This week we’ve all been very busy working on Ace Armstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags! as well as a couple of other minis concepts and a PS3-exclusive game for the PSN Store, all of which are just beginning to get off the ground (more on those in the coming weeks I hope).
Anyway, back to Ace Armstrong, which I am very happy to say is nearly ready for launch! All of our front end, levels, weapons, enemy waves and bosses are done and we’ve been furiously tweaking enemy positioning, boss attacks, difficultly balancing and scoring/extra life score limits over the weeks in the hope of making the best game possible in the time we have left (same old dev. story, right?!).
And time is, as ever, short: we’re hoping to submit Ace Armstrong to SCEE QA by the start of next week, with a US submission coming as soon as we’ve got our ESRB age rating organised.
We’ve taken quite a hardline approach with Ace in terms of difficulty. As this is a mini we weren’t able to create loads of polished levels, so we’ve really tried super hard to make sure that the levels we have created are as tight and rewarding as possible to give the player the most bang for their buck.
Part of the difficulty balancing comes from using the recycl-o-ray to select the right weapons for different situations and placing those weapons intelligently within the levels. It’s really important to pick the right weapon for the job, for example the last level is really claustrophobic so you don’t get much time for direct fire on your enemies. In this situation the laser – which can fire through terrain - is hugely valuable as you can be hurting enemies before they get right in your face, saving you lives (which are scarce as it is) and earning more points to win extra lives.
We’ve spent a lot of time balancing this one when compared to our other minis, so I hope the end results are worth it. I’m very confident that fans of the old-style challenging horizontally-scrolling shooters will be very happy with the results. The halcyon days of memorising attack waves and button mashing until you can’t feel your arms anymore are making a comeback at last! ;-)
More next week - hopefully confirming that Ace is being submitted on time!
Share this post
Comments: