Subscribe to:

The Kiwi's TaleWitchBlasterDerelict Blow Stuff Up

Earok 2011 Collection: Gone gold!

The Earok 2011 Collection has gone Gold! Official page is still coming, but for the mean time you can grab it here.

Here is what's different to the individual versions of the games on the site:

  • Blow Stuff Up: General bug fixes.
  • Derelict: New "1 Player Solo" mode for those who prefer action to strategy. Some tweaks to the story to match my current "vision" of the Derelict universe.
  • Firestart: Overhaul of graphics and story (making it a prequel to Derelict) and XBox 360 controller support (Note: I haven't been able to comprehensively playtest it, so there may be remaining showstopping bugs).
  • Heart of Ice: Two player co-operative mode, joypad support, and brilliant new score by Sergio Cornaga.
  • Noah More Heroes: General bug fixes.
  • The Kiwi's Tale: General bug fixes.
  • WitchBlaster: Anthony's new DJ Bat Boss, which might be the coolest thing ever.
  • All with HTML manuals and can be opened from a launcher application.

The collection represents almost five years of my freeware game development efforts. A limited "Promotional Release" run will be sold at Overload this weekend, but I'll definitely be distributing a few free copies to the scores of people who have collaborated with me on the games.

I have a lot of people to thank for all of the help they've sunk into the collection, but for this release I'd especially like to thank (in no particular order):

  • Mark Sibly for the brilliant Blitz series of languages - the games on the collection are all from the latest three iterations (Blitz3D, BlitzMax and Monkey).
  • Sam Jeffreys, for being a constant help for the past five years.
  • Anthony Lau, for the brilliant art contributed to WitchBlaster and Blow Stuff Up.
  • Sergio Cornaga, for Heart of Ice's new score.
  • Cobra Blade, for the cover art and vastly improved interface for Derelict.
  • Seong J Oh, for letting me use a table at the Graphic Novel Cafe every Saturday to work on the collection.
  • Gui Chirinéa, for, amongst other things, the Portuguese translations of Kiwi's Tale and Blow Stuff Up.
  • Christian Toft, Pater Alf, and the awesome guys at Curly's World of Freeware for their help and support.
  • Arran Ubels, for being by far the most prolific commentor on the site.
  • Stephen Knightly, for his enormous effort to help foster the Auckland game developer's community, also for having patience while our other projects slowed down when I was working on this!
  • Kirsty Win, for her love and support.
  • Anyone who has ever contributed to, or provided feedback for, any one of my games.

Well, that's it for now. I'll probably re-release the individual games over the next few weeks, but there's definitely a lot of other stuff I need to catch up on before I get back into game development.

Coming next year: The Earok 2012 collection, and maybe BattleSuit.

 

Edit - I should put together a trailer before overload, though I don't claim to be an expect in that field so I'd love it if someone could put something together. Ideally it should have footage from all seven games, including their two player modes.

Tags:

Comments

Sergio (not verified)

Oh yeah, Sega Master System style!

Earok
Earok's picture
Offline
Joined: 02/06/2009

Heh, I thought Sega Master system styled box art would make an interesting choice. If I do a 2012 collection, I'm thinking I'd either like (early) Mega Drive style boxed art, or a sideways N64 like cover. Someone even suggested a Atari 2600 Activision "Rainbow" type cover.

hydra9
hydra9's picture
Offline
Joined: 05/24/2009

Congratulations, Erik! I mean it when I say that you make great games and it's inspiring how you dedicate yourself to them, finish them and continue to enhance them.

Downloading this now.
 

I agree with Sergio: Great style choice for the cover! :D

Earok
Earok's picture
Offline
Joined: 02/06/2009

Cheers mate, although the games would be nothing without great contributions such as those from yourself.

Latest word from the printers is the physical copies should be ready on Thursday.

arran4
Offline
Joined: 05/05/2009

[Obligatory comment]

Cobra
Cobra's picture
Offline
Joined: 03/09/2011

Congratulations on the five year achievement!

Hope you have a blast at Overload.

Earok
Earok's picture
Offline
Joined: 02/06/2009

@arran4 [polite response]

@Cobra cheers mate, should be fantastic. I'm probably going to spend far too much on the pretty anime girl prints I always get from there!

anthony_O-O
anthony_O-O's picture
Offline
Joined: 03/07/2011

Yeah~~! Thanks for giving me a chance to learn about game graphics production :D

JoshuaSmyth (not verified)

Haha, that's brilliant!

Earok
Earok's picture
Offline
Joined: 02/06/2009

@anthony Cheers mate, I hope you're interested in continuing to learn about game graphics production ;)

@joshuasmyth Heh thanks, Cobra did an awesome job of capturing the Sega Master System look and feel. Physical copies apparently are finished, picking them up tomorrow.