So … I Kill Zombies – Where the fuck is it, I hear you cry? It is coming… And it’s better than before, which is thankful because at the point of initial release back around October 31st… it wasn’t a very good game. Some bad design choices and a lack of leadership/initiative, lead to the game feeling more than a little crud in it’s October iteration. After deliberating on it a bit, weighing up the options of scrapping it or keeping it, we sat down with the leads on the project and talked through the issues and now, the game is looking and playing a whole hell of a lot better.

I won’t get into too much in this article, Instead I’ll save it for the I Kill Zombies post mortem, after the games launch, but I can say that the game has really transformed, particularly in the last 2 weeks of November with myself and Colm coming on board the project in a more full time capacity. We’re now confident the game will stand up to the Open Emotion Studio standard of kick-ass bite sized gaming for your PSP/PS3. It’s the OES guarantee!!!!

Anyhow, Whats new in IKZ? Well heres the scoop y’all:

31 Stages of delightful zombie slaughter all designed from the ground up by Paddy Murphy             (Level designer Ninjamurai & Revoltin’ Youth)

3 Characters each with their own voices, skillsets, hp, special moves and movement speeds! Different players will like different dudes (or dudettes in Sugarcrush’s case)

New pickups like Grenades, take out groups of zombies and revel in the blood spatter!

Huge bosses – Take on the Zombie lords! Shiv the Prison fiend, FrankenZombie the abomination, Hoclaw and Gombie the lawyer/hockey tag team, Zombo, part metal, all death and finally, Bushido Jones, reigning IKZ champ!

Maze levels and Defend the Teapot have been added, these levels are a nice diversion from the usual Zombie Slaughter!

I Kill Zombies will launch in Q1 2012 (Due to a packed December release schedule) and will cost          €1.99, ¢2.49, £1.49 on your respective PS Stores!

See ya on the other side (Paddy M.)

Sorry about the long gaps between posting – It’s been super all systems go on Three upcoming projects here at Open Emotion. Some small (IKZ) and some… Well… not so small!

I had to come on though and give some serious props to everyone who voted for us over on PSPMinis.com during their Community Choice Awards. We ended up scooping a whole heap of awards including Best Developer/Publisher and a tie for Most Valuable Mini. We’ve listed the winning Minis below and I strongly suggest you check out PSPMinis.com for all your PSP Minis related news.

Best Shooter
A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks!

Best Story
Fighting Fantasy: The Talisman of Death

Best Other
OMG-Z

Best Puzzle
Mad Blocker Alpha: Revenge of the Fuzzles (OES WIN)

Best Sports/Racing
Aero Racer

Best Action/Adventure
Ninjamurai (OES WIN)

Best Strategy
OMG-Z

Best Music
Vibes

Best Platformer
Ninjamurai (OES WIN)

Best Soundtrack
Revoltin’ Youth (OES WIN)

Best Graphics
Who\’s That Flying!?

Best Port
Pac-Man Championship Edition

Best Developer/Publisher
Open Emotion Studios (OES WIN)

Greatest Hit
A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks!

Guilty Pleasure
OMG-Z

Most Anticipated
I Kill Zombies (OES WIN)

Most Groundbreaking
A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks!

Most Replayability
A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks!

Most Content
1000 Tiny Claws

MVM (Most Valuable Mini)
A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks/Mad Blocker Alpha: Revenge of the Fuzzles (OES JOINT WIN)

On a sidenote, I Kill Zombies, has been pushed back for Quality Control reasons and as of yet we can’t be sure of when exactly it will release but it could be Q1 2012 – However, it’s going to be such an awesomely fun game at release, that it’s totally worth the wait!!!

Rock N Roll Peeps,

Paddy M.

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TOM MATHEWS/BATMAN (Artist, Captain Awesomes Fantastic Escape)

Sham Jam 2011, where boys became men and men became zombies . . . . . . and a girl. Didn’t really know what to expect from the weekend but I was hoping for some good, immoral laughter at the expense of at peoples dignity. And I got my wish. I also got to draw, dance to myself and collapse regularly from lack of sleep and replacing my blood with coffee.

http://ninjamonkeybrain.tumblr.com/

DARRAGH JENNINGS (Programmer and Sound Director, Captain Awesomes Fantastic Escape)

Event: National Sham Jam 2011

Date: Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 12:00 AM – Monday, September 12, 2011 at 12:00 AM (GMT)

Location:
Open Emotion Studios
Innovation Works
Castletroy
NA Limerick
Ireland

For more information click here: National Sham Jam 2011

Here to drop a bit of annoying news – There is currently an issue with the PS3 version of Revoltin’ Youth. This is unfortunately due to us not being able to test the PS3 side of Mini development in house so a lot of what we do, involves us waiting on the release and seeing how the game plays on the big console. The issue is a lack of music when playing on the PS3. This has pushed the US release back as well, so the game will drop in the USA around the 20th of September, with fixed audio on the PS3 issue. The fix for the PS3 audio issue should be live either next week or the week after, but until then we have pulled the game from the Playstation Store so as to ensure people get the full true experience of the title…

Sorry for this issue and thanks for your patience guys…

Paddy M.

Basically the goal is to bring Irish Devs together to develop games for the Irish Winnitron arcade cabinet. We are hoping to get input from Irish indie legend, Terry Cavanagh in respect to the theme of the Jam.

It will run from 12 A.m on Saturday the 1oth of September all the way through to 12 A.M on Monday the 12th of September – Most devs wanted a nice 48 hour period to do everything so we obliged as you get more creativity out of a 48 hour jam generally, compared to a 24 hour jam. Selected games will make their way onto the winnitron where they will be able to be played by people all over the world.

If you are interested in being involved follow the topic over on Facebook, Game Developers Ireland or Open Emotions Twitter Page and let us know as we’re trying to get an idea of numbers,

Thanks guys,

Paddy M. CEO. Open Emotion Studios

Coming in October/November 2011… Just in time for Halloween… “I KILL ZOMBIES” the new top down action hack and slasher from Open Emotion Studios. Inside one of the USA’s top prisons, a television game show takes place every week, which throws prisoners into  arenas filled with Traps, Beasts and hordes upon hordes of the undead. Playing as one of three characters (And one unlockable dude) it’s your goal to make it through all twenty Arenas, clocking up “Megabuxx” and see if you can be the first contestant to ever survive on the sensational T.V show that is “I KILL ZOMBIES”

20 levels, 3 characters, Time Attacks, Score Attacks, Leaderboards, Awards and More – “I KILL ZOMBIES” is a frantic, gory and frankly inappropriate game that any zombie lover shouldn’t miss this Halloween!

You can follow I Kill Zombies over on Facebook or at PSPMinis.com

Just a quick post to say that the Official Soundtracks for Revoltin’ Youth, Mad Blocker Alpha: Revenge of the Fluzzles and Ninjamurai are now available from various outlets including iTunes, Amazon and Napster (Yep, they still exsist)

Paddy here from Open Emotion again, this time with the second part of our Revoltin’ Youth post-mortem. in case you missed it Part 1 was mainly focused on the concept, design and concept expansion sections of development. In this post, I will be focusing instead on the music development, the implementation and bug testing (and fixing).

MUSIC DEVELOPMENT:

So in another post on here I gave some background about the music development, but I feel that here I have the chance to further expand on where the idea for the music came from, the licensing system and the sound effect development. When we began development on Revoltin’ Youth, it was at first my intention to do the entire soundtrack myself under my Chiptune moniker, 8BitLegend. The way things panned out, Ninjamurai was close to being finished but required practically my full concentration, so I had to try and come up with another solution on the audio front. I had the good grace to meet the awesome guys from Anamanaguchi last year and go on a small tour of Ireland with them. While on this trip they got me into artists like Sabrepulse and George&Jonathan – Both of whom have ended up on the Revoltin’ Youth OST. I contacted both artists and asked them if they were interested. I cannot stress how awesome both artists are and how much I would love to work with them again in the future. I had never drawn up a music licensing agreement before, but with some legal advice I got something pretty good drawn up and the guys and I eventually came to an agreement that made us all happy. In the final version you are getting 2 licensed Sabrepulse tracks (Skyfire Ace and Black Dragon) as well as 8 new George&Jonathan tracks and the awesome GUH from their album, The Best Music.

SOUND EFFECT DEVELOPMENT:

I created about 5 of the SFX for Revoltin’ Youth in the first week or so of development – They were created on my GameBoy Colour using LSDJ and I thoroughly loved making them along with my own two tracks for Revoltin’ Youth (Sabatoga and Not a Ninjanamanamal Set Radio). In the last week of development I remembered there was like 6 or 7 more SFX to be created so I spent a day or two doing nothing but playing with Gameboy trying to get the best SFX for those things and I think the SFX in the final version really fit with the Chiptune soundtrack.

IMPLEMENTATION:

Both Colm English and Eoghan O Donovan jumped straight onto Revoltin’ Youth after Ninjamurai was completed and they tried to get the game working off a modified version of the Ninjamurai engine. For all of the good intentions, there was a lot of unique features in Revoltin’ Youth – So while you can say that Revoltin’ Youth is developed in a modified version of the Ninjamurai engine, it is a heavily modifed version of it. Darragh Jennings started working with us as we were beginning development of Revoltin Youth and along with our Interns, Manuel Honegger and Martell Malone, really ensured that the implementation phase was nowhere near as much a headache as Ninjamurai. For Colm and Eoghan, the experience of working in a team of this size was completely new, but in the end it turned out to be exactly what was needed. Mid-way through development we had to go on an important business trip to London. While we were away Darragh, Martell and Manuel got so much more of the game done, that when we came back a lot of what remained was the really deep hard-coding that needed to be done alot throughout Revoltin’ Youth. Also, Bug Testing had begun when we returned from London…

BUG TESTING AND FIXING:

One thing that we had some issues with on Ninjamurai was the bug-testing. It can be so difficult for a small development like us to do a sufficient amount of testing, but luckily on Revoltin Youth we had Myself, Martell, Manuel, Darragh, Colm and Eoghan all testing the title. Also, some of the newly developed in-house tools made testing a lot easier and as such Revoltin Youth is easily our most polished game at launch. The last bug we ended up having to fix was one on the final boss where by you could complete the stage by just dropping a barrel and then waiting there for a timer to tick down… Very unprofessional, I know… But I’m just glad that we seem to have gotten all the bugs sorted on this title pre-release (as it should be).

EPILOGUE:

I really just want to thank everyone involved in this project, Tom Mathews, Colm English, Eoghan O Donovan, George Brower, Jonathan Baken, Ashley Charles, Darragh Jennings, Manuel Honegger, Martell Malone, Mika Kelly, Shahid Ahmad, Ellie Finnerty, Marque Sondergaard, Kathy Murphy, Mike Naughton, Sally Murphy, Angela O Callaghan and I know there are more that I’ve probably forgotten but seriously… You people have all been immensely important to creating a game that has been sitting in my brain for 6 years and now looks and sounds better than I could ever have imagined. Revoltin’ Youth is a challenging, funny, beautiful, engaging puzzle game with a kick-ass soundtrack. I really hope you check the game out when it launches in August and my biggest thank you, goes to the people who buy our games and support our developments. It’s because of you guys that we are able to make these ideas become a reality… Give yourselves a big pat on the back! Ha ha

“Francios feels that a man can only take so much before his dignity demands he rise up against an absurd and unjust universe.” – Nick Twisp, Youth in Revolt

CONCEPT:

Revoltin’ Youth is a game that I have been wanting to make for about 6 years. As a kid, I had this great game for the SNES by Silicon & Synapse (Now Blizzard), which saw you control three vikings with unique abilities that you had to use to get through Puzzle/Platform levels. I loved it and played it so much that I actually still remember some of the passwords by heart – SMRT (Level 17, I think) – I always waited for someone to come out and do something similar. A couple of years ago I had the idea for a Lost Vikings style game about some Urban Youths (Heaviliy influenced by Jet Set Radio at the time) who have to stop an evil guy whose brainwashed all their friends. I left it at that as I was not involved in the game industry at the time, but when we were trying to figure out our next title after Ninjamurai, straight away I had this idea for a game called “Youth in Revolt” (Not to be confused with the movie/book of the same name…

DESIGN:

So that was it, I had the concept and knew where I wanted to take the art direction with the title. Mike, our in house lead artist, was caught up with Ninjamurai at the time so instead we brought in an art intern from a local college named Tom Mathews. I instantly loved working with Tom and although some of the early designs didn’t appeal to me, I was able to communicate to Tom the pixel art style and character designs that are now present in the title. Some character designs and elements came completely from Tom himself. I decided that the villain would be an evil marketer called Big-Wig and that was all I said to Tom. In my head, Big-Wig was a big fat oaf, something similar to the “Wafer thin mint” guy in Monthy Python’s The Meaning of Life. Tom had a completely different image and when he showed me the smarmy blonde big-wig holding a Dead Cat (or cat teddy?) I was instantly, like, “Hell yeah, this is him, this is the villain!”

CONCEPT EXPANSION:

So we had our art style in place and a basic premise down but there was still a lot to flesh out. I gave Tom a rundown of the game mechanics in a pretty extensive design doc and also we worked together on designing some cutscenes. The idea for Big-Wig to be an evil badvertising agent came from a simple discussion between us one day where Tom was like “So whats Big-Wig’s role” and I decided to make a terrible pun and said “He’s a badvertising agent” – Everyone in the office had a good ol’ laugh and afterwards it just felt right so we went with it. Some of the characters abilities in game, came from discussions during lunch or just while fleshing out animations and things like that. We had a very basic idea of the final boss, but that wasn’t fleshed out until much later by myself and Eoghan O Donovan.

Anyway thanks for stopping by and heres some more art that didn’t quite make it into the game but all helped in getting the game to the style its at now. Keep checking the site for the second part of this post-mortem which is more about the actual coding, bug issues, music development etc.

Paddy Murphy, CEO, Lead Sound Designer, Level Designer and Game Design lead on Revoltin’ Youth

All images are copyright ©Open Emotion Studios 2011