Piron Games Insider

As Born of Fire TD pretty much hit the maintenance end of the line and only one license (see the previous post) remains to be customized, it’s time to move on and explore other creative horizons

A puzzle game has been completed – it’s actually ready since April – and it’s that kind of game that will twist your brain so hard that will make it melt down So I won’t be surprised if lots will hate it. Spil licensed it, which means that it too waits for localizations in 13 languages, which further means that the public release date is unknown. Probably in September.

Meanwhile, a bullet-hell/arena-shooter title is in the making, the result of my collaboration with a talented artist, which, incidentally, is my cousin. Not that cousin, though. Anyway, expect cartoon-ish graphics, flying pigs, a little less conversation, a little more action. Audio/video assets are done 90%, code&design are trying to catch-up, expect a beta in September.

Also, two other titles are in pre-production and are trying to make themselves a place in the busy schedule. One is a “match-3″ type puzzle, but with a lemon twist, the other is a strategy with ZX Spectrum retro feel, which will, somewhat resemble Orbital Decay. Both are small projects and will probably take 2-6 weeks to complete. Unless a catastrophic event is scheduled, they might be out during the Autumn months.

I have abandoned momentarily any project that might take more than 6-8 weeks to complete, so Orbital Decay 2 is postponed indefinitely. There is a concept for the graphics and game-play, but I don’t have anything clever to say as the story, and since the story was the backbone of the first game, it would be a pity to waste effort for a game that doesn’t “speak”. I’d pretty much like to do it sometimes, but I’m aware that it exceeds my resources right now.

As for the Born of Fire TD 2, there’s not going to be any. Maybe a Born of Fire RPG, I’d pretty much like to expand on that universe, but that’s so far in the future that I’ll probably release Pure Power before it

Has been uploaded on the portal.

It includes a bug fix for the medals icons going beserk after repeatedly opening the mission window in the mission selection screen.

Also,  proud to announce that Spil (also) acquired a license, which means that game is going to be localized in 16 languages (unfortunately, all texts but the story). So the game received minor tweaks to the way texts are rendered, which won’t be obvious unless you’ll play the Chinese, Japanese or Russian versions

Public stats for Orbital Decay are available here.

Stats are for game impressions: one Mochibot ping before the game is loaded/initialized.

The game was also licensed to Armor Games, where it got 300k+ plays and an unknown number of plays at Big Fish Games (but probably around 100k). All in all, 2.5 million game plays for a game that scored 3.75 at Kongregate, 4.15 at Newgrounds and 7 point something at Armor Games and received overall mixed feelings of awe and anger

Jayisgames reviewed it and their readers voted it  in the top 10 browser shooters of 2009, while later on, the reviewer, Josh, remember it as:

the “battleship” premise is unique and under-utilized in this genre, sporadically popping up in occasional gems like Orbital Decay.

Our players said that it sucked badly enough that it deserved a lengthy bash or that it ruled and is the best game evar. No compromises, love it or hate it. Just as I intended to

…is live on the portal and has the following features:

• unlocked heroes are no more level 1. Instead, they get the same level as the lowest of the other heroes. This should greatly reduce the “grinding” for “Normal” campaign.
• heroes over level 20 get a 10% bonus per hero level to damage skills. This should help (and motivate) players that go for the “Hell” and “Eternal Damnation” missions;
• there are now visual rewards for completing a mission with one hero (the crown) and completing the mission without letting a monster slip (the shield).

Play it here and don’t hesitate to comment.

Publishing your games on Nonoba is fun!

…click…click…type…type…click…click…submit…*wait*

Table ‘.\nonoba\search’ is marked as crashed and should be repaired

If this isn’t fun, then I don’t know what else is

If you think you’ve spotted one too many Manowar references in Born of Fire, here’s why:

So remember: when doing house chores, it’s imperative to wear Manowar insignia! Humming “boooorn with a heaaaart of steeeeeel” is optional, but recommended. It really helps

It’s a fact: bugs love me.

Flash-back, a couple of years ago. As part of the Gameloft porting drone army, I’ve got the task of getting AND1 Streetball work on a couple of Sprint phones. On the first look, the phones were decent, with plenty of package and memory and it seemed like an easy task. But nooo….

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In the pure Diablo 2 tradition, here are the Born of Fire TD hero stats as tables.

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Here’s a little Flash tower-defense game called Nicemetal by Babara.

It’s not something that screams for mainstream: the name is weird (and we don’t care as long as it follows the “all your base” pattern ), 8-bit graphics (and even of the very dull and dusty kind), 8-bit music, the menus and cutscenes are in Japanese and the menu flow is kind of weird and highly against any good UI experience, including the fact that it doesn’t save the mission progress and you have to finish the game in one session.

But, as I said, it’s okay because the gameplay is brilliant in its simplicity. You don’t build anything, you don’t upgrade anything, all the turrets are already built. You don’t have to worry about waves and enemies: there is only one enemy. All you have to do is send 5 pixels small stickmen to man the turrets or wherever on the field to fire pixelated bullets, again and again, because they’re kind of amnesiac and return to the pool after a short while. All in all, the gameplay faintly reminds me of Z by Bitmap Brothers.

The game it would have been a masterpiece if the squashed stickmen would have died in a pool of blood, like you can do in another game by these guys

Play

Then please share and shout hard.

The Immortal Heroes
Vladislav “DreamRunner” Lobanov
Robert Gonzales
Jon Adamich
Tasselfoot

The Doom Warriors
Traian Pop
Stelian Serban
Stefan ‘Max the Fireraven’ Giurgiu