Spooky Squid Games at Fan Expo Toronto - Aug 22-25, 2013

We’ll be at Fan Expo in Toronto from Thursday through the weekend! Come play They Bleed Pixels and pick up some rare TBP merch including the super rare Little Black Envelope Edition pictured above!

We’re booth #2042 right across from Ubisoft in the South Building by a clump of other indie game folks including Capy, Christine Love, Onipunks, DMG Toronto and Bento Miso

More info on Fan Expo Here - http://www.fanexpocanada.com/

We’ll also be stateside at PAX PRIME the weekend after. More info soon!

Miguel Interviewed on BigSushi.FM Podcast

I was interviewed a few weeks ago by the folks at BigSushi.FM, it was during a craaaazy heatwave in Toronto and I slowly became more and more heatstroke delirious as it progressed.  We discuss a whole bunch of the things I’m involved in, not just They Bleed Pixels but Comics vs Games, The Hand Eye Society and even my brief foray into the world of special effects for film (*cough* Cube2: Hypercube *cough*).

Listen as I slowly melt!

Interview on my mixed opinions on Steam Trading Cards as a developer.

Want to read about my mixed feelings on Steam trading cards?
Here’s an article in Games Radar that fulfills that need!

The title is a bit sensational but I think the article itself does a pretty great job of condensing a nuanced 45 min conversation into a few paragraphs. I do not envy journalists their trade.

Poster For Game Jam Documentary

Game Jam Documentary is a film being created by our friend Troy Morrissey who did much of the sound design work on They Bleed Pixels (under an insane deadline (Sorry Troy!)).  GJD is pretty much what the title implies: a documentary on game jam’s and jam culture.  You can read more about it here: http://www.gamejamthedocumentary.com/

When they launched an indiegogo campaign early in the films development they asked me to create a pixel art poster they could give out as a backer reward. I agreed thinking I’d have plenty of time to get it done after They Bleed Pixels dropped. I WAS SO WRONG!  The poster took A LOT longer to finish up then either of us expected, and it is totally my fault it’s late (sorry backers!). But it’s finally done! Troy will be printing ‘em up soon and sending them out to backers.

One subtle thing you might not catch is that each of the jammers has some sort of alter ego in the cloud of game sprites hovering above them. Some are obvious others are more subtle.

Someone made the They Bleed Pixels dress in Animal Crossing!

Thanks to reddit user rocan91 for creating this awesome version of the TBP dress. I had been planning on borrowing a friend’s 3DS to try making one myself but it looks like rocan91 did a great job! I’d love to see some screenshots of folks wearing it so I can see how it looks in game.

Note: You probably need to click on the image and view it full size to get the QR codes to work properly

http://www.reddit.com/r/ACQR/comments/1i0zoo/request_dress_from_they_bleed_pixels/

Oh and a reminder we’re selling TBP super cheap on Steam for the next week or so! http://store.steampowered.com/app/211260/

So I spent a little time this weekend messing around with Saint Row 3’s character creation stuff...

Cross posting this from our FB page:

So I spent a little time this weekend messing around with Saint Row 3’s character creation stuff and created a pretty credible likeness of the They Bleed Pixels girl. SR3 is not really my thing but the customization and online sharing tools are pretty great.

If you want to run around Steelport as the Clawed Girl here’s a link to her on saintsrow.com http://www.saintsrow.com/community/characters/details/126189313149623974

Someone has also made some sweet TBP Minecraft skins that I posted awhile back:

http://www.planetminecraft.com/skin/they-bleed-pixels-heroine-full-transformation/
http://www.planetminecraft.com/skin/they-bleed-pixels-heroine-normal/

Anyone tried recreating her in other games?

Love Love Hill Sketch of Toronto Indie Games

Artist Dirchansky from the excellent Love Love Hill comics collective just posted this awesome sketch featuring They Bleed Pixels alongside fellow Toronto indie games Home and Analogue: A Hate Story (links below if you don’t know about them)

We were all part of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival’s trip to take part in the Kaigai Manga Festa in Tokyo last year. I really should get around to posting some TBP related pictures of that trip because it was pretty amazing.

sumafu:

Coolios Toronto indie game developers~ check their games out !!
Spooky Squid Games’s They Bleed Pixels
Christine Love’s Analogue: a Hate Story
Benjamin River’s Home

They Bleed Pixels Steam Trading Cards released!

So I had a lot of fun putting these together. A good chunk of the art is new and there’s some brand new story nuggets for fans who want more info on the world of They Bleed Pixels. Hope you all enjoy them!

If you don’t have They Bleed Pixels yet Amazon has it at a 66% discount with 3 free games as a bonus or you can get it at full price direct from Steam.

If you aren’t familiar with the whole Steam Trading Card thing here’s the info on how it all works.

Official Steam Avatars for They Bleed Pixels

I’ve spent the last few days putting together a Steam trading card set for They Bleed Pixels (more on that soon, when they launch!) and stumbled onto the tab that let’s me add official game avatars to Steam. Yes we really should have had these months ago when the game launched. I’m the first to admit I’m kinda clueless as to what’s available on the Steam community side of things. But better late then never!

So here are the five avatars which include some new artwork created for the Steam trading cards along with some older art from the game.  You can add them to your steam profile here. I may add a few more in the future.

We are of course 100% cool with folks downloading these and using them for other services, twitter etc…

They Bleed Pixels: Tips for new Players

We’ve got a bunch of new players coming in due to the sale so I thought I’d post up a few tips for folks discovering just how difficult (and rewarding!) They Bleed Pixels can be.

  • Play with a gamepad if you can! We support Xbox360 and other XInput controllers automatically and there are several ways to hook up gamepads that use the older directInput standard.
     
  • Prefer ‘X’ for attack? The controls can be customized in the options menu.
     
  • Having trouble with the little squidies? Don’t forget your dash attack, slash up and charge down attacks. They’re each super effective in the right situation.
     
  • Having trouble with slippery surfaces? Remember you can still react quickly in the air. When you can, use your jump and double jump to quickly change direction.
     
  • Having trouble with double jumping after wall jumps? Make sure you’re first hitting jump then pushing away from the wall. Otherwise you will fall off it first and then use your double jump early. There’s a few frames of buffer to help but for some that isn’t enough.
     
  • Don’t try to get all the pages and achievements your first time through a level.
     
  • If you’re stuck on a level try going back to an earlier one and search for pages or go for an achievement. You’ll probably be surprised by how much you’ve improved in skill!
     
  • Take a break. They Bleed Pixels was never intended to be played in a single sitting. As with the old game’s that inspired TBP you’ll often find your skills have improved when you come back to it.
     

If the controls feel slow or sluggish you’re probably not running the game at full speed! Experiment with turning off effects, parallax and v-synch in the options. If your graphic card is below spec you may also get better speeds running full screen or windowed depending on your particular card. Updating to the latest drivers can also make a big difference in some cases. For laptops make sure the screen is set to refresh at 60Hz or higher.

I occasionally come back and add to this list. If there’s a tip you think should be included let me know! (gif source: http://simonlane.tumblr.com/)

Amazing Japanese They Bleed Pixels Fan Video!

Just found this amazing fan video of our game They Bleed Pixels today. Since Nico Nico is weird about sharing video links I figure this would be a good first post for our new (and still default skinned) Spooky Squid Games tumblr!

FUN FACTS:
The two girls in the video decide that all the blood is strawberry jam. If you listen carefully you can hear them yelling “jamu-jamu” and “ichigo jam” during particularly bloody moments. Also keep an eye out for when one of them gets cursed with TBP claws!

The video starts with a really impressive parody of the game’s opening cutscene. Among other changes the protagonist is switched out and the statues have all been replaced with various indie game characters. I recognize Gaijin Game’s Commander Video and the little critters from Spirits by Spaces of Play. Anyone know what the third statue is from?

if you haven’t picked it up yet They Bleed Pixels is 66% off this week on Steam!
 

They Bleed Pixels

If you've been following us on Twitter you've probably heard me mention "TBP" a collaboration we've been working on with musician Shaun Hatton (aka DJ Finish Him).  We've been keeping the actual title under wraps till we we were ready to show some video. Last week's Gamercamp festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to properly announce the game with this short teaser.  I suggest cranking your speakers, going full screen and HD so the pixels are huge and sharp.

So there you have it. "TBP" is They Bleed Pixels, a fast paced, gothic, low-fi pixel art, platforming beat'em up with a chiptune style  soundtrack coming out on Xbox Live Indies.

You'll notice this game looks very different then our other games.    Inspired by games like Niddhogg I wanted to experiment with a more abstract,  simple style that would let me really focus on smooth and stylish animation.

In terms of gameplay, all of our games are built with specific goals in mind:

  • Night of Cephalopods: Experimenting with Dynamic Narration.
  • Cephalopods: Co-op Cottage Defence: Creating co-op play that requires players to constantly talk and plan while they play.
  • The Night Balloonists:Make a one button party game that had the same pacing and skill vs chance balance of games like bomber man.
  • Guerrilla Gardening: Creating opportunities for creative puzzle solving through the interplay of dynamic systems and AI.  Exploring themes of public space and direct action. It's a bigger game so it gets to have more ambitious goals.

They Bleed Pixels is about game feel. The kinetic joy of moving and interacting with the game and creating beat'em up combat that isn't button mashy or button heavy.  We also wanted it to be a game that was radically different from our others so we could switch back and forth and keep our brains active.

Dj Finish Him instruments.
Dj Finish Him instruments.

This is also our first game collaborating with a musician.  We met Shaun in the summer when he interviewed us for Electric Playground, a month or so later I ran into him at a Hand Eye Society social and he handed me a postcard with a link to his chiptunes mentioning that he was interested in doing game music.  I saw a good fit between what he was doing and the look I had in mind for They Bleed Pixels and a few emails later and we were set.

We'll be posting more info on the game as it gets closer to completion.  Till then I suggest you head over to Shaun's DJ Finish Him site and download his awesome free albums!

Spooky Squid Games on Electric Playground

Electric Playground did a bunch of indie games coverage this month and we got covered twice! Over the summer they visited Spooky Squid HQ (aka my home office) to film and talk about our games.

ep-squid
ep-squid

EP: Spooky Squid Games

They also covered the OCAD Start Show in September.  Around a minute in they interview me about Cephalopods: Co-op Cottage Defence. If your quick you can also catch Andrew and his kid playing the game in the background.

ep-start
ep-start

EP: The Start Show

If you're wondering about the big black squares around everything, it looks like they ran into a common gamemaker bug while capturing it at EP (If you're getting that bug at home, a good old reboot usually fixes it).   Lesson learned! After seeing that we're definitely going to be providing our own footage to journalists in the future.

Nuit Blanche Arcadian Renaissance

We recently had Nuit Blanche 2010 in Toronto, an all night event where the city is filled with all sorts of art, from gallery shows to huge building sized interactive installations. This year it also had an arcade thanks to The Hand Eye Society. Our game Cephalopods: Co-op Cottage Defence was one of the indie games exhibited.

There were six cabinets in all, each running an indie game made in part or in whole by people in and around Toronto.  Unfortunately the Osmos cabinet, a modified original Torontron, gave up the ghost and had to be reverted to it's standard set of games.

 
 

Cephalopods: Co-op Cottage Defence got a new arcade specific build, and (finally) a proper title screen.  I'm still doing some tweaks before I put the home version up on the Spooky Squid website, but the old version is still available for play.

A full shot of the cabinet complete with back lit marquee.

The arcade took place in an amazing space at the brand new TIFF Bell Lightbox Building.  The Lightbox was designed for film festivals which means we also had access to a huge projector...

...which was used for rounds of Everyday Shooter, Cephalopods: Co-op Cottage Defence, and a midnight Nidhogg tournament!

The award winning Nidhogg was our international guest game for the event. You can really see the size of the screen here.

Several of the cabinets will now be loaded up with multiple games and distributed around the city. Each cabinet is set up for different control schemes.  Shown here the 'one button' cabinet playing Silent Skies!

Mark Rabo from Gamercamp put together a great video of the event:

And the TIFF folks produced this one with an awesome packman soundtrack:

This was put together thanks to a huge number of volunteers and several generous sponsors.  Full list of games and everyone involved is posted on the Hand Eye Society Website.

START show and The Indie Showcase

If you've been following our twitter feed you know this has been the year of indie game events here in Toronto, the Hand Eye Society has ended up being wildly more successful then any of us expected and there have been a ton of side projects and events spawned by it. If you're in Toronto two events are coming up in the next few days that are well worth attending:

START

Tomorrow night (Oct 16)  is the gala event for START a celebration of independent games at the Ontario Collage of Art and Design. They've been showing a huge number of independent games from around the world all week in a great space on big projected screens.   We probably won't be there due to being in the last week of grant writing hell (Canada's grants are awesome. Writing hundred plus page submissions, not so much) but a new build of Cephalopod's Co-op Cottage Defense will be there and projected huge!  The space they have is amazing and it's well worth checking out even if you miss the gala.

As part of START the folks at Gamercamp put together this great trailer on the local indie scene.

It's part of a bigger project they're working on. I'm really looking forward to seeing what they make from all the interviews they've been doing.

The Indie Showcase

On Saturday (Oct 18) my friend Alex from Golden Gear Games is holding the Indie Showcase with live music, presentations from local indie developers, more games to play and, weather permitting, games projected outside on a 40 foot wall! Info on the event here.  We will not be attending, again due to what will by then be a full blown grantpocalypse .  However Night Balloonists and Cephalopod's Co-op Cottage Defense will be playable.

More events coming soon (and eventually more development vids I freaking promise!).

RGBfilter Interview

Been quiet on the blogging front for a bit, but not to worry we've just been busy on Guerrilla Gardening and some other projects. Here's a rather epic sized interview with the folks at RGBfilter that hopefully makes up for our absence. [blip.tv ?posts_id=3897684&dest=-1]

It was taped a few months ago, so I don't remember everything we talked about.  I know we touched on my not-so-mysterious origin story, the Toronto indie game scene, the inspiration for Co-op Cottage Defense and Guerrilla Gardening... oh and that pesky are games art debate crops up as well.

We're on TV in France!

GGonTV-La-Matinale
GGonTV-La-Matinale

Guerrilla Gardening: Seeds of Revolution was on La Matinale, a French morning show last Monday!  We only have the sketchiest idea what they're saying since we're both terrible Canadians and neither of us are fluent in French.  I assume the bits where she's reading off paper are the interview questions they emailed me though.  Who knows!  I just get a kick out of hearing the name 'General Bauhaus' on TV. Go check it out and if you're more fluent we'd love to find out what they're saying.

This may actually be the second time we've been on TV in France, I had someone contact me for info last year, but never got a link to the show.

I've been doing a few interviews and the like in the last few months, here's a quick roundup:

Torontoist - 'Guerrilla Pixeling'

GOOD Magazine/Kill Screen - 'Guerrilla Gardening for Gamers'

Guest Appearanceon Level Fourtytwo's Talk is Cheap 4/12/10

UPDATE: Thanks to French game developer Shiftyweb (blog in French game portfolio in English) there's now  a quick and dirty translation in the comments.  Looks like the report was full of terrible puns and they misjudged Molly's age by a good chunk.  Still super cool to see the game in that context!

Spooky Squid at TCAF!

The excellent (and totally free!) Toronto Comic Arts Festival(TCAF)  is coming up this weekend.  Unlike your typical comic event this one is all about independent creators and small press comic books from around the world. It's also really big for an indie media event, taking up two floors of the Toronto Reference Library (Yes the one where Knives and Ramona fight in Scott Pilgrim vol.2).   Toronto's local indie games initiative The Hand Eye Society is setting up a booth at TCAF with a bunch of playable games and we're one of the participants. Here are the Spooky Squid Games @ TCAF specific details:

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