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!
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! :)
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! :)
Hey there internet - Happy New Year and all that jazz! You probably don't remember me, but it's James Monkman here smashing the keys. You know, the guy who used to post on this blog quite often back in ... what? Oh dear...
...Ok, so the last blog post, Tweet and Facebook comments from RGCD were back in October last year and since then loads of people have written us panic-stricken emails and DMs. Well, the truth is we were here all along, but totally swamped with real life stuff. After the excellent Play Expo in Manchester Jamie and I took a short two week break, and then - lo and behold - my youngest of three kids catches the slap cheek virus and then proceeded to share it with the rest of us, one at a time. In fact, I spent my birthday back in November off work in bed with a fever, lying next to a bowl of vomit. Which was just perfect.
Anyway, after about a month of fighting with my wife as to who was going to take the day off work to look after the kids it suddenly dawned on us that Christmas was around the corner and we hadn't got anything sorted for that. And meanwhile of course, my GMail inbox was bursting at the seams due to me not having time to turn on my PC for the previous 6 weeks. You would not believe how long it took me to catch up with that lot. But hey! I'm back at last now, and I've made a promise to myself to post here at least once a week in 2016 (a New Year's resolution of course - let's see how long it lasts).
But what about Jamie? Well after many debates and months of hunting he and his girlfriend Ali finally bought a house! And then they totally ripped the guts out of it and are only just managing to get it put back together again :) Oh! And he's currently in the process of going full-time indie, so as you can imagine, he's had his hands full with that.
Whilst I was nursing ill children and getting no more than 2-3 hours sleep a night, Jamie (being the human dynamo he is) still found time to put down his DIY tools and drop hundreds of lines of fresh code into the now-one-year-old Pan-Dimensional Conga Combat project, so thankfully that has come on quite a bit since I last typed anything here. Oh, and if there are any Chris Wilkins Kickstarter backers out there with questions about Tiger Claw - fear not! The game is finally complete, with just a few minor bits to fix up before we can get it onto a cartridge :)
So, in chronological order, let's have a quick update as to where we are!
Play Expo & Conga Combat Continued
We had a superb time at Play Expo back in October, and it was really nice meeting some of you guys (our 'readers') in the flesh! We took along a couple of PC's and a C64, with the C64 mostly running long-term favourites Super Bread Box, Rocket Smash EX, Bomberland and C64anabalt and the 'proper' computers running Conga and an updated, currently unreleased version of r0x EP. Despite our stand looking like a teenager's bedroom when compared to some of the more swanky looking booths, we got some really valuable feedback, and we'll definitely be taking our games on the road the next time the opportunity arises.
Conga turned out to be surprisingly popular amongst the Expo visitors, with the controllers rarely out of use (in fact we ended up being voted 3rd best indie at the show, but enough bragging!) However, there were a lot of common complaints that Jamie and I jotted down and discussed post-show over a few pints.
Mechanics that we thought were obvious or self-explanatory were completely missed by the public, and it seemed that people were quite determined to play it 'the wrong way' wherever possible!
So here's the low-down on what we've changed:
Visible arena borders that fade in as you approach the screen edges.
On screen indicators that show where enemies are spawning from.
Clearer and more concise instructions!
A rating system that judges your performance each time you play (WIP).
Fairer enemy AI.
In-game playing tips/hints.
Tons of bug fixes.
...and what's yet to come?
Improved 'between stage' screen.
Credits! (WIP)
Options! (WIP)
Stats/Achievements (WIP)
Various improvements across the board.
Tons of bug fixes.
Ship it.
Joking aside, after a year of working (albeit very sloooowly) on this silly little thing we're confident that we'll have it complete before the start of the next financial year, so you won't have to wait much longer to get your hands on it. In the meantime, check out the latest gameplay capture video at the beginning of this post!
C64 Competition Chaos!
Oops. Ok, it looks like I totally dropped the ball on this one. Seems that if you don't post any updates to a game development competition then the end result is that hardly anyone enters :(
Not only that, but so far we have failed to even secure any prizes this year(!) I'll have to discuss this with Jamie, but at this stage I'm not 100% sure what we're going to do. Maybe extend the deadline? Beg our friends for support in organising a prize fund? I can't give an answer at the moment, but I can promise that the next blog post will be a compo update that will include details of all the game submissions. Not that there are many(!)
On the more positive side, the few entries I have seen do look promising indeed, but you'll have to watch this space for more news on that. For now, check out Richard Bayliss' blog for news on his (completed!) submission 'Vortex Crystals'. Nice work Rich!
Out of Stock Cartridges and New Releases?
This has undoubtedly caused the most worry amongst our supporters - but please fear not, the rather bare-shelved RGCD store is in the process of being restocked with just about everything. Oh! And it turns out that the planned extension of the new EU VAT laws for physical goods will NOT be coming into action this month (possibly not even this year), so we can continue trading as usual for the time being!
On the new release front, we'll be showing off the now complete Kickstarter Backer Exclusive Tiger Claw later this month, and there's Jam It! and Moonspire sat on my desktop ready to go as well. So here's hoping you C64 freaks haven't spent all your Christmas money yet! ;)
And on that note, I'm out of time here so you'll have to wait until next time for further news! Take care all, and check back next week for an update on the C64 Game Dev Competition!
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!
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).
A huge amount of progress has been made on our quasi-arena-shmup project over the past fortnight - and although there’s a long way to go, the end is definitely in sight. We’re still hoping for an early summer release (at least on PC and Android), mainly because we need to start making sales in order to pay our accountants, but also because it’s good to have a self-imposed deadline so as to prevent the project running on and on.
We’ve revised the game design somewhat; in single player ‘arcade’ mode - the proper way to play the game - Pan-Dimensonal Conga-Combat now features three stages for each of the four dimensions, and loops indefinitely. On each stage the kill quota to unlock the exit portal increases by 20, then drops by 20 at the completion of a dimension so as to give a little breathing space. This means that to reach dimension two, the player needs to kill 20 + 40 + 60 (120) of the geometric critters, then to reach dimension three they’ll need an additional 40 + 60 + 80 (180) more. To loop the game, the player will need to kill a total of 840 critters all on a single life - which sounds insane, but when you consider that enemy formations and waves often consist of 10+ enemies and you get 10 kills for every enemy portal you close, it’s certainly still achievable. Also, we learnt from r0x EP that it’s a mistake to underestimate how well some people play!
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!)
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).
