Unfinished: The Messenger 08/10/2018

This looks super squirrely to control to boot

Been looking forward to this game for a while but the release date is just slated as "2018" everywhere. Ben seemed to think this was releasing soon.. any idea what the actual release date is going to be?

Boy, this looks great. Figured it was just a Ninja Gaiden clone until they started showing off all the cool mechanics, upgrades, etc.

And I just read about the shift that happens later on. Hell yeah.

is it just me or does anyone else automatically assume any indie game they haven't heard of that gets discussed on GB is 8/16bit graphics?

Damn, everything about this looks fantastic, except the writing which seems almost insufferable. Thankfully they didn't have you sit through that cutscene twice, but my excitement for the game dropped every time there was a word on screen. Really hope there's some kind of "play without interruptions" mode, because the actual gameplay and artwork looks great!

Yeah, the "did you just assume my banter" joke almost singlehandedly made me not want to touch this thing with a ten foot pole.

Huh. This entire quick look is before a big shift in the game itself.

Not going to spoil it, but there become s a big mechanic later that changes a lot of how the world looks/operates.

Stala[c]tite – C – Ceiling

Stala[g]mite – G – Ground

Stalactites hold tight to the ceiling, while stalagmites might grow up.

"Did you assume my Banter"

Seriously fuck this. First it's an awful, poorly written joke, second it's a riff on a (very bad) transphobic joke. Who write shit like that?

Yep. Very odd.

This is how I remember. Only need to remember one, the other one is...the other one :)

It's an unfortunate side-effect of indie-developed games sometimes. You don't have the safety net of a larger sounding board or PR team that says, "Yeahhhhhh you should leave that part out." The recent Shaq-Fu game also suffered from this phenomenon.

It's also a characteristic of games developed by teams who can program much better than they can write -- one other recent game in my memory is They Are Billions , some of the writing of which seems to be on the level of "high-school fan-fiction".

@loktarogar: Well, it does seem to be a really popular graphical style with indie developers.

@benpack I played this at Pax East and it was super fun. This is coming to Switch. You forgot to mention one mechanic of this game switching from 8 bit to 16 bit. 8 bit you are a ninja 16 bit you are a Samurai guy. I do not know if you reached that but it was very prevalent in the demo switching back and for as each form had different abilities.

aw jeez that writing is not so great
you got bad, deader-than-dead transphobic non-jokes in my retro game
I swear 99% of these folks trying to do self-aware, 'ironic' old-games humor would be way better served just playing straight the poorly translated all-caps non-stories from the genres they seem so fond of

7:36 an air what?

Hey everyone, I’m Martin, one of the devs - without getting into how this line made it into the game, as I think the explanation would seem made up on top of missing the important point that people feel uncomfortable, let me say that we agree this bit is in poor taste, and will be removed from the game before release.

Thanks for the feedback!

@misterproof: That's a refreshingly non-defensive response.

"The Messenger" sounds like a walking simulator.

@misterproof: Cool, thanks!

The game looks neat, I´ll probably pick it up on Switch.

I played this at PAX East and really dug what I played. Been looking forward to it since playing that floor demo. And, as a few others have said, they oddly enough didn't show that one mechanic of the game that stuck with me at PAX.

Minor spoiler for those curious: you get an ability to switch between 8 bit and 16 bit style which unlocks parts of level that may have been blocked off before.

To be fair, the demo I played at PAX was a different level so I may have been further along in the game then I realized.

@misterproof: Really appreciate your (and the rest of the dev team's) willingness to respond to feedback and act accordingly, Martin! Innocent mistakes happen: the ability to accept those mistakes and grow from them is what separates the outstanding dev studio from the mediocre one.

I'll definitely be looking into picking up The Messenger at a future date, myself. :)

@misterproof: I checked out the game at PAX South this year and loved it, so I'm glad to see you addressing that issue. Thank you.

It's a bad riff of a joke, but transphobic? I always saw this joke as a dig against people who say their gender is something ridiculous, not people who are actually transgender.

Though I guess it can be for anything now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@misterproof: That's good to hear. I'm guessing that joke got into your game from a place of innocent ignorance, not from a place of hatred. Thank you for listening to the folks on here who pointed out how transphobic it is.

I just went through a real whirlwind of emotions with this video. "Oh sweet, a new Ninja Gaiden-like, I'm totally down for that!" then "Oh no, awful, tired transphobia!" and then "Hey, the devs seem nice and are taking the transphobia out of the game!" - so, you know, good for y'all!

@misterproof: I'd like to just congratulate your whole team, your game looks/sounds absolutely fantastic! Cant wait to play it when its out!

@maxxcanti: I would argue that claiming that there are people who claim their gender is "something ridiculous" is itself a bigoted stance to take. How many people exactly do you think claim their gender is something that you would deem worthy of ridicule?

@maxxcanti: Dude, you're living in 2018. Everything is offensive and bad and we are all Mad Online all the time.

@maxxcanti: im not totally clear on what you were trying to say but, "Did you assume my gender" is a joke that has been used to paint anyone pushing for trans-acceptance as screeching liberals who would be offended at anything and dismiss concerns surrounding trans and non-binary people. So riffing on that out of hand kind sucks.

"Air-tech." Teching in fighting games is when you bounce off the ground immediately upon a knockdown instead of laying there for a sec. So an air-tech is when you get hit by an attack, get knocked back, but you can mid-air jump out of the knockback-state.

@flashflood_29: Yeah, I figured it was a fighting game thing. That kind of terminology belongs in fighting games and fighting games only.

Sure, Ben's way into fighting games, but it's not fair to assume people watching a video about a platformer know the lingo

Sad to see they did not play it long enough to actually get to the «real» game. Hopefully they do an official Quick Look and they reach that 16-bit transition mechanic.

Having seen a bit more this game recently it's a bit of shame they didn't making past this final boss fight.

This is the gate for the first big scenery change, meaning new music and sprite palette. It's at least some variety.