Explodemon!

[Shin-Ra]

http://www.curve-studios.com/explodemon.html

Explodemon! is a 2.5D action platform game with an explosive main character. Mixing classic platforming action – from classics such as Mario and MegaMan – with the refined contemporary gameplay of Halo and Half-Life 2, it brings old-school gameplay bang up to date. Coming from Curve’s deep-seated love of video game culture and history, Explodemon! is wrapped up as a loving homage to SNES-era Japanese action games.

720p Trailer

[Septimus Prime]

Please be bringing it on soon, lest I reduce into brittleness fluid.

[Shin-Ra]

Nice Engrish.

Last year, Curve's website leaked the existence of PlayFactory, a first-party game for SCEE.



Hopefully this HD trailer is representative of the graphics they're achieving on PS3. I think Unreal Engine III most commonly uses that dithered soft shadow effect but others use it too. If it's UEIII, the AA leads me to believe it's probably PC footage.

[silversnake]

looks like a nice mini-game. i like the "old school" gameplay idea.

Seeing this game reminded me of that game that was using garbage as a tetris game. Can't remember what it was called though.

[Shin-Ra]

Yeah, the smoke has a similar nice volumetric looking effect to Gomibako and LBP.

[Elandyll]

Wait ... so basically it's coming to -all- platforms .. except the 360?

Weird, but definitely gotta love it
(I imagine it's something to do with the XBL limitations on size?)

P.S: why is it that everything I see posted I happen to doubt today?

[Simplayer]

Looks very neat. Hope to hear more about it.

And if they're able to get it on PC fine, I can't imagine it not coming to XBLA.

[MacDaddyOJack]

Please be bringing it on! I reduce you into brittleness fluid!

[atat23]

When I saw the thread title I thought it was some kind of Pokemon game coming to PS3

Love any kind of platformers though so will definately watch out for this one.

[dereksworl]

Looks kinda like a Mega-man/Viewtiful Joe type game. Gets the "Ok" from me.

[opterasis]

I thought this was going to be a pokemon spinoff. But this looks pretty cool.

[deathmachine]

Game looks great. I could easily get into it.

[BlackMamba]

This looks awesome!

[jkwest]

hmm...I will wait for more info...

[Xerios]

Originally Posted by dereksworl

Looks kinda like a Mega-man/Viewtiful Joe type game. Gets the "Ok" from me.

word my thoughts exactly brotha

[Shin-Ra]

Target render footage for now:

Thanks guys. I can't say anything about XBLA besides the fact that it's not coming to that service. Sorry.

I should also restate that this is a target render, just so you know. Our tech guys are pretty hot shit though and as you can see our art team is, as they say, 'bad ass'.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...5&postcount=69

[Goodintentions]

if the game has that blurriness in hte final release its a pass for me .. that is damn annoying and is hte same reason i hated GTA IV .. uggh blurry blurry blurry

[Xerios]

Originally Posted by Goodintentions

if the game has that blurriness in hte final release its a pass for me .. that is damn annoying and is hte same reason i hated GTA IV .. uggh blurry blurry blurry

Vice City was the worst, first thing i did was turn off "color trailing" who the hell invented that

anyway i dont think the blurriness will be there in the final release

[u_nick]

Sad that it's only a target render, but I look forward to them delivering. I love the look of the game.

[Shin-Ra]

http://www.onebitbeyond.com/



My name is Jonathan Biddle, but everyone calls me Bidds (even lawyers and my wife's parents). I'm the Design Director at Curve Studios, and this is my personal development blog.

IGN's summarised the story so far.

We're talking about Explodemon, the 'Mega Man meets Half-Life' action game that was announced early last year for PlayStation Network, PSP, WiiWare, and PC. Like 'Splosion Man, Explodemon can self detonate. However, Explodemon is more of a love letter to the 16-bit action games of yore, going so far as to insert typos into the text to simulate the poor translation so many Japanese games received. We haven't heard much about the game since its announcement, but a few recent blog posts written by Jonathan Biddle, design director at developer Curve Studios, provide some details on what we can expect.

First off, the initial plans to bring Explodemon to all of the above platforms have been set aside in order to focus on the PlayStation 3 version. Work on other versions won't start until the PS3 game is done and Curve hasn't yet determined which other platforms it will eventually make it to.

The inspiration for Explodemon came directly from games like Yoshi's Island, Astro Boy on Game Boy Advance, and the revered classic Gunstar Heroes.

"These kinds of games, and especially for me Yoshi's Island, possess a certain quality to them," Biddle says. "Something about the pixel art, the depth of gameplay deriving from simple rules, the accessibility, the collecting, the level designs, the perfect controls… I didn't know what it was, but it tickled my nostalgia node in a special way, and I felt a burning desire to create my own game that explored these mechanics. I didn't want to create something ambitious, or poignant, or something that pushed the edge of game theory, but rather an uncomplicated platform game, albeit one of the quality of a Nintendo or Treasure title. I was interested in finding out just what it is that makes those titles as good as they are. And so I started at the beginning."

Biddle began coding Explodemon way back in 2005. Once he had the basics of a platformer up and running (and jumping) he borrowed ideas from three separate sources in order to create Explodemon's explosive mechanics:

1. Biddle had made a plug-and-play Superman game called Meteor Strike. Similar to Missile Command you could destroy certain enemies and cause the explosion to take out additional bad guys at the same time. "A key strategy was to repeatedly chain these explosions together in order to clear the screen. It worked out pretty well in a basic fashion, but I thought it might be nice to see how that would work with a platform game."

2. He had also previously created a simple match-three game where the player had to eliminate blocks by destroying like colors around them. Explosions would "level up" and become more powerful as you progressed.

3. Finally, Biddle and a former colleague now working at Pokemon studio Game Freak had an idea for a game starring a robot that couldn't stop itself from exploding. He decided to make Explodemon jump by detonating himself – which also happens to be the way 'Splosion Man reaches higher ground.

Since Explodemon is a traditional videogame, it must have crates. A big fan of Half-Life 2's gravity gun and the opportunities it created to have fun with physics, Biddle made sure his crates would respond realistically to Explodemon's eruptions.

"I made the objects move fast and land heavy, to emphasize the arcade-like direction [in which] the game was heading."

Since there will obviously be a lot of explosions in the game, Biddle is making sure they will be satisfying for players.

"I'm a big believer that if you make the lowest level of a game's interface enjoyable, you've got a much better chance of building a rewarding game on top. To this end, I made lots of s*** blow up into tiny pieces; windows, solid walls, wooden crates, areas of solid rock…"

All of this work on Explodemon was going on during Biddle's lunch and evening hours while he worked on plug-and-play games like Thomas the Tank (which Biddle says was the worst project he's ever worked on). The lack of creativity required for this type of work made him even more imaginative with his pet project.

It was time to borrow from another classic: Bangai-O. Biddle loved the risk/reward mechanic of giving the player more ammunition the more danger they are in. He applied this idea to Explodemon so that the nearer enemies are when he detonates, the bigger the boom. Enemies leave behind red orbs that build the player's explosion level and make them more powerful. But after exploding, players must wait for their blast gauge to recharge.

Explodemon can slide like Mega Man, but fans of the Blue Bomber may be dismayed at how this came to be.

"The creation of this move was also down to my longstanding dislike of the Mega Man games. I've never played more than 30 minutes of a Mega Man game to this day, because I find the abilities of the main character too limiting. I find the fact that he can't crouch or shoot in more than two directions to be frustrating rather than enabling. He's so immovable, and I understand why some people like the gameplay that the limitations create, but for me it's like moving a brick around. I find it funny when people say Explodemon is inspired by Mega Man, because it's true in a way that people might not expect: some of Explodemon is how it is because I wanted the main character to be nothing like Mega Man!"