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[dukope]

Hi everybody. I'm the guy that made the drawing game Mightier a few years ago with my wife. It was nominated for an IGF innovation/Nuovo award, but lost. Life.

At the beginning of this year I started making an iPhone game in my spare time. It went through a lot of changes, found a publisher, and got released in the App Store a few weeks ago.



(Click for big)

As with Mightier, I tried to make something a little different with Helsing's Fire. The gameplay is based on lighting up specific monsters with your torch, then blasting them with colored tonics. It's a simple mechanic, but there are lots of enemy types, multiple tonic colors, and boss fights to keep things interesting.

The difficulty curve in the initial release is a little too slow and easy, so I'm improving that (and fixing a bunch of other issues) in an update. After that's live, I'll start pushing out regular content updates with new puzzles, monsters, characters, and worlds.

There's a video and some more info on our site: Helsing's Fire on Ratloop.com

Because we've signed with a pretty well-known publisher for this game (Clickgamer), I'm not sure if it still falls in the "indie" bucket. Clickgamer works with a few other indie devs, and so far have done a great job with marketing for us. If anyone thinks it inappropriate for me to announce here, I'll lock the thread or mods can nuke it from orbit.

[William Broom]

This looks really awesome. Any plans for porting it to iPad? That's probably the only way I would get to play it...

[ness io kain]

This looks really neat... Some day I need to get one of those iPod gadgetmotrons all the cool kids are talking about, but as it is now, I can't afford one... so I don't get to play things like this.

By the way, Mightier happens to be one of my favorite things ever.

[dukope]

This looks really awesome. Any plans for porting it to iPad? That's probably the only way I would get to play it...

We have distant plans for an iPad HD version, but right now the focus is on adding content to the iPhone version. The game looks pretty good at 2x on an iPad though. The art style is a mix of pixel and more modern stuff which expands fairly well.

By the way, Mightier happens to be one of my favorite things ever.

Wow, thank you! You just made me really happy

[Hima]

I bought this game before I saw this lol. Anyway, I love the art style, really. And the game is fun and addictive. I love clever and fun puzzle game like this Cheers! 

[dukope]

After over a week in review, the first update has finally been released. Here's what's new:

USER PROFILES    Switch between 3 independent profile slots at any time.
PERFORMANCE    Enjoy silky smooth framerates on all devices.
COLOR ADJUSTMENT    Easily compensate for common forms of color blindness using the new "Color Blindness" setting.
NEW DIFFICULTY    If you were unphased by HARD mode before, try ABSURD difficulty. Warning: It's way too hard.
NEW CELEBRATION    The Tomahawk!
BACKGROUND AUDIO    Listen to your own background music while playing.
HARDER FASTER    Tweaked difficulty curve to ramp up the challenge faster.
ENDLESS PUZZLES     As always, every playthrough is unique. All puzzles are generated randomly for each game.

At the moment we're working on a content update with new puzzles, monsters, and characters.

[dukope]

Bit late on this, but last week we put out a big update with lots of new content and features:
_____________________________________
NEW CAMPAIGN: Our heroes are called into action again. The Shocking Mire awaits!
NEW CHARACTER: Someone's been causing trouble with London's new dynamo.
NEW MONSTER: The Splodin Toad!
NEW BOUNTIES: Compete against other players online by collecting bounties for difficult puzzles.
NEW PUZZLE TWIST: Special puzzles that require temporarily ADDING shields to monsters. Warning: Hard!
NEW JOURNAL: Replay, save, and share your favorite puzzles from the Journal.
BETTER COLORBLIND: An improved color adjustment, better suited for multiple forms of colorblindness.
NEW SURVIVAL: How long can you last in The Shocking Mire's survival arena?
_____________________________________

[eobet]

I was just thinking that, man, the normal levels don't ramp up the difficulty much, do they... and then I tried one of the bounties. Damn!

The quality of this game couldn't be any higher. Everything is pixel perfect, everything adds to the atmosphere even the menus, and the gameplay is unique.

The first time I saw the hand shakes it had me laughing, but I have to admit that even though the game is very interesting, I'm not craving to get back to it. A level now and then is fine, but once I've solved a level I feel no rush to move to the next one. Perhaps it's an effect of the lack of urgency and polite tone of the main characters, I don't know.

[dukope]

I was just thinking that, man, the normal levels don't ramp up the difficulty much, do they... and then I tried one of the bounties. Damn!

The quality of this game couldn't be any higher. Everything is pixel perfect, everything adds to the atmosphere even the menus, and the gameplay is unique.

The first time I saw the hand shakes it had me laughing, but I have to admit that even though the game is very interesting, I'm not craving to get back to it. A level now and then is fine, but once I've solved a level I feel no rush to move to the next one. Perhaps it's an effect of the lack of urgency and polite tone of the main characters, I don't know.

Thanks eobet. The main idea was to have quick puzzles with multiple layers of progress to keep you playing. So each puzzle takes less than a minute, then each row takes a few minutes, then each page takes longer, etc. I wanted the player to be constantly completing/clearing stuff while working towards the endgame. But I agree there's not much of a sense of urgency in the gameplay or the presentation. Helsing and Raffton are pretty laid back chaps.

If you want more challenge in the main game, try increasing the difficulty. We had people on both sides of the difficulty fence. For some it's too easy, and for others it's too hard. I ended up increasing the default difficulty just a little bit and adding 2 optional harder modes; one of them being much more difficult. Absurd even.

And the bounties we just sent into outer space. Even I have a hard time beating some of those, but there's a fairly dedicated community that plows through them all the time.

Btw, we've recently released a lite version if anyone wants to try it out for free. And both the full and lite now have retina support.

Helsing's Fire Lite

[dukope]

Distant plans accomplished.

Helsing's Fire HD has just appeared in the app store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/helsings-fire-hd/id407201718?mt=8

[eobet]

Perhaps it's a bit too late to ask, but could you talk level design a little bit? How do you generate your levels? By hand or by algorithm, and in that case, what drives it?

[dukope]

Perhaps it's a bit too late to ask, but could you talk level design a little bit? How do you generate your levels? By hand or by algorithm, and in that case, what drives it?

The puzzles are generated by an algorithm. At first I was laying them out by hand, but that got old real quick. I had a good idea of how the game should progress, and designed a simple way to express that. In the end, I created a puzzle generator that takes a monster progression table, some per-stage flags, and a rudimentary block layout as input.

The basic flow is to put together a playfield, populated with random and hand-placed blocks, then select good locations for the tonics. This is basically generating the puzzle backwards: start with the solution, then make it interesting. After a certain number of tonics are sprinkled around, a set of monsters (chosen based on the progression table) are placed and given shields to match their tonic exposure. There are a lot of little details and tricks along the way, but that's the basic idea.

Besides providing an infinite number of puzzles, the nice thing about this system is that the solution is known by the game. This allows us to verify everything is working properly, and to have a mode where the game "autoplays" itself, which helped big-time with testing.

[X3N]

This is one of my favorite iPhone games, great job!
How did you like working with Clickgamer?
Also.. I think I have an "impossible" puzzle! I'll take a screenshot later (I'd like to see how you solve it)

[Chris Pavia]

I work at a publisher you guys pitched this game to. I was asked to review the game to determine if we should publish it, and I was like "Hell yeah!" To this day I give my bosses a hard time for passing this game up. I make sure to send them emails whenever the game is mentioned in the news too

[dukope]

This is one of my favorite iPhone games, great job!
How did you like working with Clickgamer?
Also.. I think I have an "impossible" puzzle! I'll take a screenshot later (I'd like to see how you solve it)

Thanks X3N! Working with Clickgamer was really easy. They've published for a lot of indies, so we fit right in.

If you've got an impossible puzzle, I'd love to see it. Post a pic here, or paste the puzzle code and I'll take a look. Usually the impossible-looking puzzles require annoying precision, or avoiding to hit an enemy until the right time.

I work at a publisher you guys pitched this game to....

Hah, cool. Thanks for the endorsement In retrospect, it's a good thing we didn't end up with that deal since it would've cost us the IP, and a significantly larger chunk of royalties.

[Chris Pavia]

Hah, cool. Thanks for the endorsement In retrospect, it's a good thing we didn't end up with that deal since it would've cost us the IP, and a significantly larger chunk of royalties.

You are certainly correct about that!

[X3N]

I beat the first round on Normal, I think, then jacked the difficulty to the max for the next mission (the one with 30~ levels). This is the fifth level of the second stage.



Have gotten close, but always seem to be short a potion.

Glad to hear about Clickgamer. I hope to be sending a game or two their way soon.

Tigsourcers with iStuff: buy this game, it's excellent.

[dukope]

We won best mobile game at IGF! Thank you judges!

As proof of our impeccable timing, we just released a huge update with a new campaign:

This release adds a new campaign, new puzzle elements, some small fixes, and more.
NEW CAMPAIGN: The cold is relentless. The Frozen North awaits!
NEW VILLAIN: The Ice Queen has cast a spell that is slowly turning London to ice.
NEW PARTNER: Raffton has fallen sick! Who will take his place?
NEW MIRRORS: Bounce light and tonics around corners.
NEW CRYSTALS: Color the light and tease your brain.
NEW SURVIVAL: Two new survival arenas to prove your skill.
NEW CELEBRATION: Tea time!
ENDLESS PUZZLES: As always, every playthrough is unique. All puzzles are generated randomly for each game.
GAMECENTER SUPPORT: Leaderboards and Achievements are now posted to both Crystal and GameCenter.
ENTER THE COLD!: Select CAMPAIGN to access the new campaign.
Thanks for playing and enjoy!

I beat the first round on Normal, I think, then jacked the difficulty to the max for the next mission (the one with 30~ levels). This is the fifth level of the second stage.

X3N, sorry for the embarassingly late reply on this, but do you happen to still have the puzzlecode for this in your Journal? If so, can you paste it here?

[X3N]

An update with new mechanics? Downloading
It was in the campaign, how do I get the puzzle code for that?
(Take a look at the screen shot though! See if you can see it.. )

[dukope]

An update with new mechanics? Downloading
It was in the campaign, how do I get the puzzle code for that?
(Take a look at the screen shot though! See if you can see it.. )

The last 30 puzzles you play (either in campaign or bounty) are saved to the Journal. Just open it up and scan it for the problem puzzle.

I spent a few minutes with the screenshot, but couldn't figure it out. :D