itch.io

Yup! It's an arcade game. Would you like it to have an ending?

Thank you!

Cues inception scene - "That's not enough, we need to go deeper."

Welcome to itch.io! (: 

There is something like a watch-list on the top right of every game page - buttons that allow you to follow the creator or add the game to a "collection". The buttons will allow you to receive updates from the creator or game (:

Thank you! The original vision was to make the game overly serious to the point of it being a joke on itself but I think I didn't manage to reach that point during the game jam haha! So I just settled for it being serious. Glad you enjoyed the game! I really enjoyed the videos on your website and subbed on youtube. Really like that you're covering/reviewing indie games (:

Thank you so much! I hope you liked it. I've just added the "casual" game mode to the build and the updates will be up after the jam's rating session is over. The new casual mode will make it easier for the player while the current gameplay has been transferred to "hardcore mode".

If you ever do get the chance to try it out on a 4K monitor + gtx 1080, please do tell me how it goes!

Currently I'm on an 1080p $90 monitor from amazon and a gtx 1050. One day I hope to save up enough to get the latest rig (: 

It also runs well on the "Beautiful" quality setting on my 5 year old HP laptop which uses a NVIDIA Quadro K2100M. 

@CoalFire Thank you so much! I agree wholeheartedly and the furthest I've survived is to the third level (and that was harder than any dark souls run through I've expereinced imo). Currently working on the fix for the difficulty and will upload an updated version once the xkcd jam is over.  More details in the Updates sections above (:

Thank you! 

Yes I agree, the difficulty is way up there! After the jam, I will upload an update that increases your player health so that you have a large health pool, so that you have more time to read the bios. Might also add a game mode toggle that lets you switch between the normal high health or a hardcore low health mode (which is the current setting). 

Thank you! Tried to make the game funny and less serious but my personal style edged the game towards the more serious tones.  

I agree, am still finding a deeper gun tone, the current sound was the deepest I could find on the sound library I'm using haha! Would love it to have this deep bass tone but yet with a sharp crack to imply a tense murder.

3400! Had a really great time playing this~ The drag and shoot mechanic took some time to get used to (was half-expecting an indicator to show up haha) but after that hurdle it got really great as I tried to outshoot the black-hats. Would've to see a score to know where I'm at (: 

Overall, the combination of the music, the graphics and the animation adds up to a really fun arcade time. Great solid game that can be expanded upon!

P.S what's the highest score you've gotten so far?

Awesome! Loved the squirrel on top of the Kalashnikov AK-47. Also loved the mechanic of clicking to shoot and propel yourself. A very bolt-action shot type of machine gun but still fun. 

The poor squirrel must have got squashed over thirty times playing this. Great fun though. 

Also the narrative in the level was great, and can totally agree that sometimes a certain element of game design is the most fun and the rest is a slog. 

Great work! 

Hello there! Did this game jam solo, so thought it would be awesome to do a debrief of my game jam submission with you all. Please do join in and ask questions~

Goals for game jam 

1. Learn more about Lighting in Unity.  

2. Learn more about Behavior Trees and Simple Artificial Intelligence (AI).

3. Attempt to solo make a simple 3D Shooter in 48hrs while juggling University homework.

Yea...I was kind of in over my head haha, but challenge accepted!

So here's a breakdown of the 48 hours per Los Angeles Pacific Standard Time (where I'm currently based).

Friday (17 November)

@04:00 omg the game jam started!  Time to search for an XKCD comic.

@05:00 still searching, some of these are really good, can't believe I missed them

@05:15~ Found it! "FPS Mod" -https://xkcd.com/873/ ok time to sleep.

Saturday (18 November)

@10:00 - Woke up and ok its time to do this! Opens up Unity 2017.2...and it crashes. Apparently the latest windows update corrupted the data files again.

@11:00 - Unity finishes downloading again! In the mean time, searched online to find tutorials and ended up watching Brackeys on Youtube. Here's what I watched:

• Ammo & Reloading
• Shooting with Raycasts
• How to make Slow Motion

@12:30 - Made an FPS Prototype using the above tutorials and added some blocks in but there's something missing. 

@14:00 - Played around with the FPS prototype more but started to lose interest. Went to buy food. 

@15:00 - Continued work on the prototype but played around with lighting instead. Found the following tutorials to be really useful:

• Lighting a Simple Scene
• The AAA graphics of Spellsouls: achieving 60FPS on mobile
• Game level texturing: Bake lightmap in Blender and Unity

@17:00 - Lighting is good and the level is blocked out, let's take a break and play with post-processing effects and shaders! Brings in Colorful FX and Unity Post-Processing Effects. Also, the USC vs. UCLA Football game is on - watches it concurrently on ESPN.

@19:00 - Food and Football + Watching Unity lag while trying to bake the lighting with every change (realized later that I forgot to turn off auto-generate lighting)

@21:00 - The football game ends and realized that there wasn't much work done. Decides to start learning / trying out Opsive's Behavior Tree and Third Person Controllers using their documentation.

@22:00 - The food places at the bottom of the apartment are overcrowded because of the Football game. Proceeds to cook up a simple donburi with japanese rice and ground chicken. 

@23:00 - Woah this is alot of documentation but at least the agents are set up.

@01:00 - Okay, so the agents are running around on a nav mesh and I'm in first person. I can't shoot them and they can't shoot me....

@03:00 - Ok let's just scrap my first person mode and follow Opsive's Third Person Controller Tutorial for the player.

@4:00 - It's kinda broken in all places, but if I wake up early tmr, I should be able to get it done.

Sunday (18 November)

@14:00 - OMG it's 2pm! HOW. Gah. I hate alarms.

@15:00 - Ok. Ok. Let's do this...

@16:00 - Wait, I still need to do homework...nah forget it

@17:00  - YAY! Game is happening. Players can now shoot at each other and things happen. Credits to the Opsive Tutorials - it only took like a day to learn, not too bad....

@19:00 - The start of a long slog fixing bugs and polist

@20:00 - Unity crashes again due to windows corrupting files

@21:00 - Took an Anime destress break while waiting for Unity. Managed to catch up to the latest episode on Season 3 Food Wars.

@22:00 - WHY CAN'T I SPAWN ADDITIONAL PLAYERS

@23:00 - Oh, it's all the startup scripts and managers...

@00:00 - Okay nvm, let's just .setactive everything. Okay now add in the Main menu...

@01:00 - Polish Lighting, add more stuff to build

@02:00 - OMG THE PLAYERS DON'T SHOOT EACH OTHER ANYMORE

@02:30 - Okay. Okay. Let's submit the game first and then fix this bug...

@02:50 -  FIXED IT! Forgot to change a tag name

@03:00 - Screenshot taking time!

Debrief

Did I accomplish my goals?

1. Yes! Learnt more about the Unity Lighting systems and materials. Still a novice at making the lighting pop but managed to optimize my lighting to make it look good + run fast. Also pleased that I can make shadows softer now and remove shadow banding.  

2. Well, yes and no. I tried going my own way but ended up following Opsive's tutorials to get their stuff to work. I realized that I should've used a more open-ended asset. Opsive is still too big a package to handle.

3. Really wanted it to be first person but just couldn't hook it up to the Opsive framework in time. Ended up using their default third-person controller with some aesthetic tweaks. The Jump is still weird but at least it works...

Overall - Learnt that the next time, I won't use Opsive's framework because it has such a high learning curve till the point that I rather would like to spend the time building my own. Unity's upgraded post-processing stack is a beast! Also the lighting is getting easier to use compared to Unity 5.

Hi Dangomountain,

Apologies for the lack of communication. I have been working hard on adding to the Atomica Experience (more songs and visual aesthetics + gameplay variants later in the future) and will reveal more next week. Thank you for your patience (:

Hi letsmaybeLP92,

When the game releases on Steam, there'll be a free week period where previous users will be able to claim the game key (:

Best,

Hi Lukz,

Thank you so much for posting your score! I've added it to the leaderboard on the page. Really glad you like the game and it's true that the game ends super fast once the yellow ball reaches maximum speed. 

Tim

Hi dangomountain! 

Thank you so much for posting your score! I've had my fair share of higher-ups walking in on me too. Wish you all the best and can't wait to see an S score soon :D 

Tim

Hi Yeeeee, 

Thank you so much for downloading and playing Atomica! I understand your pain. As a developer, I should have been able to reach max score but really, it took me forever to get to that S Rank (37 tries actually, I counted each one). I had a friend who played it twice and got an S just like that. This is to me reflective on the struggle of life and though this may be a game,  it is a game that doesn't have a discernible system to break as it is quite random, paralleling life's own mysterious  system.

That said, there are strategies that can be employ to get a higher score. Something that is not yet highlighted in the game is the fact that at 10% Atomic Integrity (your health) or lower, the score is now basically double per hit - which means each time the ball hit a purple box, your score increases by 200. Knowing this, a possible but risky strategy is to bunch up the purple boxes with [space] (activating the gravity well] when Atomic Integrity is low. Doing this will allow for a final "burst" of score when the ball hits the core for that knockout punch.

Hi Hayden,

I agree! A tutorial would help very much and it will come in the future implementations (I've already added it to the list). For now, I have created an anatomy guide for the game to help you get used to all the elements of the game.

For playing the game, all you would want to do is use your (F) Thumpers with your keyboard keys [Z, X, Space] to keep (A)The Ball as far away from the (B) Core as possible so that you can survive longer. By surviving longer, you increase the chance that The Ball hits (D) the Purple Boxes which increases your score, represented by (E) Explosive Yield Score. If The Ball does touch the Core, you will lose life, represented by (C) Atomic Stability, which if it reaches zero, the game ends. Good luck and I hope this helps!

Hi Spoonage,

Thank you so much for playing and recording the game! Loved your commentary and watching you play ATOMICA. Admittedly, this game doesn't do a top notch job of explaining how to play it, so here's some possibly helpful tips:

For a high score, the most I've seen is at a local playtest of around 18,000 and the playtester didn't really know how they got it (which seems to be a recurring theme in this experience haha). From what I can gather, the playtester played defensively once they got to a lower "life" (atomic stability) and used the gravity to bunch up the purple cubes to protect the core. As the cubes give a score on each hit with the yellow ball, the player managed to get quite a numbers boost as the lower the atomic stability, the higher the points earned (up to a maximum of 200 per hit). As such, at 10% stability or less, it is possible to get one large points boost before the explosion which can push the total up to an S. 

The next hotfix will add in more tooltips and UI to help show scoring + how the extra points work based off the atomic stability (:

Tim

Hi dinre, 

Thank you so much for posting about your experience! That little bit about your son really warmed my heart and made my day. You also helped pull me out of a creative burnout too. 

I do apologize for the incoherent gameplay. Much of my daily work centers around making other games coherent (usability wise) and it's an irony that the experiences I create in my free time constantly buck that trend. Many a times, I feel like my brain goes "I spend so much time making games work for others, I think its time I make something that just is...whatever it is".

Over time, I do hope to develop the game more so that it explains itself better. I'm so glad you chose to play ATOMICA! 

Tim

Hi HarryPotter4444,

The current temp audio was from Youtube's Audio Library and here are the details,

Pyres by Broken Elegance https://soundcloud.com/brokenelegance
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Music provided by Audio Library https://youtu.be/9xMg_xdpa7w

Nostalgia by Tobu https://soundcloud.com/7obu
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Music provided by Audio Library https://youtu.be/03AKy9bhOMU

HIIOOOOOOOOO~

gnruean nrieuav nreiaoaoak i iii fdoo llll naon o nnnn nao rui bau bi ba a

Oh wow! Thank you so much for posting this Cregina! I'll add your name to the page. For the prizes, please send me a message at https://www.facebook.com/qgamesinteractive to claim the steam key. (Can't post it publicly here and itch.io doesn't have a message system yet) 

Post here for any technical issues/game  bugs that you have run into and I will schedule them to be patched up!

For all those who have played a game of ATOMICA, please post your stories/experiences here! Would love to hear how you felt while playing, why you played it, and what you would like to see in future versions.

Hello beann! For the developer challenge, the prize is a mystery gift but is usually associated with Steam. This could mean a gift card or a game or maybe both? (:

Hi bent-n, sorry it took so long to get back to you! I've been busy prepping for E3 and a Kickstarter launch for other projects. Thank you for tackling the developer challenge, you did a great job! To claim your prize, please send me a message at the Qgames Interactive facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/qgame...

Hi Meneerkiwi,

Just woke up! I am sorry that the buttons were not clickable.

This is a serious issue. Would you mind providing me some more information?

• Need to know if you are using the Windows or Mac build.
• In addition, linked below is a screenshot of the start menu, are the buttons in the same layout?

[Latest] Version 1.02 - It's time for more sounds and more stuff! / We reached 300 downloads

Released 12th May 2017

What is in this?

- Added UI sounds that randomize on click in menu

- Added some chimes for audio feedback on ability recharged and use + when you fall and it reloads

- Added another wave of 4 objects that fall from the sky - Beach theme; there's a boat, a coconut tree, beach ball, and Minivan

Just finished my exams at uni! Thank you all for being so patient for this update. I've combined both the 200 & 300 download stretch goals and I am so happy we've reached this many. Now that I'm out of school and have more time in the summer, I am looking forward to deliver more content and more games to you via Itch.io!

Please do tell me what you think of the UI sounds and the chimes, and the new wave of objects (:

Version 1.01 - The First Update / We reached 100 downloads!

Released 1st May 2017

What's in this?

- Added two more songs during the gameplay mode (they will randomize and play when you click start)

- Added three more gradient backings to the game to add more visual colors! (The colors cycle every time you fall off the platform and respawn)

Thank you all so much for the outstanding response! As promised, 100 downloads unlocks the first update for phase one. Super excited to update the game and get it online to all of you. I realize that some may like to play their own music, so I'll be implementing the audio controller soon. Ran into some trouble implementing the extra audio in Unity because I forgot to capitalize a letter in a string and took 30mins longer to finish it than was necessary!

If any of you would like to make games too, I would suggest getting started by downloading the Unity Game Engine and completing the Rollerball tutorial (links below).

Want to make games too?

https://unity3d.com/ - Download the Engine

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX2vGYjWbI0... - Learn the basics with the Roll-A-Ball Tutorial, anyone can try it!

https://www.youtube.com/user/Unity3D/playlists?she... - Official Learn Unity Playlist to improve your skills

Looking forward to seeing what games you make and to seeing what you like about mine (:

Version 1.00 - The Original Vanilla

Released 20th April 2017

What's in this?

- The game in all its original glory

The launch of TILTOFF on ITCH.IO. TILTOFF was a game that I designed and created during a stressful week at uni and took another week to polish it up for play. After two weeks, the game was ready to be let loose into the world. Was recommended Itch.io by a friend and leaped at the chance. Heard the community was awesome and it really is! Looking forward to talking with you all more (:

TILTOFF is all about balance, not just in a virtual game world, but in your real world as well. During a hectic university week, I realized a few areas of my life were out of balance - not getting enough exercise, not eating fruits, drinking too much, and in general, it all made my frame of mind out of sync because I was not FOCUSED. So TILTOFF helps me regain balance by making me focus on achieving balance and through the experience of playing the game, I internalize the focus for balance and am able to achieve it in real life as well. I hope you will be able to experience this too!

Post here if:

You have an awesome comment for the game (all compliments and complaints welcome, I treat it all very seriously because I love you all)~

You would like to report a bug that affected the game (please try to be as specific as possible and add screenshots to help me expedite the bug fix nya~)

You would like to post an improvement for the game (will credit you if it actually gets into the game - in the version log and where applicable, in the game as well)

Overview

How do I play this game?

Balance your ball (colored red if player one, blue if player two) on the yellow platform using the WASD / arrow keys (I/J/K/L if player two) to gain points. Objects will spawn periodically to throw the yellow platform off-balance so use the weight of your ball to offset the impact of the falling objects by moving around the platform to stabilise it. Sometimes a bonus gem will spawn and grant you more points but this comes with the high risk of falling off. At any point during the gameplay, you can press SPACE to activate your global special skill (which can be chosen in the main menu). If used wisely, your special skill can help you stay on the platform longer. You can also play this game as a local co-op multiplayer which provides a much tougher challenge as you will have to coordinate with a partner.

How does this game improve my spiritual balance?

This game is based on the spiritual belief of balance and flow of movement inspired by Tai Chi. Though the game seems like a simple arcade game on the surface, it is this simple mechanic that allows the player to easily dive deep into the core of the experience - one that seeks to improve the spiritual balance of the player. Leveraging Ian Bogost's Theory of Procedural Rhetoric, which theories that a player can learn through experience and repetition of a procedure in a game, I have crafted the game in a way that will teach you, through repetition, that true balance does not come from staying still but from continuously moving to offset the imbalance. The objects that fall onto the platform are there to symbolise the way life continuously throws hurdles at you on a daily basis and either you act in change to them or they cause you to fall. The bonus gem that spawns always represents a great risk, just as some opportunities in life do, so that object tests your greed and your judgement of risk. The special ability of your player is there to represent the special traits in our life, for some of us may be born smarter or have more monetary means, to which we can use to escape imbalance if we use them well. Lastly, the co-op feature of the game is there to illustrate how hard it is to communicate in a relationship. Balancing your own spiritual self is hard but it gets even harder when you are together with someone else. As such, the co-op feature truly presents the greatest challenge in life. Overall, I have used the Arcade Genre's use of simple and engaging mechanics to create a game that seeks to teach the player the rules of spiritual balance.

Coming soon~

This will be a how to play guide that will not only cover getting better at the game but also how by doing so, it will help you succeed in life (:

BALANCE

FOCUS

Challenge The Creator! The current Developer Highscore is 134. If you can beat that score and post a screenshot of it in the comments below, I will deliver an awesome gift to you! (and the top five get their profile linked below!)

Challenge Leaderboard

1) HisButtjesty - 200 Score

2) bent-n - 135 Score

3) OR could third be you?

4) Perhaps fourth is not too bad?

5) Being the fifth element is always good~

Congrats to HisButtjesty on being the first to challenge the score! (The original post was a comment, and a pic of it is below)

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/dVdh8jy.png)

Hello everyone~

My name is Timothi Ellim and I am an Indie Game Developer from Singapore that is currently studying Interactive Media and Game Design at USC in Los Angeles as an International Student! While Game Design is my main focus, I am also a budding Fiction Author and Visual Artist, and if you would like, you can visit my website - http://timothi-ellim.com/ to learn a little more.

TILTOFF is my first publicly available ITCH.IO game, so I do hope you enjoy the experience.

For this AMA thread, its purpose is to help me connect with you as I find that the best part of game dev is getting to know the community in person!

So, ask me about college life, video games, anime, dogs, movies, and just about anything you can think about~

Congratulations on beating the developer highscore! You are the first and you are awesome~

Because you accepted the challenge, the Challenge Leaderboard has appeared on the game page. In addition, when the actual Leaderboard does appear in the game, your profile name will be enshrined there in memory of this moment.

I'm so glad you had fun with the game!

Note: I had also planned a physical gift that comes with this, but I now realize that Itch.io doesn't have direct messages, so could you message me @timothiellim on Twitter or Facebook message the group page at https://www.facebook.com/qgamesinteractive/ ?