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The previously announced roguelike Gunmetal Arcadia will be preceded by a classic action platformer early next year. This new game will be set in the same universe as Gunmetal Arcadia, but will have handcrafted levels with a linear structure rather than the random level generation of its roguelike counterpart.

You can find the blog post announcing the decision to make another game on the Gunmetal Arcadia development blog, and here's a video of an excited developer, J. Kyle Pittman, talking about this newly announced game:

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Some notes from the video:
  • It will be a smaller game, similar to Castlevania on NES in scope
  • Its production will also serve Gunmetal Arcadia because of overlap in content
  • It's a chance to experiment a bit with a lower price point
  • It will be an action platformer/hack and slash with a limited number of lives
  • The name of the game will be decided through a public survey
  • A Patreon campaign will be launched to help fund development of the games and production of video logs
  • You Have to Win the Game will get 32-bit Linux binaries

Since the video was released the new game has been named Gunmetal Arcadia Zero, the Patreon campaign has been launched and You Have to Win the Game now has 32-bit Linux support (though the store page still says it's a 64-bit executable).

I'm a month late on writing about Gunmetal Arcadia Zero, but I was excited to hear about the decision to make a classic action platformer in the same universe as I always preferred those over roguelikes.

About the games (Official)
Gunmetal Arcadia and Gunmetal Arcadia Zero are a pair of video game made by one guy, ex-Borderlands 2 developer J. Kyle Pittman. Their visuals and core gameplay mechanics are informed by classic action-adventure platformers like Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, The Battle of Olympus, Faxanadu, and Castlevania.

Gunmetal Arcadia‘s long-term structure takes cues from modern-day roguelikes and their derivatives, emphasizing replayability across multiple bite-sized sessions, while Gunmetal Arcadia Zero focuses on classic action and skillful play across a number of handcrafted levels. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
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A big fan of platformers, puzzle games, point-and-click adventures and niche indie games.

I run the Hidden Linux Gems group on Steam, where we highlight good indie games for Linux that we feel deserve more attention.
See more from me
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5 comments

no_information_here Sep 21, 2015
This is really interesting news. I really liked his other games.

QuoteI was excited to hear about the decision to make a classic action platformer in the same universe as I always preferred those over roguelikes.

Yes, me too. I have tried to enjoy a number of roguelikes but they just don't seem to hold much interest for me. Obviously there is a huge fan-base for them, but I guess I am not really in there...
wolfyrion Sep 21, 2015
I dont really understand how this patron funding works...

I am a bit confused and I consider this a bad strategy to gain funding.

Lets say I pledge 10$ per month...

It doesnt have any eta when both games will finish

so what if the project will take 1 year to finish?

10$x 12 = 120$ for 2 indie games ? :|

I dont know the value of the games but usually games like these are estimated max 10-15$.
I would prefer an option like Pay $$ -ONCE-to get both games

I find it very hard to fund developers these days due to some developers failing to deliver what they have promised. So at the end of the day I am like "First deliver your product , lets see what you have done , is your game REALLY worth the $$$ you are asking for ? Yes ? = Buy it

Good luck on your project..


Last edited by wolfyrion on 21 September 2015 at 5:32 am UTC
sub Sep 21, 2015
Great!

To convince more people in supporting him, he could release his generic
CRT simulation*, that allows to grab and work on the content of arbitrary windows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h72l_YsjL6Y

However, this seems to be a PoC and works only for Windows.
I'm not sure this is (easily) possible for Linux at all...

I still think his CRT sim approach is the best I've seen so far.

[*] http://gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20150420/241442/CRT_Simulation_in_Super_Win_the_Game.php
flesk Sep 21, 2015
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Quoting: wolfyrionI dont really understand how this patron funding works...
[...]
I dont know the value of the games but usually games like these are estimated max 10-15$.
I would prefer an option like Pay $$ -ONCE-to get both games

For most customers it will make more sense to pay for the games once when they're released, and that will most certainly be possible. In most cases Patreon isn't a way to pay for a finished product, but rather a way for fans to support the process of creating it, though some incentives for backing is common.

In this case, these incentives include the game(s) on completion for certain reward tiers, and also early access to in-development builds. You might recall that Liam wrote about the first of these builds a while back. There are six of them on the development blog now (all available for Linux), but the developer decided to hold off publishing more for now to instead deliver more substantial updates.

This is very similar to how patronage historically has worked, with regents supporting artists financially to be able to focus on their art. Some countries still have patronage in some form, e.g. Norway, where the government pays bi-yearly grants to artists, including video game studios. Dreamfall: Chapters, Teslagrad, Among the Sleep and several other Linux games have all received a lot of money from the government.

In addition to monthly payments, like this developer and GamingOnLinux uses, it's also possible to run per creation campaigns, where the creator tags certain updates as requiring payment. This makes sense when the artist focuses on smaller, more frequent projects, like Sokobond developer Alan Hazelden, who frequently makes small PuzzleScript games.
tuubi Sep 21, 2015
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No interest in 2d roguelikes, but Pittman does know his platformers. Zero is definitely worth checking out (when it's out).

@sub: I almost always disable CRT simulation effects in these games. Don't see the point. I guess I'm just not that nostalgic for the inferior technology of my childhood years. Many old games were/are great fun, but not because of the crappy screens we had back then.
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