Pan-Dimensional Conga Combat (Finally) Submitted to Steam - Hopefully Out Next Month!

So, it's been a while since we discussed Pan-Dimensional Conga Combat here, hasn't it?

If I'm completely honest, part of the reason that updating the game for Steam has taken so long was due to a severe lack of motivation following the initial release. Despite a positive outreach campaign on Twitter and a really great write-up on EuroGamer, we're still only at about 25% of the way to breaking even (being sold on both GameJolt and itch.io). Around the time we launched Conga back in 2016, our Greenlight page for the game had also stalled at just over 1000 views and was sat at around 33% to the top 100 with only 700 or so votes - a record low for RGCD. All of this combined had Jamie and I feeling pretty down in the dumps.

Then, after months and months of zero sales, POW! An email out of the blue arrived in our inbox around the middle of last year from Valve saying that Conga Combat had been Greenlit.

This really highlighted to me what a total bonkers system Greenlight was. I mean, I'm not knocking Conga Combat at all - Jamie and I are both proud of how the game turned out (even if it has completely failed to find an audience), but how exactly was it Greenlit when it was so far down on the list? Sure, considering the niche genre we had a pretty good split of yes/no votes (49/49% with 2% undecided), but only 1000 page views, and 700-odd votes? Wow, Conga Combat must be one of the lowest scoring games ever to break through the Greenlight barrier. But hey, at least it made it in the end.

However, 'making it' presented us with another problem; we had to invest more time into the game to tick all of Valve's boxes for release. Time that, quite simply, we didn't have last year.

Coming back to the game after such a long time provided some surprises; the first being what a cool game Conga actually is. Neither of us had played it in ages, and with fresh eyes it looked, sounded and played really, really well. I had an absolute blast play-testing it again. However, Jamie soon found a bug that had been there since launch, and that meant trawling through code neither of us had looked at in over a year! We nailed it in the end (thanks to some half-decent structure and clear commenting), and Jamie completed tweaking and finalising the Steam Achievements and leaderboards code he had started on last year. By Saturday we had completed working through the epic Steamworks checklist and hit 'submit', with a launch proposed for next month. I just hope that the extra work will be worth it! :)

If you'd like to receive a Steam key to assist us with beta-testing the new features, don't be shy! Drop us a line (via the contact form/Twitter/email) and we'll see you soon on the scoreboards!

Pico Breed (PICO-8)

Back in the mid-nineties, one of the deciding factors that persuaded me to 'upgrade' from an Atari ST to an Amiga was playing a little budget game called Alien Breed (Special Edition) by up and coming studio Team 17. I'd cycled 4 miles on my BMX to a friend's house in the next village to check out his new Amiga 600, and after initially laughing at it's childish form-factor I was soon taken aback by the quality of the games on the thing compared to my trusty old Atari.

Looking back, Team 17 certainly had some balls in releasing Alien Breed. The follow up games swapped the xenomorph-lookalikes and face-huggers for more generic/non-copyright-infringing sprites, but that original game captured the pure essence of James Cameron's Aliens. It was unlike any other top-down exploratory shoot-em up of the time; your bulky marine felt slow and vulnerable, there was a constant feeling of dread and the scarcity of ammo and keycards forced you to constantly weigh up your options and make difficult decisions. The endless waves of xenomorphs meant that getting lost or taking a wrong turn could have dire consequences - and when that self destruct sequence countdown started... well, you just knew you were in the shit.

20th Century Fox missed out. They could have put an official seal of approval on the thing and Alien Breed would have been the best Alien home computer game ever. It really is a classic, and a game that I've yet to find a modern counterpart that successfully captures the same feelings.

Until today.

Who would have thought that it would have been an Alien Breed 'tribute' on the humble Pico 8 that almost got it right, causing those happy memories to come flooding back? But yet here we have Pico Breed, a game by a developer who has quite clearly been touched by memories of the 'Breed' in a similar way to yours truly. And damn, those teeny weeny alien sprites are almost too cute to kill.

Of course, being a Pico 8 port, there's been some cuts. There's only one short level, and aside from the three-headed queen there's a grand total of two alien types; predictably full grown 'xenos' and little facehuggers than spawn from eggs. Thankfully your stereotypical marine-tough-guy can take a huge amount of damage before kicking the bucket, and if you act smart and target the alien spawn points first then you'll find there's enough ammo to last for days.

Progress is made through this top-down shoot-em-up via the collection of key cards and hacking of terminals to open doors and sealed bulkheads. The layout of the stricken spacecraft is typically Alien-Breed-ish; i.e the architects were clearly on some heavyweight recreational narcotics when they came up with the layout and had no regard for common sense or health and safety. There are dead-ends and maze-like ventilation shafts a-plenty, key cards kept safely behind locked doors and ammo lying about in the most unlikely of places. At least on this version there's no self-destruct sequence with barely enough time to escape and tons of hurty-hurty one-way electric gates. What kind of sicko space-engineer came up with the idea for those anyway?

Surprisingly Pico Breed has also nailed the sound of Alien Breed too. There's an ominous background hum, the doors open with a lo-fi "swish" and the explosions and gunfire are suitably punchy. Even the alien death-throe chirrups are as perfect as you can get with the Pico 8 limitations. In addition to this, the starfield zipping by in the background gives a feeling of speed and urgency that Alien Breed never managed; there's a genuine sense of panic as the starship full of alien scum hurtles towards Earth.

There have been a few complaints on the BBS that the game is too hard, but I guess they are missing the fact that the spawning points can be disabled, or perhaps they missed the weapon upgrade? Not meaning to sound as though I'm bragging, I found the game pretty easy - I think it took all of two or three goes to successfully reach the end. But hell, it was a blast to do so and thanks to the speed-run timer I'm tempted to give it another shot. Gabriel Crowe, I salute you.

Download/Play the the game here (from the PICO-8 BBS).
Run it using PICO-8 (Commercial).

Pan-Dimensional Conga Combat is Available Now! (Windows)

Hey there RGCD friends and family! It’s James here, albeit a rather more exhausted James than usual. You see, after 18 months of late nights and weekend crunch sessions, our admittedly not-to-be-taken-seriously little arcade-style quasi-shmup Pan-Dimensional Conga Combat has finally been released for Windows as a launch title for Game Jolt’s all-new Marketplace!

Priced at $4.99 (plus VAT), the game is available to buy at both Game Jolt and itch.io, and we’ve launched a Greenlight campaign to get it on to Steam as well. Conga was a game designed for competitive score chasing, and we really want to get it onto Steam so we can use their online leaderboards - so please, give us your thumbs up!

We’re still working on the .APK version for Android devices with controllers, and that will of course be provided for free to anyone who buys the game from either of the storefronts listed above. If Greenlit, we’ll also provide you with a free Steam key too :)

I recently wrote a few words about the development of the game on our blog, as well as the reasoning behind the price point, but basically the short version of the story is that we really want to revisit r0x Extended EP and give it a rather ambitious update for its Steam launch. Consider it a ‘two-point-oh’ revision, with extra game modes, more enemies, greater stage/wave variety and massively refined gameplay using all the lessons that Conga taught us.

RGCD currently has over 2000 followers on twitter, 1000+ on our mailing list and a similar number on Facebook. If a third of you fantastic people out there reading this can help support us by buying the game, then we’ll reach our break-even target. So please, give us a hand spreading the word (we can provide review copies on request), and hit one of those widgets below! :)

Pan-Dimensional Conga Combat Release Imminent!

Exciting times! Here we are, 18 months after the first playable prototype of Conga Combat, and finally the game’s initial Windows release is only a couple of days away. Play Expo Blackpool proved to be exactly the stress-test we’d hoped for, with hundreds of games played bug-free and only a single additional feature request from the public (a few people pointed out that there should be a way to quit the game when paused). And that’s it - for now there’s no more work left to do on the Windows build.

We were lucky enough to be one of a couple of dozen developers invited as first-rounders on the new Game Jolt marketplace (opening to the public on Wednesday), so we decided we’d use that opportunity of potential ‘feature space’ to set Conga free into the wild. The game will also be available to buy on our itch.io page as well, and we’ll be launching a Greenlight campaign to get the game onto Steam on the same day (Conga is a game that was designed to use online leaderboards, so it’s a perfect fit). We’re still working on the Android .APK; there’s some optimisation to do to see if we can get it running at at least 50 FPS on low powered devices, but more critically the shader code for the sine-distortion effects used on the game titles is currently completely borked on the Amazon Fire TV.

The past three months of development-weekends have been pretty soul destroying for Jamie and I, a period of time that can be summarised as an ever-repeating cycle of finding a bug, fixing it and inadvertently creating another, but at the time of writing the game is pretty much 100% there. Amazingly, despite the hundreds of hours put in, we both still enjoy playing Conga in short bursts - which I guess is a good sign. I even recently managed to loop it twice, although I still haven’t managed to conquer the game by beating it three times. I do wonder if perhaps we’ve made Conga too brutally hard? I guess we’ll find out soon!

Since the last time we wrote about the game, our main focus has been on implementing the achievements system, stats, player feedback/ratings, credits, intro and laying on a thick coat of final polish. Like 2014’s r0x EP, Conga has it’s own built-in achievements and stats system so that it offers players some reward even in the DRM free version of the game. Doing this has of course also made it easier for us to eventually implement other platform API’s, such as those used by Steam, Amazon, Google and (possibly/hopefully) Game Jolt. A huge amount of time was spent tweaking these so that the game doesn’t ‘give it all away in the first 30 minutes of play’, but to be brutally honest, if I set my mind to it and beat my double-loop record, I reckon I could probably manage it in less.

You see, Conga is a SMALL, traditional arcade game. With a single loop of the 12 stages/4 dimensions technically possible in less than 5 minutes, you might ask why we feel it is worthy of the budget $4.99 price tag. That’s not a simple question to answer, but nonetheless we have our reasons;

• With only one life per game (plus an additional hit-point per level achievable by collecting armour pods), Conga is quite challenging (read as “it’s 1986 coin-op style hardcore”). I have my doubts as to whether or not anyone will actually reach the ‘game conquered’ message. I’ll be happily proved wrong though :)
• The mix of scripted and randomised game events give Conga a LOT of replay value. That and the quick ‘one button to try again’ functionality combine to give it that compulsive one-more-go vibe. We’ve tested the game at several events and it’s genuinely hard to pull people away once they’ve got into the zone.
• We’ve not made a big song and dance about the competitive local multiplayer aspect of the game, but it is quite a laugh (when you can actually make out what the hell is going on amongst all the flashing and screen shake).
• Although original, the game concept is admittedly quite simple, but we’ve made the very best game that we could out of it in all respects. The controls, the menus, the transitions, the flow of the game... a huge amount of work and attention to detail went into them all.
• If/When Greenlit, those friends/global scoreboards are going to make it a whole lot more fun to play. High score competitiveness is what Conga is all about. Jamie and I have furiously been trying to better each others scores now for a year, and we still enjoy giving the game a blast. I’m still in the lead by the way ;)
• You’ve never played anything quite like Conga. That’s a fact. Rob Remakes knows where it's at :)

In respect to the above points, we feel that the price is both fair and reflective of what we’d feel happy paying for a game of the same scale and standard. In these days of crazy-cheap games it also gives us room to move with future sales and promotions. Also, ignoring the unpaid time we’ve put in, Conga has already cost us about £1K in assets alone. That's no huge sum, but it's still money that we'd really like to get back to reinvest into giving r0x EP a console-release worthy update. However, even achieving that is ‘quite’ an ambitious target for a low-profile indie like us, equating to something like 350 sales. If we manage that, there’ll be some serious high-fiving going on here at RGCD HQ! :)

Huenison Released on Steam! (PC/AmigaOS 4)

The day is finally here! Huenison has thrown down the gauntlet and challenges you to enter (and doubtlessly perish within) his mind control wells! If you are brave enough to face him, then head over to the game's Steam page where a bonus 1-week 20% discount awaits! (Current price with discount is £3.19/$3.99).

As previously mentioned, all customers who bought the game for Windows and AmigaOS 4 back when it was available as a download from our online store and other legitimate sources should have by now received their free keys. Hit us up on the contact page if we somehow forgot you (a few emails bounced)!

Huenison Hits Steam on the 26th of February! (PC/AmigaOS 4)

It's been a long time coming, but the date is finally set! Huenison arrives on Steam in just over three days time, with an introductory 20% discount on the regular $4.99 pricetag and including the AmigaOS 4 version as free DLC with every purchase (undoubtedly a first for Valve?!)

Created by Retream and released in collaboration with RGCD, Huenison is an innovative puzzle-shooter that takes various elements from Arkanoid, BOH, Decathlon, Dyna Blaster, Impossible Mission, Oil's Well, Pac-Man, Pang, Qix, Slam Tilt, Space Invaders, Tetris and Vital Light, and puts them together in a hectic arcade mix. All in retro visuals and synthetic sonorities that recall the revered Commodore 64's SID chip.

As promised, the game now includes Steam achievements, trading cards, badges, emoticons and backgrounds to collect as well as many minor improvements and bug fixes that were identified during the lengthy Steam integration process. Check out the downloadable demo over on the game's Steam page here!

As previously mentioned, all customers who bought the game for Windows and AmigaOS 4 back when it was available as a download from our online store will be receiving a free key in the next couple of days - so keep an eye on your inboxes!

RGCD News Update

Another week, another blog update! James here, back again as promised with a few brief yet IMPORTANT announcements cut 'n' pasted from our recent newsletter! So without further a-do, let's get to it! :D

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Commodore 64: a visual Commpendium (Second edition) Kickstarter

Yet again RGCD are back to provide some exclusive cartridge-based goodness to Sam 'Bitmap Books' Dyer's latest Kickstarter campaign, and this time we've teamed up with those award-winning C64 heroes over at Prior Art!

With Sam's 'Commpendium' being primarily an -art- book, Prior Art's recent smash 'Caren & The Tangled Tentacles' seemed the obvious choice for the cartridge treatment. Coded by RGCD's own Dr. Martin Wendt, he'd previously invested a good amount of time and effort in optimising the performance of the (formerly secret) 1.3 cartridge version, with rooms loading almost instantly. Oh, and talking of rooms, I should mention that this Kickstarter build will also include a whole bunch of NEW ones!

So what are we planning for the package? It'll be the usual mix of badges, stickers, manual and an A3, double-sided poster (rolled) - more details will be confirmed when we are closer to shipping.

Unfortunately nearly all of the 100 cartridge perks were snapped up in the last 48 hours, but there are a few signed ones still available at the £75 backer level. Missed out? Don't feel too bad. Back the book at ANY level and you'll get the game on a USB 'cassette' with a whole bunch of other extras that you can play via software/hardware emulation :)

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Huenison is on its way to Steam!

In case you missed it, Retream and RGCD's AmigaOS/PC puzzle-shmup Huenison was successfully green-lit for distribution on Steam some months ago. Cool huh? Well the even good-er news is that Saimo has been diligently working through Steam's convoluted integration system and the game is currently pencilled in for release in late February (hopefully complete with the AmigaOS version included as a free DLC)!

Please note that the reason I'm letting you guys know isn't because we're after your coins - it's because if you bought a pre-EUVAT copy from our online store then you'll be receiving a Steam code from us at some point in the near future! :D

Keep 'em peeled...

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RGCD/RGCD.DEV are back at PLAY Expo Blackpool 2016

...and we'd love to see you there :)

Ok - full disclosure... I've volunteered my (professional?) services to Replay Events again to assist as their 'indie liaison', so technically I'll be working there with Jamie (and John?) manning the RGCD stand. Being a retro/indie crossover event, we'll probably be showing off a mix of both olde and newe stuff - but yeah - the offer still stands; if you want to meet us in the flesh, please come along!

Located at the Norbreck Castle Exhibition Centre over the 30th April - 1st May weekend, PLAY Expo Blackpool attracts over 5000 attendees from all over the UK during the two day event. It's a real mix of people due to the variety of systems, exhibitions and activities - some come for the coin-ops, pinball and retro stuff, some for the current gen and indie games, others for cosplay, highscore tournaments and talks from game industry legends - but the majority are interested in the whole spectrum of video gaming culture.

If you - or a friend - has a new game that you/they've been working on, then you might be interested to know that unlike some other expos, the indie section at PLAY Expo Blackpool won't be hidden away in a separate hall away from the main ruckus. Indies will be centrally located within the main exhibition space, i.e. where the people are. Prices for exhibiting are extremely reasonable:

* £180 Standard booth (1x table, 6ft backing board, space and power for 2x PC/Console set-ups, 2x Exhibitor passes)

* £300 Large booth (2x tables, 6ft backing board, space and power for 4x PC/Console set-ups, 4x Exhibitor passes)

(Note that wired internet, PC hire and additional exhibitor passes are available at an additional cost. Please drop me a line for further details).

Speaking from personal experience, exhibiting is quite simply the best way to get honest feedback about your game, giving you the perfect opportunity to fine-tune areas of your design that perhaps your family, friends and fans are too kind to question! It's an invaluable experience, and you just cannot get the same level of discussion and interactivity with players of all ages anywhere else. It can be a little daunting, but most certainly will help you to develop the skills (and contacts) to succeed in what is undoubtedly the most competitive gaming market of the 21st century.

If you would like me to hear more then please get in touch (I've composed a document that covers all the basics). You can drop me an email or hit me up on Twitter or Facebook. Further information on the event can also be found at the PLAY Expo Blackpool website.

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Thanks for all the Orders! :D

Phew! It's been an insane week, packing the scores of games that you crazy C64 peeps have bought from our online store! We sold more cartridges in the past fortnight than in the past SIX MONTHS. Several games are now out of stock again, but most will be back again next week - so keep an eye on this blog for announcements.

Pandimensional Conga Combat: Interface Swoosh!

When I set aside time to work on Conga, before hitting the keys I normally sit down, skim through the all-important project design document to see what's left to work on, then pick a few meaty chunks to tackle. Usually I'm over-ambitious and select WAY more than I'll ever manage, but it does help to add a bit of focus and provides me with a rough plan for the days ahead. Doing this also gives James a chance to feed some ideas in ahead of implementation, as more often than not we've ended up scribbling something down during one of our weekly meet-ups and it's never actually made it into the documents (luckily his memory is better than mine!)

So, with three days booked off from real-life work, I set out my battle plan. On day one I'd tackle the entire front end, right the way through to Conga's 'Casual' play mode, then take on the scores and achievements on day two and round off with multi-player on day three! Oh well, one out of three isn't too bad!

Conga Continued

It's been a few weeks since I last wrote about our adventures in game development, and although Jamie and I have not made quite as much progress as we'd hoped, work on Pan-Dimensional Conga-Combat has continued to move forward. Oh, and we released a new C64 game too - but more on that in a bit.

So what's new? In the previous update I explained how we were using timelines to synchronise in-game events to the soundtrack and discussed some of the problems we were having with 'frame-slippage' on less powerful hardware. Thankfully, this part of the project is now complete, and Jamie even fixed the sync between the game and soundtrack by incorporating a frame counter that starts as soon as the timeline and audio playback begins. This 'timer' is then compared against the current position in the timeline every frame, and if there's a difference the game simply jumps forward and realigns itself.

There is of course a small risk that the game will occasionally miss scheduled events, but so far the method seems to be pretty bullet proof and it's a huge improvement over what we had before (where even something as trivial as alt-tabbing out of the game resulted in everything falling slightly out of sync).

Critical Beatdown

In the immortal words of the UMC's Kool Keith, we're hoping to "take your brain to another dimension" with our current project. Well, maybe not your brain, but certainly your thumbs/swiping finger. We've been busy working on RGCD.DEV's follow up to r0x Extended Play on odd weekends and evenings for a few months now, and it's finally at the stage where we have something to show (mainly thanks to the artistic talents of Folmer Kelly). So, here we go. Children of the Earth, meet Pan-Dimensional Conga Combat.

I've already given the game's background a brief introduction in a previous news post, but I never properly explained what it actually was or how it plays. So before we continue, if a picture speaks a thousand words then a video must be worth a million. Observe and discuss. (Warning! Flashing images follow!)

Welcome to the Future!

2015 already? Wow. I was watching Back to the Future Part II yesterday, and if Hollywood is to be believed, we're less than one year away from consumer hoverboards, flying cars and cyberpunk costumes being mainstream fashion - so that's something to look forward to at least. I remember watching that movie at the cinema as a kid and thinking 2015 was so far away, and yet here we are. I also remember spending many a weekend in 1989 cycling over to a friends house to play on his C64 and I never would have imagined that now, 26 years later, people would still be messing around with these ancient machines - nor that I'd be involved releasing new games for them.

2014 was a pretty quiet year on the RGCD cartridge release front, with only 3 games published (Darkness, Phase Out and Powerglove), mainly due to real life issues such as moving house/office, redecorating, loads of DIY and other not-so-fun stuff. Of course, 2014 also saw the release of r0x (Extended Play) - our first in-house developed PC game since 2010 - as well as the founding of RGCD.DEV Ltd by myself and Jamie Howard. Sadly, the news/reviews side of RGCD has suffered as a consequence, and I think pretty much all our writers have jumped ship (although I'll try to find time to write a few things myself each month going forward).

Tsunami Cruiser (Android/Ouya/PC)

[This review was originally written by J. Monkman for indiegames.com, and has been reposted here with the editor's permission].

Released for Windows yesterday (and Android and Ouya last week), Boris Van Schooten's wavy-navy, Geometry-Wars-at-sea twin-stick shooter Tsunami Cruiser has come on a long way since the early prototype developed for Ludum Dare 29. With tighter controls, super-clean redesigned vector graphics and a new speaker-buzzing, arcadestep soundtrack from BitBurner, blasting away marauding sea critters and alien saucers whilst bouncing about on an increasingly choppy ocean has never been so much fun!

Iron Fisticle (PC)

With a title like Iron Fisticle, one might suggest this is something they only do in Germany, or perhaps an obscure entry on Urban Dictionary. No, friends, you won't be hitting up the missus (or the mister) for an 'iron fisticle' any time soon. Unless you make it up. Rather, Iron Fisticle is the name of a fantastic new dual-stick shooter that harks back to the old days of quarter-chompers Gauntlet and Smash TV, developed by Confused Pelican Games (Amiga shareware-scene hero) and Tikipod (Rock Boshers DX, Aqua Kitty and of course r0x EP).

Shovel Knight (PC/Mac/Wii U/3DS)

I normally lead into these reviews by setting the theme or laying the foundation for a punchline, but this time this time I'll cut the (now traditional) waffle I'm famous for by simply saying that Yacht Club Games' Kickstarter-hit Shovel Knight is an absolute work of art. It's not the kind of indie game that wants to be famous for its 'message' or 'deepness of expression', it's instead the kind that polishes an established set of formulas and delivers a diamond-solid package.

Boson X (PC/Linux/Mac/Android/iOS)

Being a physicist never looked so exhausting. Or so death defying. Mu and Heyo's Boson X is a runny, jumpy platformer of the breed that has been made world-famous by games like the viral leviathan that is Temple Run, and like all of its brethren a spiritual successor to the modern classic Canabalt.

This particular endless runner takes a graphical style begging to be described as 'Super Hexagon meets Another World' and sees the player in charge of a miniature scientist taking a really hands-on interest in particle-colliders. Simplicity and ramping difficulty are key players in this game, which eschews the bells, whistles and fripperies of bonuses and rewards in an appropriately scientific just the facts sort of way. This is gameplay pared down to a pure and simple form; Occam’s Razor taken to the run and jump genre.

Duck Game (Ouya)

[This review was originally written by J. Monkman for indiegames.com, and has been reposted here with the editor's permission].

Remember back when everyone used to call the Ouya a $99 TowerFall box? Well, it's time to unofficially rebrand the indie-friendly console that everyone loves to hate, because a new challenger for the local-multiplayer throne has entered the arena and powerslammed the competition into the floor. Matt Thorson's magnum opus might match it blow-for-blow in the ring when it comes to fast-paced player vs player combat, but with a wonderfully unbalanced array of ridiculous weaponry, devious level design and twisted humour, Landon "SuperJoeBob" Podbielski's Duck Game ultimately delivers a K.O. every round. So, if you have both (a) friends and (b) a $99 Duck Game box gathering dust in the corner/on a shelf/under the bed, dig it out and get ready to fall in love with local multiplayer all over again.

Dynablaster Revenge (PC/Linux)

[This review was originally written by J. Monkman for indiegames.com, and has been reposted here with the editor's permission].

When it comes to party games, few can top Dynablaster (or Bomberman, depending where in the world you are) - so it's no surprise that Titan and Haujobb took first place in the game development compo at the Revision demoparty with Dynablaster Revenge. What is surprising however, is that hardly anyone outside the scene has yet taken notice of this fantastic tribute to Hudsonsoft's incendiary magnum opus. When I tested the game on Titan's server earlier this evening there were no other players other than myself and a few friends I'd hooked up with, but hopefully that's an issue we can resolve following this write up.

Powerglove Available! (PC/Linux/Mac/Commodore 64)

Initially released as an entry in the RGCD 2013 RGCD 16K C64 Game Development Competition (where it placed 3rd out of 15 entries), Lazycow's acclaimed 8-bit run 'n' gunner Powerglove is finally available to buy on Commodore 64 cartridge! This specially enhanced post-compo version features a revised five level map complete with Powerboots and Energy Doors, faster room-change transitions, slicker player controls, a map overview display, bug fixes, game balance tweaks and a (much-requested) shot sound effect!

But that's not all... In addition to all this awesomeness, over the past few months Matthias has also ported the game over to Windows, Linux and Mac OSX, making Powerglove the first game to be simultaneously launched on the C64 and modern-day systems since, well, ever! Exclusive to itch.io, this port of the game is completely faithful to the Commodore 64 original (despite featuring some minor enhancements such as parallax scrolling and optional pimped spritework). And the best part is that it's completely free!

If you enjoy playing Powerglove on your modern-day PC and have a Commodore 64, or maybe you're already familiar with the already-excellent competition build, you'd be a fool not to grab a physical copy of this all-new-and improved C64 version. Similar to last year's Super Bread Box, Powerglove is offered in multiple formats, coming either as a downloadable .CRT image for emulators or hardware such as the Ultimate 1541-II, on a real, physical cartridge complete with a 12-page printed manual and a bunch of ultra-cute vinyl stickers (available with standard cardboard packaging or a deluxe plastic case, the latter also including a double-sided A3 poster/map print). There's even an A2/A3 poster set bundled together with the .CRT download.

For prices and further information, head on over to our online store and order your copy today!

The Dungeoning (PC/Linux/Mac)

Roguelikes are the hot thing these days, so much so now that as even a die-hard, long term fan for the genre, I'm beginning to roll my eyes when I see the term being thrown around. Especially when it's used loosely - "contains roguelike elements" (as in, not a roguelike) or some such. Don't think I'm a purist, but there's no doubt that these days it's being slapped on decidedly non-roguelike games in an effort to cash in on the genre's newfound popularity. Thankfully, The Dungeoning is not one of those titles.

Continue?9876543210 (PC/Linux/Mac)

Indie gaming has a reputation of being deliberately opposing the the ideals of current mainstream gaming, and to some measure this is true. Some choose to subvert the 'norm' deliberately, choosing to single themselves out believing it to increase their weight in their own shallow end of the fish bowl. However, some have no agenda other than the simple need to express themselves in what amounts to a fleeting burst of human experience that we all share, perhaps an attempt to truly connect - if even just for a second - with another soul.