Radiangames Crossfire II is out! 80 MS points.

Download the game here.

Also, according to the Radiangames development blog, sales of Radiangames Crossfire II are going to play a big part in deciding his plans for next year and whether or not he makes a sequel to Inferno, so if you like Radiangames’ work (and you should), be sure to support them by purchasing Crossfire II!

2 more games from the Indie Games Winter Uprising have been released. Break Limit & the Hypership Out of Control update (which adds a new mode among other things). 80 MS points a piece.

Soulcaster II and Ubergridder are both in the review queue, so if no bugs are discovered, they should be coming out soon.

As for Cthulhu Saves the World, I have the next 3 days free to dedicate to working on it so by Saturday, I ought to have a really good idea of when it will come out. In any case, we’re getting really close.

My goal is to get Cthulhu Saves the World ready for playtesting by Saturday. Wish us luck!

I was originally going to implement a Save Coin system (similar to the one used in Wild Arms 3), but you know what? Forget that! One of the biggest complaints that people have about RPGs is the inability to save whenever you like. Developers usually counter by saying that forced save spots are essential to challenge and balance and all that. You know what I think? I think games should be fun and I think a large part of having fun is doing things your way. If you’re overly cautious and want to save every 5 mins, why should I stand in the way of you playing the game the way you want to? The people who are more daring and want more of a challenge can always limit their saves and take advantage of stuff like the Hard mode and Score Attack modes. Plus schedules aren’t always condusive to long play sessions – sometimes you only have a few minutes to play or something comes up suddenly.

Save anywhere functionality is already in the code (I use it when I’m debugging things) so it’s not like it’s a new feature I have to add. If anything, it’s easier to do it this way.

To go with the ability to save anywhere (outside of combat & conversation, of course), Cthulhu Saves the World will also let you teleport back to towns whenever you like as well. Besides being convenient, this should ensure that you can’t save yourself into an unwinnable state in the middle of a dungeon.

As we near the end of Cthulhu Saves the World’s development, I figured it would be a good idea to make it easy for people to find out when it comes out so I present to you, the Zeboyd Games mailing list! Just email me at rdespair@gmail.com with the Subject: “Zeboyd Games mailing list” and your email address (if it’s different than the one you sent me an email from) and I’ll be sure to send you a message when Cthulhu Saves the World is out on the Live Dashboard, ready to purchase. Plus at no extra charge, you’ll receive additional messages whenever we send out an official press release (generally for new game announcements, game releases, and game trailers).

Of course, we’ll still put up big announcements here at zeboyd.com, but this way, you can find out ASAP even if you only check the site every few days.

And if you’re on twitter, feel free to add me (Username: werezompire) and Bill (bill_at_zeboyd). I try to always twitter whenever the website is updated, plus you’ll get random thoughts from us and the occasional development tidbit.

We’re almost done with the soundtrack to Cthulhu Saves the World. We just have 2 more songs to go, plus a little polishing here and there and it’s done. From the look of things, there will be 21 songs in the finished game, totaling over 1 hour of music. Contrast that with Breath of Death VII: The Beginning where we only had 11 songs for around 25 mins and you can see that’s a huge difference. Not only is there a ton more music this time around, but I think the overall quality is noticeably higher as well.

We’re going to release the entire soundtrack around the time that Cthulhu Saves the World comes out (hopefully in just a few more weeks, guys!), but in the meantime, here are a few more songs from the game for your listening pleasure.

World Map Theme
Volcano Theme
Big City Theme

Oh and the actual soundtrack release will have more interesting names. How’s ‘Across the Crescent Moon, the Weeping Monster Sighs Once More (Victory Theme)’ sound? Pretentious enough?

Radiangames makes great shooters and their latest game on Xbox Live Indie Games is no different. Radiangames Inferno is a dual stick shmup, but unlike most games in the genre that just stick you in an arena and ask you to survive for as long as possible, Radiangames Inferno has levels to explore and upgrades to be purchased and equipped. Taking a cue from the old arcade classic Gauntlet, there are keys to be found, doors to be unlocked, monster generators to be destroyed, and fake walls to be discovered. Solid level design and a good variety of new enemy types (including 2 bosses) help to keep things interesting.

The game took me about 90-120 minutes to complete its 30 levels. 3 difficulty levels, a New Game+ mode where you start out overpowered, and up to 4 player co-op all combine to give the game a decent amount of replayability.

At a mere 80 MS points, Radiangames Inferno is easily a must-buy.

The good people at Carpe Fulgur sent me a review copy of the PC indie RPG, Recettear, and I must say that I’m in love. 1 part Action/RPG dungeon-crawler, 1 part shop-sim, all parts adorable. Expect a full review sometime next week.

So we probably won’t do this, but I thought we’d get some more outside opinions, out of curiousity and to help us make a decision – should we license out the Breath of Death VII code for other developers to make their own RPGs?

Pros:
Helps developers who want to make RPGs but aren’t the best programmers.
We could see some cool games from other developers out of this.
Alternate source of income for us to help pay the bills between game releases.
XBLIG might become THE place for RPGs on home consoles.

Cons:
We could have an RPGMaker effect where lots of crummy RPGs get released.
RPGs on XBLIG might all start to feel the same if they’re based on the same engine.
Extra work – I’d have to go through and add documentation to explain how the engine works.
Some people might waste their money, not realizing how hard an RPG is to make, even with an engine in-place (there are no user friendly editors with our system- it’s all code editing).

If we did decide to do this, the code license would probably cost a few hundred dollars ($300 sounds about right to me), but again, nothing is set in stone and there’s a very good chance we won’t do this at all.