Playing With Fire Gets New Manifesto
Over at Greg Costikyan's Manifesto Games website, he's revealed that the indie portal's first exclusive game will be 'Playing With Fire', a "...highly unusual platform puzzle game in which you play a giant ball of fire--and burn things down."
Costik explains: "Play With Fire was developed in an unusual way; [creator Chris] Bateman's company, International Hobo is based in the UK, but owns a development studio, Fantasy Labs Entertainment in India. Many of the game's more than 100 levels were created by people who responded when Bateman asked for submissions on his blog. So the development of Play With Fire was distributed not only across the Internet, but also across the globe."
Bateman has an entry on his blog celebrating the game going master (it was originally listed as a PS2 title to be released by Midas, too - but I don't see that mentioned anywhere?), commenting: "The basic principle has held: we’ve developed on a very low budget. Now all that remains is to see if there is a niche market out there looking for something a little bit different, something that could never be a mass market success, something which endeavours to be original."
He continues: "My biggest concern is our rather high minimum spec. We may be at the mercy of players more interested in the latest glossy FPS than an oddball game like this one." We'll try to post when it goes live - check Bateman's historical posts for more info on the thoughts that went into the design of the game.
Comments
Hm, I think he should be more concerned about how incredibly awful it looks on screenshots. I know it's not a big-budget title, but still...
Also, going up exclusively on Manifesto Games is a bad idea. Despite all the noise made by the founders of that service, it's really nothing more than yet another internet game portal, and afaik it's not a particularily popular one either.
That said, the gameplay looks interesting. I decided a long time ago that I'd give it a go when it was done, and I'm still going to do that.
Posted by: fluffy bunny | December 31, 2006 3:28 AM
Ahaha it's ironic that Mr Costykian was loathing the mainstream game industries a few months ago for producing what he considered "bad games" based on several criterias, and boasting that he was the messiah of indies and was about to revolutionarize the industry. But now look at his exclusive title. It was off-shored to india and the levels where made by users.
Well done, the jokes on him I think. that should teach anyone not to criticize other people's work before you have released yours...
Posted by: moi | January 1, 2007 4:49 PM
Harsh! This game wasn't 'off shored', I was looking for programmers to work with and found one in India. And it's equally harsh to belittle the work of the external pool - they made some fantastic fields for the game. Don't you think you should take a look at their work before dismissing it?
And yes, I know the screen shots are unimpressive - you really need to see it running to appreciate what the visuals are about.
Well, I think it's fun, but I made it. :) If you want to belittle it, be my guest, but it would be polite to look at the game first, I think.
*shrugs*
Posted by: Chris | January 18, 2007 3:42 AM