oddbob0

Hello! I've just finished and released my first game in a couple of years. It's been bunged together in Studio, it has lasers. Lots of lasers.Now With an 8/10 from Edge.

DEATH RAY MANTA

Death Ray Manta is an attempt at finding the videogame equivalent of the perfect 2 1/2 minute pop song. A flashing, glowing exploration of the history of arena shooters condensed into the now. It's a game about finding and embracing the moment, celebrating everything videogame and being videogame. It's also an arena shooter where you blow stuff up and flash lights in your face. Because videogames. Death Ray Manta is videogames.

Video

Also colours. It definitely has colours. It looks and moves and sounds like this:



You can get it from here starting at $0.99 with 4 other excellent games

Screenshots

When not moving it sometimes looks like this:



Loads of screenshots and stuff can be found by clicking here.

Instructions

Playing the game is dead simple.

1. SPAWN - Yay, the game does this for you.
2. LOOK AT SCREEN - Oh my, it's full of aliens!
3. KILL ALL THE ALIENS - Quickly before they kill you.
4. COLLECT THE SPACE TIFFIN - Because tasty space tiffin is good for extra firepower and one whole extra point per stage.
5. TRY AND SCORE 64 - Because everyone adores 64.

Press Quotes

Here's some nice words that's already been said about it.

“Just when you thought Rob Fearon’s shmups couldn’t get any more eye-bleedingly confusing, they did”
- VG247

“You know that cacophony that greets you when you walk into a big arcade? You know, the sort of one they have at the end of Brighton pier. The sound of 60 different games being played at max volume, with boozed up people shouting at each other over the top and neon everywhere and flashing disco lights and there are little kids running all over the place and you’ve had too much fizzy sherbert but you kind of like it? Fearon’s games are a bit like that” – Scripted Sequence

“If you’ve ever played Geometry Wars you’ll know that it’s fast paced, colourful and addictive. Now imagine that times forty with a side order of crazy and more visual stimulation than you could ever imagine” – The Reticule

“After spending some time with DRM though, I realize that this is very much a celebration of the videogame” – I Luv Games

“I honestly believe cacophony is the only way to describe what I have saw, as each and every enemy burst into vibrant colors which filled the screen. It could almost be considered parody of arcade game graphics” – Indie Game Mag

“the sort of thing you’ll want to play if you’ve ever shivered in delight at the touch of primary-coloured lasers against a black, vacuumous background” – PCGamesN

“It’s looking rather beautiful” – RockPaperShotgun

“It’s a polymorphous colour cluster. An effervescent, saccharine, gum-rotting sherbet dip that crackles in your mouth and turns your piss pink. And I can’t get enough of it.” – ClickIndie

“Lord, look at those colors. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Bright, cheerful, and hectic” – GameRanx

For the first fortnight, it's available as Pay What You Want through Bundle In A Box from as little as $0.99 because y'know, making games and making them affordable is pretty important.

It's available in Windows and in OSX flavours.

Where to buy?

AVAILABLE TO BUY FROM BAGFULL OF WRONG

Demo?

Reluctantly, yeah. It's a really hard game to show off because it's meant to be played from 1-as far into 32 as you can get in one sitting so splitting it off makes no sense whatsoever. But, y'know, maybe you -really- need to know if your computer runs it or not so whilst I work out a better way to put a demo together and make it really nice, here's a chopped out slice of the first 12 stages.

DEMO VIA STEAM WORKSHOP

Ok, I'm probably missing something incredibly obvious here. Attempting to rag across one of my old PC games onto the Mac and I can't seem to get GM4Mac to dump or read any .ini files outside of the root directory on the HDD.

I've tried working_directory/program_directory etc... and no joy. It either tells me I need the ini file in the same dir as the file (fnnng!) or dumps it at root. Which is no good, obviously.

I'm assuming I'm missing something hideously obvious so anyone had any success with this so far? Running 7.5.78 if that helps any.

Tips or hints greatly appreciated with mucho thanks, obviously.

Cheers!

==WAR BUS==

**MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR FOLKS WITH PHOTOSENSITIVE EPILEPSY OR ANY SIMILAR CONDITIONS**

Hello! Hope everyone is well and no-one has fallen down a pit or something similar. That'd be bad.

May I present for your fine and furry eyebrows my latest magnum opus, War Bus. Sometimes it's not called War Bus but ssh, there's kids around. Keep it nice. Ever onwards! Here comes the blurb, brace yourself:

    * Name: War Bus
    * Category: Brutal Arena Shooter
    * Size: Around 6 meg
    * Version:   GM7-me-do
    * Vista Compatible: Yes sirree
    * Resolution: 800x600 scales to fit
    * Changes Resolution: No
    * Mulitplayer: No
    * Download Link: YoYoGames Linky-me-do Alternative Download

Screenshots!

The game doesn't really show up well in screenshots, but here's a few all the same. It'd be rude not to include them, after all.

Screenshot1 | Screenshot2

Videos! **CONTAINS SWEARING**

Hi Res | YouTube

War Bus: Arena Shooter

You know, the problem with Geometry Wars? Its name is wrong. What it really should have been called is “Geometry Run Around In Circles” but I guess that isn’t quite catchy enough. So yeah, it’s wrong in the face. That’s not war. Unless your idea of war is having one foot nailed to a post whilst strange shapes sneak up on you and pop you one up the backside.

And with no disrespect meant, Geo Wars, Neon Wars… none of them are really war. Sure, some are good - nay, great - but not war.

War Bus on the other hand…that’s war. You poor piece of cannon fodder you. As the battle rages amongst the stars only one thing is truly inevitable… death. And lo, it will come swift, hard and fast. A bit like the Vicar did that time for you in the pulpit when you were eight. Only this time, there’s no hankies to help you clean up. Just explosions, destruction and what sounds awfully like Bruce Forsyth…

The aim of War Bus is simple. Survive. The only way you’re going to survive is to kill. It’s the proverbial kill or be killed. The big question is, just how long can you survive for?

Surviving War Bus

War Bus is a quick fire game with an emphasis on merely beating your own high scores. Control your player using the cursor keys and z to fire and survive the onslaught of enemies. Hit a bullet and it’s game over, hit an enemy and it’s game over, wander outside the arena and it’s game over. War Bus takes no prisoners.

The key to high scores lies in the depths of light entertainment hell. Brucey Bonuses vastly increase your score by giving you 1 point for every enemy, bullet or particle on screen as the shockwave blasts through the arena.

Praise and Love for War Bus

Some very nice people on the internet have said some very nice things about War Bus in it's ever so slightly swearier (but no different other than that) guise. They may possibly be lying, it's hard to tell when you're not face to face with them. Generally though, it's been wonderful and I love them all like they were my own babies. Which for the record, they're not.

“…this is a Minter shooter with the finese removed and the volume turned to Bruce Forsyth screaming with the force of a nuclear explosion” - so sayeth Keiron Gillen on Rock,Paper,Shotgun.

"“Surely this is a new Chris Morris vehicle ? It looks like, and is named like something from a Nathan Barley episode" - said a lovely bloke called phatchief2006 on The Guardian Games Blog.

"…we shall only refer to this game by a pronoun…” said someone undoubtedly gorgeous on Big Download

"The Minter movement in sweary psychedelic shooters gets another acolyte!" said Simon Carless over at GameSetWatch

There were plenty more comments, but I fear most of them are threatening to cut me apart or swearing at me and a bit rude. I won't reproduce them here for obvious reasons.

Just one last thing...

Major thanks to Barry Island for the excellent tunes and, well, enjoy the game. I'm off for a jam butty. :-)