated with the sport, most prominent amongst them the Tooth Count…

Rikk: How many teeth a player has lost since his professional career began.

Takei: The Tooth Fairy Count…

Rikk: How many teeth a player has knocked out of other players since his career began.

Takei: The Bone Breaker Count and the Bone Breakee Count…

Rikk: Like the tooth counts but with bones.

Evolution of Slamjet Stadium - In Pictures

I put up this video last night. Actually, it was really fun to do, although it took a while! As I've been developing Slamjet Stadium (from August 2012 to February 2012), I've taken about 350 screenshots - some to use as publicity material, some because of bugs that looked particularly funny - but mostly just to remind me later on of how it had developed.

Then I strung them together, one-by-one into a 70-second montage. The result is below

Below are some of the screenshots from development with a little explanation, to give a taste of how it's evolved.

Slamjet Stories: The Referee

The following is a fiction piece written by Leon Osborne. Leon is a good friend of mine, one of the testers behind Slamjet Stadium and a very funny guy! He's written this piece about the game and I thoroughly enjoyed it, so I hope you do too.

It wasn’t easy being a referee. You were always going to upset somebody with a decision. The problem with Slamjet of course was that the people you upset tended to outwardly express their upset in a graphically violent manner. Gerry Glass had been a chief referee for two years now and had only been shot the once.

Slamjet Stadium Arrives March 14th!

A mysterious game from the distant future and is coming to your iPad. What could it be? Why, it's Slamjet Stadium of course! I've submitted it to the App Store and will be going live on March 14th.

For those not yet familiar with the game, Slamjet Stadium is a multiplayer iPad game I've been working on since the summer. Based on an ancient 20th Century sport known as "football" the Slamjet tournament is the hottest event of the galactic calendar. Arenas are filled with deadly saws, mysterious wormholes and ridiculous power-ups, and only the fastest and toughest can win!

Players control a team of characters riding on the titular Slamjet-class hoverbikes. Grabbing a player with your finger and dragging back charges their engines, and releasing launches them across the screen, to bash the ball into your opponent's goal.

Played on a shared iPad, players are free to get in each other's way, steal each other's characters or set off traps to mess their opponent up. It's fast, it's chaotic and breaking the rules is encouraged!

Slamjet Stadium also features a single-player mode where you can take on a gauntlet of increasingly-tough computer opponents in an attempt to become the ultimate champion.

More screenshots and details are on the Slamjet Stadium website

Why make Slamjet Stadium?

Local multiplayer iPad games have fascinated me for a long time, ever since developing the multiplayer mode for Greedy Bankers vs The World. Watching people get competitive over the board, encouraging them to get in each other's way and play dirty, and seeing the joy this kind of experience created, made me want to explore it further.

One of the great opportunities that the touchscreen offers is the ability to share the whole canvas of play between two players. In the old days, you'd have your gamepad and I'd have mine, and we'd be controlling two separate avatars. But when we have a device where two players can have free roam over the whole space, why split the game into your side and mine?

Slamjet Stadium is about using the whole touchscreen, and getting players to use the whole screen as one big playspace. Instead of worrying about players getting in each other's way, Slamjet encourages them to do so. Why can't my hand be an in-game obstacle? Why shouldn't you be allowed to grab my arms?

Where on consoles shared-screen multiplayer has increasingly given way to online, local multiplayer designers are pushing their medium to show why sharing play is still important. Playing with your friends is a joyous experience. Let's make the most of what this medium has to offer!

Press for Slamjet Stadium

I wanted to collect together the press Slamjet Stadium has got so far. The game is almost ready to submit to the App Store - I'm super-excited!

Interviews

Alistair Aitcheson talks Slamjet Stadium - your next local multiplayer addiction on iPad
PocketGamer, 28 January 2013

ConsoleNinjas Podcast Episode 18
18 February 2013 (begins 01:35)

Previews

Greedy Bankers dev bringing futuristic footy-esque sports title Slamjet Stadium to iPad
PocketGamer, 17 January 2013

Preview with Trailer and Screenshots
ArcadeSushi, 17 January 2013

IndieEye: Introducing Slamjet Stadium
Final Boss Fight, 30 December 2013

Below are a couple of from the early stages of development. I think they're pretty fun to look back at now!

Crossfire for the 21st Century

Hookshot Inc, 8 November 2012

Galaxyball Early Preview

GameZebo, Oct 10 2012

Let's Get Physical (on iPad!)

Back in Summer 2011 I was busy designing Greedy Bankers vs The World's multiplayer mode - an iPad-only variation where two players compete to make their fortune the fastest. I realised that rather than creating a separate game grid for each player, it would be easier just to build one giant grid with one side assigned to each player.

What came out of that turned out to be one of the most interesting and exciting parts of the game. Players weren't limited to using the gems on their grid. They could just reach over the board and steal anything they needed from their opponent! Players could get in each other's space, and that was great fun. To incentivise it, I added a bonus multiplier to every gem stolen, and the game took on a whole new lease of life.

Gems can be stolen in Greedy Bankers by taking them from your opponent's side

The game was for two players, but required both of them to use the whole screen as if it was their own. Players' approaches ranged from the desperately greedy to the polite and civilised, and some even descended into wrestling matches!

Noting that this was something very special, I wanted to explore this deeper in my next games. As such, it's why I ended up working on Slamjet Stadium - my upcoming multiplayer physics/sport mashup for iPad.

The tablet as a physical space

One of the great things about the tablet is it is a great big interactive canvas. You can do large gestural movements on it, you can play with objects without them being fiddly, and you can easily fit more than one hand on it at once. So it's the perfect device for physically-demanding touchscreen games, and there's plenty of room for multiplayer.

Slamjet Stadium: Get Ready!

Slamjet Stadium is nearing completion! I'm about to send out build 0.80 to testers, marking the point where it is "content-complete" with only tweaking and testing outstanding before it's ready to launch.

This is a very exciting stage to be at! I've put a lot into this project, including working over Christmas and staying up late coding to pretty weird music (it helps me concentrate!), so seeing it all taking shape is a wonderful feeling.

For those not yet familiar with the game, Slamjet Stadium is a local multiplayer iPad game. It's physics-based variation on football set in the distant future, where players are free to cheat and play dirty, using traps and power-ups to mess up their opponents, or simply stealing players from the other team. This youtube video shows the game in action!

So what's new in the final version?

Single-player is now complete, and I just want to balance the level of difficulty, which means plenty of testing and tweaking! There's three difficulty settings, each one affecting the level of speed, accuracy and behaviour of the AI opponents.

A final three teams were added to the roster, making a grand total of six, plus one secret boss team. Below are the new non-secret teams: the Precinct 9 Police Bots, and the Fanboys.

Slamjet Stadium Trailer!

Here it is! The trailer for my upcoming game, Slamjet Stadium for iPad.

Feel free to read more about the game here on the blog, or contact me via twitter or email (games [at] alistairaitcheson [dot] com) if you have any queries!

Slamjet Stadium is the upcoming iPad game from indie developer Alistair Aitcheson, creator of the Greedy Bankers games for iOS. Challenge your friends to crazy futuristic matches! Charge your hoverbike and slam the ball into the goal! Steal your friends' players and fling them into traps!

The rules of the game are simple, and the rules of social conduct are there to be broken. You can grab your opponent's players as well as your own, push them out of the way, or grab a teammate and play two-against-one. Wormholes, moving goals, ridiculous powerups and deadly traps give you more incentive to play dirty!

Also featured is a single-player mode, where you can take on a gauntlet of A.I. challengers to prove yourself as the galaxy's mightiest player!

Many thanks to the hugeley talented Tom Parfitt, who composed the music for the trailer and is creating music and audio for the game.

Slamjet Stadium will be available for iPad in the new year.

Welcome to Slamjet Stadium!

Galaxyball 2113 has a new title - it's now Slamjet Stadium and I'm so excited about how it's going!

The video below gives a brief rundown of how the game's played, so hopefully you can get a feel for what it's like in action.

Guess who's been making A.I.! 

Since my last post I've been putting a lot of work into the AI and then user interface. I've had a lot of fun doing the AI in particular - there's something oddly delightful of coding a game and watching it play by itself. I coded AI for Greedy Bankers vs The World, and it's fascinating how different the two implementations are.

What's new in Galaxyball?

I've been working pretty full-on with Galaxyball 2113 so far, and it's really taking shape. GameCity Nottingham proved to be a fantastic opportunity to test out the game with the general public. What's great about demoing at this kind of event is that the audience really runs the gamut of player-types: from children to grandparents, gamers and non-gamers alike.

 I managed to work in two new teams before the festival: the burly aggressive Astro Marines, and the Cortex Crusaders, who aren't just brains in jars… they're brains in rocket jars!

Functionally, the Astro Marines are heavier and bulkier than the other teams, while the Cortex Crusaders are smaller and floatier. One thing I did learn from GameCity is just how physical the game can be, I'll be making these kinds of differences bolder and broader so they have a clear effect on play. I was never a fan of subtlety anyway, so I'm going to experiment with other, more obvious abilities - the brains could psychically repel opponents, for example, or the marines could be protected against stage hazards.

I've also been putting a lot of effort into the look-and-feel of scenery, as I really want the player to feel like they're part of some brutal sports tournament. I've been working on scenery such as vents, pipes and fans to make arenas feel more industrial, and the flashing lights respond to the state of play and upcoming hazards, making it feel more alive.

There's also an extra two arenas added in now: one with wormholes, for an extra jolt of unpredictability, and another where the goals regularly change position.

Thomas Was Alone developer Mike Bithell tries out Galaxyball at GameCity

The really exciting take-home from GameCity was just how physical people get over the game. As soon as they score their first goal, players tend to get very competitive - which is exactly what I want. Just like Greedy Bankers' iPad multiplayer, I want players to get in each others' way, steal each other's characters, and mess each other up within the game world and in the space around the screen. In fact, that whole feel works even better here than it did in Bankers.

Both players need to use the whole space to play, which means they both get to use the whole of that lovely big iPad screen. And because players don't always need to be in the exact same place at the same time, it's more of a scramble for a good position than a fight over the exact same spot. It's hard to explain, but it makes the whole game feel fluid - a clash of hands never creates a stalemate - and that's incredibly encouraging.

It's certainly an exciting time for the game and I can't wait to show off some more as it expands!

For the sake of perspective, here's how the very first prototype looked. Great oaks from little acorns eh? It was fantastic fun even at that rough-and-ready stage, which is exactly what you want a prototype to be, and why I was so excited to pursue this project in the first place.

Galaxyball Coming to GameCity Nottingham 25-26 October

If you're heading to GameCity Nottingham this month (which you should be, as it's amazing) please do have a peek at the Old Market Square on Thursday 25th and Friday 26th, where I'll be exhibiting Galaxyball 2113 in its first public showing!

With the game still in development this will be a fantastic opportunity to test it out with the general public, so if you're there I'll be very excited to get your feedback. I'm particularly excited to see how different people find the multiplayer experience, so I can get a feel for which aspects of the game really buzz with players.

Greedy Bankers being played at GameCity 6 last year

I demoed Greedy Bankers vs The World at the event last year, and the multiplayer was fantastically popular. Lots of people visit GameCity with friends and family, so it's a perfect opportunity to test out player-vs-player party games like Galaxyball.

Introducing Galaxyball 2113!

Good morning everyone! I'm very excited to announce my latest game in the works. I've been building it for the past month or so, and hope to have it ready to launch in the new year.

Broadcast across the galaxy in the year 2113, Galaxyball is the number one deathsport of the 22nd Century. Teams from all four sectors compete for the grand title - including mutants, rocketeers, aliens, space marines and more - and for the first season ever, you will be able to take part too. Your iPad is a window to the future, and your finger powers the players! 

Galaxyball is a multiplayer iPad game, building on the stealing and cheating that were so popular in Greedy Bankers vs The World. This time we're jetting off to a physics-based future to play football on hoverbikes, and grabbing your opponents to fling them into traps is fair game!