Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Kudos 2 on the Mac. DONE

Kudos 2 is now available on the Mac. As usual, I partnered with redmarblegames.com to handle porting the game, as I know little about Macs these days.

The games demo download link is here:

http://www.redmarblegames.com/downloads/Kudos2Demo.dmg

The buy page is here:

http://store.esellerate.net/s.asp?s=STR807618070&Cmd=BUY&SKURefnum=SKU05843952168

I’m mulling over the possibilities of an iphone port for the game, with a few people interested in doing it. I think it would do very well, but it would also need some redesign, and I don’t really have time for that right now.

Now I REALLY must get my head stuck into the space strategy stuff.

Simulation Game of the year 2008

Woohoo!

Looks like I got the #1 and #2 spots at the gametunnel sim game of 2008 awards (for Kudos 2 and Democracy 2)

http://www.gametunnel.com/article-726.htm

If anyone has a digg account and can digg it here, I’d really appreciate it. Or maybe you have a stumbleupon account and the stumbelupon toolbar? If so can you thumbs-up that page? Actually I’ve really come to like the stumbleupon system, it often recommends some really decent sites to me I’d never find otherwise.

http://digg.com/pc_games/Top_5_Sim_Games_of_the_Year

Kudos 2 In PC Gamer UK

I got my subscriber copy of PC Gamer UK today. There is a copy of Kudos on the coverdisk and also a review of the game, where it scored 72%. It DOES bug me that they give half a page to K2 with 72%, and then spend 2 whole pages giving a lower score to Quantum of Solace. I mean… who the fuck was looking forward to the new bond movie tie-in game so much that they need a whole 2 pages to tell them it’s not as good as a hip cool new Indie game? Bah!

You can read the review online here:

http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/kudos-2/review/kudos-2/a-2008110714375486059/g-20081107142631814067
Also… I added an RSS thingy to the left of the blog for subscribing. If anyone understands that stuff well and notices it doesn’t work, let me know! I don’t personally use an RSS reader, I never got around to finding and installing one.

Promoting a genre-less game

There’s a big problem in doing PR and marketing for Kudos 2. It has no genre. The nearest it gets to a genre is ‘like the sims’. But even then, the Sims has no genre. Most hardcore gaming sites have genres such as Strategy,Arcade, RTS, FPS, Adventure. Kudos is none of these. Some might consider it a strategy game, but many sites assume a strategy game is an RTS, or at least some sort of combat or war game. Most strategy sites are bulging with screenshots of Elves and Tanks, hardly the same genre as Kudos 2.

Then there are the casual sites, where the taregt market for Kudos 2 also overlaps. The people who play games like ‘Diner Dash’ often quite like Kudos 2, IF they get to try it. The thing is, these sites also pigeonhole their games into ‘Time management’ ‘Puzzle’ and ‘Arcade’.

That makes me laugh, because what they really mean is ‘Diner Dash clone’ ‘bejewlled Clone’ and ‘Zuma Clone’. There is sod-all innovation in most of these games. But anyway, despite that rant, you will see again that Kudos 2 does not fit nicely anywhere. Sometimes it’s puzzle, sometimes arcade, sometimes its RPG or Adventure or strategy.

Nobody actually looks for Kudos 2, because they don’t know what sort of game it is. The best I can hope for is people expect it to be like an existing gewnre, but give it a go anyway. When people try it, they tend to like it.

Maybe next time I should make a game that more clearly fits in an existing genre. Right now I’m doing the very first bits of work on the next game, and it’s another strategy game. I have a nice idea for the game, and can imagine it being really cool. I just need to get the visual side of things arranged nicely…