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Dead Horizon

 
NEW (VERY) SHORT MURDER MYSTERY SCI-FI ADVENTURE GAME!Sep 26, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHey everyone. A friend of mine was the main dev on STARSHIP MURDER and I did the narrative design. It's the best title I'll ever come up with. Kuba the main dev wrote up a whole thing about all the work that went into it, so I'll let him do most of the talking. FROM NOW ON YOU HEAR THE WORDS OF KUBA. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/26308370/6168b1dfe90c697069e21de71d7c8704d470c798.png Hey, everybody! Kuba from My Next Games here. Ufffff…. It took me longer than I anticipated but I finally got our new game out into the world! It’s called Tales From The Arcade: Starship Murder and it’s an experimental murder mystery roguelite in which the killer changes every time you play. You can now get it for free via Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2541360/Tales_From_The_Arcade_Starship_Murder/ or if you prefer web browser visit Newgrounds: https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/44254674/fa44a32af76ebdf746d431860d898eb191894788.png With this little announcement out of the way, let’s move on to this month’s update. Today I thought I would tell you the story of Starship Murder’s development. I decided to do so not only to show you the process behind a curtain but also as a record of how this thing came to be. As I mentioned in a previous update, it all started with Hank: Straightjacket - a tiny little adventure game we made at the end of last year. We came out of that side project with high spirit. It was a lot of fun to quickly create something small that everyone can enjoy. As soon as Hank: Straightjacket was released, in our spare time, we started brainstorming ideas for another little game we could make. After a month we took a vote to decide which one we’re gonna pursue. https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/44254674/9ff57ad4117e0634f70ed7909a04d7475c8c085c.png The vote landed on the picture above. The concept was simple: you click different points of the space station to repair it. After a few more discussions we added in the murder mystery angle. Expecting the people to follow a real time dialog while they keep an eye on the station sounded risky. It could have ended up overwhelming a player. We decided to go with it anyway :P. After all, we were making a tiny free indie game. The goal was to create something unique and learn from the experience. With all that out of the way it was time for a dummy screenshot. It’s a method I use to better visualize the game to everyone on the team. As my art skills are pretty limited (I’m a programmer) what I usually do is mash tougher whatever I can find on the internet until it resembles what I’m trying to convey :D This is also where we moved away from the idea of the space station in favor of a starship. The journey that is implied with a spacecraft was a natural way of telling the player when the game would end and at the same time it maintained the atmosphere of isolation we were trying to invoke. https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/44254674/e37773380cd5bf19d58edf80f845779eabb8a9f3.png Then, finally ca...Hank: Strightjacket -Feb 4, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsGreetings human humans! My friends created this 'micro' adventure game. It’s about a vigilante with time powers trying not to get shot in the head and It's now available on Steam! I did the writing for it but most of it was done by Kuba. The idea the whole thingy. It was to test out some engine stuff. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2277670/Hank_Straightjacket/ Let me pass it on to Kuba - the game’s programmer - he can really talk about... well... the game. Listen to him. He's cool. -------------- Hey, everybody! Kuba from My Next Games here. How’s everyone doing in the new year? For us it’s been busy. Last month, we’ve won a for a video game prototype! (I’m the guy in brown pants in the photo) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43507426/0be4921a44d2d1af3bfa265759a034a1da274408.jpg The competition was organized by CRPK Poland and we entered it with a proposal for a small point-and-click game - Hank: Straightjacket. Here’s the story of how this little adventure game came to be: We were about to start working on a new dialog system for our main project - Hank: Drowning on Dry Land - and we wanted it to be a bit different. In a regular game when the conversation starts the game pauses - you talk to the character and you’re basically unable to do anything else. We want to change this and allow players to interact with the world while still in dialogue. There are some challenges that stem from that approach, though. What happens if the player does something noteworthy during the conversation? Wouldn’t it feel strange if the hero broke a piece of furniture and the npc didn't react to it? We had some ideas on how to tackle those problems but we couldn’t be sure they would work without trying them out in an actual game. And so we went on a rapid prototyping spree… {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43507426/f795d7b8e8dc01c2d8dbdbabcb2bd19d58054be2.gif …Two weeks and five gallons of coffee later we finally had a build and a working prototype of the system. As a side effect we created this tiny escape room experience. We were quite surprised that it was even playable! So, we called it Hank: Straightjacket and decided to release it as a free game. If you’d like to - giving it a go! Hope you guys enjoy it and if you’re interested in more Hank’s adventure here the link to Hank: Drowning on Dry Land: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1937880/Hank_Drowning_On_Dry_Land/ Cya Around, Kuba Full Dead Horizon adventure game longer demo thing now playable!Jun 19, 2022 - Community AnnouncementsFull Dead Horizon adventure game demo now playable! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/30096761/a2a10103690f4e083dbd3d33cc63e3cfe3ab7336.png Greetings fellow shootists! Over the years a lot of people have told me that if there was a more fleshed out version of this game they would love to play it. Something with you know... more... game in it. While this game came out about exactly as I wanted it, one way or another, I'll admit, I have been working on a more fleshed out version of this game for a few years. The demo was supposed to be shown off in the steamfest this week, but... Well, I am also sometimes an idiot. I messed up the submission process twice so instead... the demo is going to be available next week! I'll have my OWN Steamfest! It won't have blackjack or hookers but it will have the (Still slightly janky) demo for Dead Horizon: The Longer Version! A full adventure game with point and click stuff going on. An inventory. It includes... The ability to talk to people. The ability to shoot people. An inventory. A lot of niche and optional content most people will never see because sometimes late at night I can't sleep and I just go write long conversations The ability to look at things and get descriptions of them! No voice acting! Being slightly unfinished. SFX especially need a touch more work. An obvious representation of my psyche an world view in video game form. A weird sci0fi western setting that seems to be a normal western setting at first but if you read way too many of the buried look ats you realize 'wait what?!' and then you are like 'oh, okay' and then you're like 'huh, maybe he should have made this more obvious?' Years of blood and sweat soaked into the code and pixels in a desperate attempt to hold onto my nostalgia of the 90s. Ability to shoot someone's hat off their head. Pixel art that is really really keeno! Play as a drunk! Freak people out by pulling your gun out randomly mid conversation. Um... there's other stuff. I think. It's something you can check out right now over here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1368540/Dead_Horizon/ Eventually this game will probably get named something lame like Dead Horizon: Origins. Or Dead Horizon: The first game I made a long time ago but calling the other one Dead Horizon 2 feels weird. The demo will be up and playable for a week or so. Feel free to play it, wishlist it, tell people about it, make fun of it, hate it, or whatever. I mean, I can't control you. You seem like an independent and smart minded person if you've reading this update, and you know what? I trust you. You'll probably get what I'm trying to build here. Feel free to tell me if I am missing the mark! This is a demo meaning that feedback at this stage is fantabulous. I hope all of you find what you are looking for out in the shifting sands. -Always Matthew Ritter {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/30096761/5e473b27631d0473976bce71ff1aeccb564ce1e8.pngDead Horizon out on NewgroundsAug 26, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsI have no idea how many of you out there have any idea what Newgrounds is. It's a place where people put up videos and games long before steam or youtube. A lot of people remember it as that place where cock jokes, homophobia and porn reigned supreme. It is also a place where if you had flash you could make a video, put it up, and have it looked at by a very active community that would rate it and give detailed feedback on it. It is a place of imagination and demos. When the internet was young and so was I the gaming systems I had was a mac. The mac couldn't run most games. I was always looking for new or interesting or free games on the early internet. I found Newgrounds. A place where games were coming out that I could play all the time. Most of them were short. Under ten minutes. Shorter than that even. They were wacky, weird, and often just a single idea, screen, puzzle, or mood. They were experimental and beautiful. Horrific and challenging. Ugly and charming. They took what a computer game could be and stretched it. They played with the concept of genera and art and good taste and they tossed it around like a rag doll. A lot of what I know about game design and a lot of my favorite games came out of this site. I still go looking every now and then and still find things that blow me away. I think there is value in the short. I think some of the best fiction ever written is in short stories. I think some of the best films of all time are in short films. I think some of the best jokes ever told are one liners. I think there is value to short fiction. A beauty in simplicity. I think that something being short and free doesn't preclude it from being powerful or emotionally connecting with someone. Newgrounds showed me what games could be. It showed a lot of people on the internet what games could be. That they didn't have to be defined in the ways they had been up to that point. More importantly, it gave people a place to showcase them. To vote and share and express themselves through games at one another. Dead Horizon wouldn't exist without Newgrounds. In many ways I might not exist without it. If you have a few moments, please go vote on the Newgrounds version of Dead Horizon and then... look at some other things on the site. You might find something surprising. Good? Bad? Hard to say. Just surprising. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/698298Dead Horizon out on NewgroundsAug 26, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsI have no idea how many of you out there have any idea what Newgrounds is. It's a place where people put up videos and games long before steam or youtube. A lot of people remember it as that place where cock jokes, homophobia and porn reigned supreme. It is also a place where if you had flash you could make a video, put it up, and have it looked at by a very active community that would rate it and give detailed feedback on it. It is a place of imagination and demos. When the internet was young and so was I the gaming systems I had was a mac. The mac couldn't run most games. I was always looking for new or interesting or free games on the early internet. I found Newgrounds. A place where games were coming out that I could play all the time. Most of them were short. Under ten minutes. Shorter than that even. They were wacky, weird, and often just a single idea, screen, puzzle, or mood. They were experimental and beautiful. Horrific and challenging. Ugly and charming. They took what a computer game could be and stretched it. They played with the concept of genera and art and good taste and they tossed it around like a rag doll. A lot of what I know about game design and a lot of my favorite games came out of this site. I still go looking every now and then and still find things that blow me away. I think there is value in the short. I think some of the best fiction ever written is in short stories. I think some of the best films of all time are in short films. I think some of the best jokes ever told are one liners. I think there is value to short fiction. A beauty in simplicity. I think that something being short and free doesn't preclude it from being powerful or emotionally connecting with someone. Newgrounds showed me what games could be. It showed a lot of people on the internet what games could be. That they didn't have to be defined in the ways they had been up to that point. More importantly, it gave people a place to showcase them. To vote and share and express themselves through games at one another. Dead Horizon wouldn't exist without Newgrounds. In many ways I might not exist without it. If you have a few moments, please go vote on the Newgrounds version of Dead Horizon and then... look at some other things on the site. You might find something surprising. Good? Bad? Hard to say. Just surprising. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/698298Linux Patch! Maybe this one works?!Aug 23, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsHey everyone, I got in contact with some devs over at: http://store.steampowered.com/app/368390/The_Darkside_Detective/ (Which is a great game, go play it, makes this one look like junk!) And they suggested some fixes. We have released them. Could all of you that have been having problems in Linux check it out? See if maybe now... finally... the game works! Linux Patch! Maybe this one works?!Aug 23, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsHey everyone, I got in contact with some devs over at: http://store.steampowered.com/app/368390/The_Darkside_Detective/ (Which is a great game, go play it, makes this one look like junk!) And they suggested some fixes. We have released them. Could all of you that have been having problems in Linux check it out? See if maybe now... finally... the game works! Linux users! A small bit of help!Aug 21, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsSo! We think it seems that all the issues are caused by having the game in full screen mode. We've set it so the game opens windowed, but it won't override a users default if they've already set it to open in full screen. Could everyone who is still with us, check their linux version and see if there are any issues that are not fixed by taking it out of full screen mode and into windowed? Thank you all so much. We're not sure what's causing the issue in fullscreen mode, but this would at least let us know that all the users can use the game. Linux users! A small bit of help!Aug 21, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsSo! We think it seems that all the issues are caused by having the game in full screen mode. We've set it so the game opens windowed, but it won't override a users default if they've already set it to open in full screen. Could everyone who is still with us, check their linux version and see if there are any issues that are not fixed by taking it out of full screen mode and into windowed? Thank you all so much. We're not sure what's causing the issue in fullscreen mode, but this would at least let us know that all the users can use the game. Linux build still has issues...Aug 20, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsGreetings Linuxers! We're currently at a bit of a dead end on the mouse cursor fix. It works on our VMs, we think it might only be happening on 32 bit systems. Which is something we can't test. If anyone has any suggestions we'd love to hear it! Anyone out there know a lot about Linux and unity? I very much want this game to run properly on all linux systems (within reason). If you or your friends have any suggestions let us know, we've tried a lot of things, and we've gotten a few issues fixed, but there's still a decent amount of Linux users having issues. So, we're open to suggestions!Linux build still has issues...Aug 20, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsGreetings Linuxers! We're currently at a bit of a dead end on the mouse cursor fix. It works on our VMs, we think it might only be happening on 32 bit systems. Which is something we can't test. If anyone has any suggestions we'd love to hear it! Anyone out there know a lot about Linux and unity? I very much want this game to run properly on all linux systems (within reason). If you or your friends have any suggestions let us know, we've tried a lot of things, and we've gotten a few issues fixed, but there's still a decent amount of Linux users having issues. So, we're open to suggestions!Yet another Linux build. Please redownload and check if it works.Aug 18, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsGreetings again, okay, so... For some reason when fullscreen is set the camera stoped rendering to the rendertexture, so the rendertexture just continues to be the same thing So we added a check to see if the render texture has been disconnected and if so It'll reconnect which should hopefully fix any issues. TELL US IF THAT WORKED! We also fixed a few sound bugs that were cropping up. The programmer is confident this time. So, feel free to make him cry.Yet another Linux build. Please redownload and check if it works.Aug 18, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsGreetings again, okay, so... For some reason when fullscreen is set the camera stoped rendering to the rendertexture, so the rendertexture just continues to be the same thing So we added a check to see if the render texture has been disconnected and if so It'll reconnect which should hopefully fix any issues. TELL US IF THAT WORKED! We also fixed a few sound bugs that were cropping up. The programmer is confident this time. So, feel free to make him cry.New Linux version up! If you have Linux, test it out!Aug 17, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsWe tried to fix some stuff. With Linux it can be hard to know if we fixed anything for everyone, or just for a few specific builds. If people with Linux that were having trouble could download the new build and try it again and let me know if we actually fixed anything or not! Thank you so much.New Linux version up! If you have Linux, test it out!Aug 17, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsWe tried to fix some stuff. With Linux it can be hard to know if we fixed anything for everyone, or just for a few specific builds. If people with Linux that were having trouble could download the new build and try it again and let me know if we actually fixed anything or not! Thank you so much.Do you have Linux and if so, can you run the game?Aug 15, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsGreetings all you gunslingers! We're currently having issues with the Linux version of the game. We want as many people as possible to play our free game, and thus, we want it to work on everything. Linux included. If you have Linux and are having an issue with the game could you please reply to this topic with your specs and the exact issue. A player log would also be appreciated. We're working on it and hope to have it running smoothly very soon.Do you have Linux and if so, can you run the game?Aug 15, 2017 - Community AnnouncementsGreetings all you gunslingers! We're currently having issues with the Linux version of the game. We want as many people as possible to play our free game, and thus, we want it to work on everything. Linux included. If you have Linux and are having an issue with the game could you please reply to this topic with your specs and the exact issue. A player log would also be appreciated. We're working on it and hope to have it running smoothly very soon.

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