Long time, no post. As I mentioned, if you haven't picked up Frozen Synapse yet then now is a great time. Just enter the coupon code INDIEPOWER when you pre-order to get a whopping 25% off.
GET 25% OFF FROZEN SYNAPSE TODAY!
For those of you who haven't seen it, here's our pre-order trailer...
Please do spread word of this promotion around - it helps us a lot. We'll be doing a new trailer and an official announcement next week, but I thought I would let you guys get a first look-in. The discount may reduce when we go public, so there's another reason to jump in now and grab a pre-order!
Single Player Developments
We had some contract work to finish off, and then we've mostly been working hard on getting the single player game up and running.
Our experiments so far have centred on trying to work out what will specifically be fun within missions. Ian's designed a couple of basic mission types, then added some randomisation to them. We've intensively played these and basically settled on a system we think will work for a big variety of missions. It's going well - most of our tests have been successful.
Next, we're going to test out a structure and then figure out how to make sure that there's a strong progression between levels, with suitable rewards for the player.
We're angling towards a direction where the game is fairly tricky, so progressing a long way will be difficult. We're hoping that, by using a variety of missions and a lot of dynamically generated content, people will want to "attack" the SP game in a "let's see how far I can get THIS time" manner - sort of like an arcade game or a roguelike, but with lots of Synapse gameplay and some story elements as well. It's a pretty exciting thing to be working on, and we have a long way to go, but progress is good.
Further Stuff!
I've posted several blogs over at Bit-Tech which go into a little bit more detail and give some background on the game. Take a look here.
We recently made a very silly video involving a PR stunt...I'll be posting that soon as well.
We'll be back shortly with some fuller news on the single player, but until that time please do spread word of our pre-order promotion - it will really help us out. Cheers!
Well I would love to support you. And I plan on buying this game in the future, but I'm totally skint. I did buy the Introversion pack off Steam a while back though, so I'm doing my part!
(This was actually kind of through guilt. I got a free copy of Uplink years and years ago when it came out. I enjoyed it so much when I saw the pack going on the cheap I felt of it more as a donation, or an investment in the future games you will produce)
Um...we're not Introversion.
LOL
Oh why oh why did I choose to support you earlier! ;D
Nah, this game is worth twice what I paid for just what's there at the moment, and that's not even fully finished!
Awesome game, keep up the morale lads, I'll be recommending FS to the Gaming Society in my University, assuming we can funnel it through the damn firewall (Might need to hack the lecturer's private network again this year, oh well xD)
Thanks mate! Much appreciated.
Quick Q...
Any chance of getting that awesome looking diamond shaped context menu back, even as an option? (The one in the banner above)
Nope, that's gone I'm afraid - it was truly appalling to use, so we replaced it with a more normal menu.
Looks very interesting... I'll share this with some of my friends/colleagues!
P.S. Great job with the trailer. Having the beat come in around 1:06 w/ the explosions was very effective! Nice & unique music choice too... is this something that could be heard in-game?
Thanks! This music was composed specifically for the trailer - it will probably feature in game at some point - I'm still working on the in-game music.
Awesome, would love to support, but I'm out of dough as well.
No worries! Maybe you can find someone with a free copy.
This looks awesome but i still feel the game is expensive at £16. The majority of indie games tend to be £10 or lower and £16 seems alot. I may pickup a copy when you guys release it we will see.
I'm sorry you feel this way.
The game will have a full single player Campaign mode, as well as a variety of multiplayer modes and lots of additional features like instant YouTube export. Its scope is much larger than other indie games, so we feel the current price, which is well below the majority of games, is justified. Our current customers are very happy with the game they've received at that price, even while it's still in beta.
People who do feel the price is too much for them tend to team up with another person and split the cost, to take advantage of the free copy offer, so that's maybe something you could consider if you did want to pre-order.
We spent a long time working out this price point and so far it has worked for us and our community. We need to fund the remaining development of the game during pre-orders and pricing the game at this level is one of the ways we've been able to accomplish that.
Yah i agree :P. I still think it probley is a great price and looks like a awesome game. Is there any chance you will be releasing just a single copy version which is say £10 or so that would get you guys alot more sales as some people just want a copy for themselfs and not others :D.
i havent played this since the holidays i think. whats new?
Here's the last changelog - Mode7games.com - there have been a bunch of changes to things like pathfinding since then as well.
We've also recently worked on some significant UI improvements, but those haven't made it into a release build yet. We're working behind-closed-doors on single player for a while, but when that's done we'll hopefully be able to finish off the UI and put that out as a new update.