It's summer again and that means the Finnish indie development scene had something to aim for: the game dev competition at Assembly 2011, one of the biggest demo scene events / LAN parties in the world. We participated last year, and we're doing it again. Only this time our game's a bit different.

Our initial idea was that we wanted to incorporate the style of The Typing of the Dead, where you have to type words at a rapid pace to make something happen. The original plan was to make a sort of interactive movie (bear with me!) where you were an actor doing various action scenes and had to type in action catchphrases and stuff like that to make your guy dive through windows, shoot down helicopters etc. As fun as this seemed, we also quickly realized we'd need far too many assets (graphics, animations etc) to make the game work.

So we settled on something else. One of the long-standing traditions at Assembly is the schism between gamers and demo scene guys. The various competitions are a big part of the party and everything is screened on the big screen. Which is in the same area as most of the people with their computers. So every time a competition starts, there's a long battle where people from the stands yell obscenities at kids who just can't turn off their fucking WoW raids for 10 minutes to watch short films, demos and what have you. And that's our game.

You're the head of security at Assembly and a compo is about to begin, but the power of "Guage" (a reference to Quake, which used to be the game of choice for these morons to play) is too strong, and kids are going hyper in their seats. You have to yell increasingly difficult words at them to make them turn off their machines, before the organizers lose patience and shut down the party forever.

We bolted on some leaderboards, achievements and start tracking and called it 1.0. Version 1.1 is coming this Sunday with some fresh twists that will, I think, warrant the last the tag I chose for this post.

So anyway, try it out and let us know what you think!

EDIT: We just updated! Version 1.1 brings a whole mess of changes, some visible and some less so. There's now a lot more visible feedback when typing in words and completing them, plus the game should run a bit snappier than before. Give it another shot!

It's summer again and that means the Finnish indie development scene had something to aim for: the game dev competition at Assembly 2011, one of the biggest demo scene events / LAN parties in the world. We participated last year, and we're doing it again. Only this time our game's a bit different.

Our initial idea was that we wanted to incorporate the style of The Typing of the Dead, where you have to type words at a rapid pace to make something happen. The original plan was to make a sort of interactive movie (bear with me!) where you were an actor doing various action scenes and had to type in action catchphrases and stuff like that to make your guy dive through windows, shoot down helicopters etc. As fun as this seemed, we also quickly realized we'd need far too many assets (graphics, animations etc) to make the game work.

So we settled on something else. One of the long-standing traditions at Assembly is the schism between gamers and demo scene guys. The various competitions are a big part of the party and everything is screened on the big screen. Which is in the same area as most of the people with their computers. So every time a competition starts, there's a long battle where people from the stands yell obscenities at kids who just can't turn off their fucking WoW raids for 10 minutes to watch short films, demos and what have you. And that's our game.

You're the head of security at Assembly and a compo is about to begin, but the power of "Guage" (a reference to Quake, which used to be the game of choice for these morons to play) is too strong, and kids are going hyper in their seats. You have to yell increasingly difficult words at them to make them turn off their machines, before the organizers lose patience and shut down the party forever.

We bolted on some leaderboards, achievements and start tracking and called it 1.0. Version 1.1 is coming this Sunday with some fresh twists that will, I think, warrant the last the tag I chose for this post.

So anyway, try it out and let us know what you think!

EDIT: We just updated! Version 1.1 brings a whole mess of changes, some visible and some less so. There's now a lot more visible feedback when typing in words and completing them, plus the game should run a bit snappier than before. Give it another shot!

Country with the most players:

01Finland: 74

02United Kingdom: 1

03Sweden: 1

04Norway: 1

Go Finland?

Well we are Finnish and the game was first published on the Assembly 2011 website the other day, but that just means you foreign types have your work cut out for you ;)

Woo only U.S player! As for the game, not bad. One thing I would like though is a little more responsiveness from the words you are typing, such as letters you have typed getting highlighted or something along those lines. If I make a mistake by skipping a letter I often can't tell until I reach the end of the word and see that it hasn't disappeared (Brain doesn't respond to the mistake noise in time). The game itself felt very difficult, mainly due to the odd word choices. Even on easy mode I would see a lot words that I would  never use on a standard basis, or ever for that matter. Other than that my complaints are just things that come from it being an early version of the game as well as it being an indie game. Keep up the good work.

Okay, I'm addicted to this game now. Also, I would love to get my hands on the soundtrack. =D

@chainreaction@chainreaction01 said:

Woo only U.S player! As for the game, not bad. One thing I would like though is a little more responsiveness from the words you are typing, such as letters you have typed getting highlighted or something along those lines. If I make a mistake by skipping a letter I often can't tell until I reach the end of the word and see that it hasn't disappeared (Brain doesn't respond to the mistake noise in time). The game itself felt very difficult, mainly due to the odd word choices. Even on easy mode I would see a lot words that I would never use on a standard basis, or ever for that matter. Other than that my complaints are just things that come from it being an early version of the game as well as it being an indie game. Keep up the good work.

Yeah, we hear you. In the updated version we're pushing out tomorrow the active word is copied below the target word letter by letter as you type it, like in Typing of the Dead. Additionally there will be graphical feedback on getting words right (points flying up from tables with particle effects etc).

And yes, it's pretty difficult :) I thought I was hot shit by getting 5900 points in Endless mode. The day we launched? Some guy got 12k. Today? Some DVORAK using dude broke 16k. I finally know what it's like to get schooled in your own game.

@MythDarK said:

Okay, I'm addicted to this game now. Also, I would love to get my hands on the soundtrack. =D

That's super nice to hear! I'll talk to our sound guy about the possibility of a soundtrack.

Okay this is really cool, but your original idea is awesome too. Why not take a lot of footage and make an FMV typing game.

@XII_Sniper said:

Okay this is really cool, but your original idea is awesome too. Why not take a lot of footage and make an FMV typing game.

That's definitely a possibility. We're basically trying to do the games we'd like to play (like our game last summer, which is a physics-based rocket jumping platformer :))

Aww, I thought I was gonna be typing out obscenity-laden insults! Of course I wouldn't be able to read them if that were the case... But I think that'd be cool, add a bit more humor and personality to the game.

once you said typing of the dead, I was SOLD. hope you guys... uh, win? I dunno what you do at that thing. I HOPE YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL AT WHATEVER

Downloading.

I'm downloading it right now, but will only be able to play tomorrow. I'll give you some feedback then :)

Wow... tough game!

@soralapio said:

@XII_Sniper said:

Okay this is really cool, but your original idea is awesome too. Why not take a lot of footage and make an FMV typing game.

That's definitely a possibility. We're basically trying to do the games we'd like to play (like our game last summer, which is a physics-based rocket jumping platformer :))

Yeah so, who wouldn't want to play an insane typing FMV game? TELL ME. Because I'm thinking that's just about nobody.

But yeah gave the game a shot, lot of fun actually. Weirdly addictive, if only to see the animations of the LAN kids just flipping out (which are great), and the completely bizzare choice of words at times. Things I haven't heard in years, or words no one uses anymore.

@soralapio said:

@XII_Sniper said:

Okay this is really cool, but your original idea is awesome too. Why not take a lot of footage and make an FMV typing game.

That's definitely a possibility. We're basically trying to do the games we'd like to play (like our game last summer, which is a physics-based rocket jumping platformer :))

Yeah so, who wouldn't want to play an insane typing FMV game? TELL ME. Because I'm thinking that's just about nobody.

But yeah gave the game a shot, lot of fun actually. Weirdly addictive, if only to see the animations of the LAN kids just flipping out (which are great), and the completely bizzare choice of words at times. Things I haven't heard in years, or words no one uses anymore.