Reprisal game dev diary

Web Reprisal press mentions so far

electrolyte — Mon, 28 May 2012 12:28:00 +0100

Here’s a short round up from some of the things being said about Reprisal since it’s launch so far!

Edge Magazine:
“Its chunky, and fashionable, pixel visuals are augmented with an attractive, tilt-shifted depth of field effect that gives the game a unique look, while the cheerful tutorial leads you through the game’s territory-conquering gameplay with easy charm.”

TIG Source
“I highly encourage this game not only for its old-school game play in homage to the god games of yore, but also for the fantastic audio-visual presentation …”

Kotaku
“This Free Game Takes Populous And Gives It a Sworcery Makeover”

Indie Game Magazine
“…the charming simplicity of Reprisal’s mechanics still never fail to put a smile on my face even when it all inevitably backfires”

Rock Paper Shotgun
“Reprisal has officially launched, and it hits many of the beats recent attempts on the god game throne like From Dust couldn’t quite wrap their giant disembodied hands around. ”

Indie Games
“In short, it’s all kinds of awesome and you should be playing it today. Monday blues? Forget about them. Go drown rival tribes instead. It’d make it all better. ”

The Verge
“It preserves all the terraforming and village-conquering strategy action of the original, but the tilt-shifted pixel art style is gorgeous and right up to date “

Digital Tools
”When graphic-designers meet game-design – this can be a very fruitful combination. The game Reprisal is a good evidence. Artwork and in game-graphic of Reprisal is one of the most clean and charming pixelartwork, that came within the last years – playing in the same league as Sword and Sworcery or Fez.”

Nerdcore.de
”Reprisal: Pixelarty Remix-Game of Populous”

Reprisal is launched! You can play now...

electrolyte — Mon, 21 May 2012 11:47:01 +0100

Reprisal is launched!

You can play now at: http://www.reprisaluniverse.com

New tilt-shifted A3 Reprisal Universe poster, ready for...

electrolyte — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:29:18 +0100

New tilt-shifted A3 Reprisal Universe poster, ready for printing!

Reprisal A2 Poster Printed arrived and...

electrolyte — Sat, 12 May 2012 13:54:53 +0100

Reprisal A2 Poster Printed arrived and framed!
http://www.reprisalthegame.com

Reprisal - A2 poster. Detail:

electrolyte — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:41:16 +0100

Reprisal - A2 poster.

Detail:

The full final 30 islands have been added to the Private beta of...

electrolyte — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 15:17:05 +0100

The full final 30 islands have been added to the Private beta of Reprisal and to celebrate, more beta accounts have been added. Grab one while you can, they are a bit like hot cakes: http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/beta/

A big thanks to all those that have been helping to provide feedback. If you don’t manage to get a beta account fear not, you can still play the 16 island public beta at the same address.

So this little chap has become an important part of the...

electrolyte — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:15:59 +0100

So this little chap has become an important part of the game.

Work has begun on the all important hand holding to help new players understand what to do in the game, and how to do it. This in itself has been a big job but it’s almost there.

The first two levels out of the thirty in total will be tutorials from this little guy guiding players on what to do and where to click.

New screen mode setting added. ‘Artistic’ and...

electrolyte — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:43:00 +0100

New screen mode setting added. ‘Artistic’ and ‘Basic’, toggles textures, depth of field and effects ‘on’ or ‘off’. This new option is in the in game ‘Pause’ menu …

http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/beta/

You’ve probably noticed that I’m making quite a few...

electrolyte — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:53:07 +0100

You’ve probably noticed that I’m making quite a few updates recently, this is because Reprisal is in it’s last few weeks of development and the momentum is flowing! This post is a little geeky, but in a nut shell its letting you all know that the cursor has been improved again!

As you can see from the above shot, each tile of the land has it’s own hit area. Before the most current update the engine was not taking into account the exact shape of the tiles and height of them. Hence you got this kind of ‘floating’ unattached cursor. Now with this new shape mapping in place you should fine the cursor is more snappy and attached to the mouse!

Once of the biggest problems was triggering events of the tile buttons after they had been drawn, as a rollover event gets lost. The solution was to use ‘hitTestPoint’ as the buttons were being drawn with the mouse to see if it was over the drawn tile button.

Hooray, this took a lot of head scratching, on paper it seemed easy, but late at night it was a tough one to crack!

Annnnddd back in the room. The Reprisal Public beta version is...

electrolyte — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:57:00 +0100

Annnnddd back in the room. The Reprisal Public beta version is back with all the updates and goodness that’s been added from the Private beta.

If you’ve not seen it for a while you can expect to find more levels, improved cursors, improved path-finding, stronger CPU tribes, 3 game save slots and also a shiny new intro with more lovely chip tunes.

Play now here! http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/beta/

Also if you wanna love Reprisal all over, you can with the help of a new FaceBook page!
http://www.facebook.com/ReprisalUniverse

Tweaked again … Hero’s V3

electrolyte — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:55:11 +0100

Tweaked again … Hero’s V3

An update before the Easter break, some pixels revisited - Hero...

electrolyte — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 17:33:00 +0100

An update before the Easter break, some pixels revisited - Hero tweaked …

A lot has been happening over the past week, but probably the...

electrolyte — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:16:27 +0100

A lot has been happening over the past week, but probably the biggest change has been completely rewriting the Populants movement AI and how they walk around.

It seems apt that the ‘Waypoint totem’ should have a star symbol as its been updated with A* (A Star) path finding. Full credit for the excellent A* code goes to Dauntless. The most recent Beta build has been updated (1.1.1) with this for beta testers to play with.

Not a beta tester? Head on over to Reprisal Beta to get an account …

Reprisal Beta account

electrolyte — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:37:37 +0100

Reprisal Beta account:

Almost there!

Just released the first batch of public beta accounts for people to play with levels. The levels will be released each week and even each day. Idea of this is so players can provide feedback on specific levels to help test. I’ve decided to do it this way for a couple of reasons. Making the full set of levels was proving tough as the only feedback was me, so this way it helps spread the load and makes sense to crowd source testing. Get one while you can, limited space in this release!

Work continues with an official full beta version just on the...

electrolyte — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 17:12:16 +0000

Work continues with an official full beta version just on the horizon …

New Reprisal game play video - work in progress part 2. Again...

electrolyte — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:39:00 +0000

New Reprisal game play video - work in progress part 2. Again music by the excellent Eric Skiff …

New build just released! Has a total of six islands which...

electrolyte — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 23:31:37 +0000

New build just released! Has a total of six islands which consist of Challenge mode in which your aim is to collect a ‘Totem’ and Reprisal mode which requires you to take out any other tribes that may be on the island.

Play now here: http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/playreprisal/

New ‘hero’ character

electrolyte — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:45:15 +0000

New ‘hero’ character

desert …

electrolyte — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:56:07 +0000

desert …

All quiet on western front ...

electrolyte — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:43:00 +0000

Will be a little quiet for a short while, just going to get my head down and sort some dev tools to help make islands. Hand entering all the settings for islands was ok while testing, but now I need some help! In the mean time you can get your Reprisal fix by playing the current build over here :D