After a weekend filled with talks about the future I finally decided for a release date for Nordenfelt.

Nordenfelt will be out on December 15th, 2014.

After more than 4 years of development there is no excuse for procrastinating any longer. In December the game will be out in version 1.0, however it will look, play and sound like then.

Cheers,
Thomas

The Deep Web is a part of the Internet which can’t be indexed by search engines. Examples of not-indexable resources are private websites (password-protected) or dynamic content. Google, Bing and other crawler bots just can’t get there.

Why am I telling you this? Today Nordenfelt got updated to version 0.8, yet the changes aren’t obvious. This is because only the final boss got (massively) improved. It now has one more combat form and several more attack patterns.

Try to go to the very end. Download the demo or get the whole game at www.nordenfelt-thegame.com or from Desura. I’m curious who has the guts to beat the final boss. 🙂

Now, on to Nordenfelt 0.9!

Cheers,
Thomas

P.S.: Get real-time updates via Twitter feed @nordenfeltgame.

Welcome back!

For nearly a year this blog was quiet. If you want to know why, please read about the reasons here.

But I don’t want to talk about the past. The present is much more interesting…

Nordenfelt 0.7 Released

This is an excerpt from the change log:

I’m curious what percentage of players will allow the game to send information about their play behavior. The data is anonymous and only for reasons of game improvement. Nevertheless, people have the fear of being spied out. Therefore, enabling the analytics module is just for the brave. 😉

Screenshots

Download the demo or get the whole game at www.nordenfelt-thegame.com or from Desura.
There’s nothing more to say, just a pile of tasks left to tackle for Nordenfelt 0.8.

Cheers,
Thomas

P.S.: Get real-time updates via Twitter feed @nordenfeltgame.

The Nordenfelt demo got its overdue update. The last version 0.5.3 dated back to 2011. So it did no longer represent the current development state.

Level 4

Right now I’m working on a desert-themed level. It’s quite tough to make an interesting background which mainly consists of sand and rocks.

However this area will develop I won’t spend too much time struggling with it initially. Gameplay is more important than fancy backgrounds. Regardless if it doesn’t look that good I’ll switch to expanding the tech tree tomorrow.

Tech Tree

As stated above the next task is expanding the tech tree. It’s structure should influences the way how you can play the levels. E.g. some enemy types are immune to the primary weapon. So you have to unlock the right equipment to wipe them out. This is the basic idea which I’m going to refine within the next days.

Cheers,
Thomas

It’s happening: Nordenfelt will be available on Desura on 9th of July.

The release was planned earlier but I made a mistake. I decided to add a new level boss while the latest version has been in Desura review. As soon as the initial boss draft moved across the screen I felt the urge to include it in the release. So be it. God knows why my rational brain did not intervene: “A new boss? Fella, you know this will delay everything for 3 weeks, don’t you?”.

Delay, delay, delay – it happens every once in a while.

Anyways, 9th of July is the day:

The following stuff bears the blame for “being late”:

New Level Boss

The new flying warship level boss is a larger-than-screen enemy. You have to blow it up section by section:

This boss introduced a crucial part in shmup design: scriptable bullet patterns. Patterns help players to memorize attack forms and let them come up with canned tactics how to dodge bullets.

(Not so) New Equipment

Also the Tesla gun got revived (first mentioned here):

This unlockable equipment is great when broad swarms of enemies enter the screen. Flashes of electrical discharge span over close neighbors. This way you can blow up whole flocks with less movement. Quite helpful when the screen gets littered with bullets.

Cheers,
Thomas

The tech tree finally gets it’s long outstanding attention, lava is OK but not great and Nordenfelt waits for Desura’s go.

Nordenfelt on Desura

At the beginning of this week I’ve uploaded Nordenfelt to Desura. Since then it’s stuck in their review queue. So the ball is in their court now. In the meantime I’ve added new equipment …

Bot Swarm

The tech tree is a core feature of Nordenfelt. Despite this intention I had to neglect it til now. So just 2 main weapon increments were available for a long time. Simply put, it was empty.

Now I’ve added the first standalone equipment: bot swarm

It’s simply a set of shooting bots accompanying the player ship.

The next equipment will be something more unique. “Unique” is a bold word because most equipment ideas already got implemented sometime in shmup history. I would need to know all shmups to be sure nothing comparable has ever be done. Nonetheless, the probability is rather low that I’ll reinvent an unknown wheel.

Basically it’s important to have a mix of novel and well-known features. Too much new stuff and people get scared off by the “experiment”. Too much well-known and the game gets tagged “old hat”. So the plan is something known, something new, something known, something new, etc.

Lava Level Continued

The lava level backgrounds don’t have satisfying quality yet. They serve their purpose and players won’t recognize their blandness as long as enemy hordes enter the screen. Nevertheless I can call them done.

They are not as good as I want them but done and releasable. And that’s the only thing I have to know to sleep well at night.

Cheers,
Thomas

P.S.: Get real-time updates via Twitter feed @nordenfeltgame.

In preparation for the Desura/IndieDB presence I had to make a trailer for Nordenfelt.

Have a look:

I’m quite new to the trailer/video maker club. So if you have some tips for improvement please tell me.

Cheers,
Thomas