Fig. 8 Developer Looks To The Stars With Eon
Having abandoned its episodic platformer Liferaft after working on the project for more than six months due to challenges with its development, indie developer Intuition Games is now showing off a smaller but still compelling Flash-based project: Eon.
Based on the trailer above, this puzzle game seems like a mix of Auditorium's stream-sculpting mechanics and Orbital/Orbient's atmosphere/lo-fi space setting. Here, you direct a current of colored bits, using markers that pull from the flow and minding nearby black holes, to different circles, filling them until everything explodes.
Intuition's Mike Boxleiter recently wrote an interesting post on the game industry focusing more and more on polishing gameplay, noting that while Eon's rules and mechanics were completed in 30 hours, he spent a month polishing the game:
"People want their experiences with their games to be smooth, easy to jump into and without any sharp corners, and I’m not standing on a pulpit looking down on the unwashed masses, I totally fall into this trap. ... The industry seems to be a lot more focused on releasing more and more polished games rather than innovating on gameplay, which makes sense from a business standpoint.It’s easy to see where there was clunky UI or where bad wall-hugging hurt player experience in Gears, it’s not so easy to see how people will react to a totally new game mechanic, especially when you remember that it’ll have to be polished up to the level the consumer expects. The cost of creating something new is so high at this point that it’s very very hard to justify."
The Iowa-based studio is currently looking for a sponsor for Eon, which it describes as "a particley puzzle game set in the 80s, when space was still a mystery". While the game isn't available to the public yet, you can try out Intuition's other remarkable titles: Fig. 8, Gray, and Effing Hail.
[Via TIGF]
Comments
Actually, the Liferaft project on Kickstarter raised 60% of their $5000 goal with a full two weeks left. Based on historical Kickstarter stats, it had a very high probability of success, which is partly why they canceled it.
They wanted to refocus their efforts on two other games and were behind schedule for Liferaft, so they decided to cancel the project.
Posted by: Andy Baio | December 4, 2009 10:39 AM
thanks for clarifying! i edited the post to emphasize that their reasons for abandoning the project were more due to other challenges.
Posted by: eric_c | December 4, 2009 10:47 AM
Thanks for clearing that up Andy, and thanks for the thoughtful post, Eric.
:)
Posted by: Greg Wohlwend | December 4, 2009 4:38 PM