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[Gamieon]

Get your free open beta key on Steam!

Steam Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/349020

Prototype Video:

About

Hyperspace Pinball is a "table top arcade shooter" for the PC, Mac and Linux platforms to be released on Steam. In this game, players use pinball controls to battle aliens and make big skill shots through over twenty challenging and beautifully rendered levels. Score big points by collecting power ups, running loops, defeating mini-bosses and conquering mini-challenges!


Backstory

I run a one-developer part-time Indie studio called Gamieon in my free time. I created Hyperspace Pinball several years ago and released it for iOS and Android. I put a PC version on Greenlight on Aug 31, 2012 in hopes it would be approved by the community. After only getting a few dozen votes after a couple days and seeing the amazing games it had to compete against, I gave up on it and resumed working on other projects...

...but the game refused to be ignored. Over two years later (February 2015), I get an e-mail from Valve that Hyperspace Pinball has been Greenlit! This on the cusp of the Android version alone approaching 100,000 downloads! To prepare it for Steam, I'm giving the game a major visual facelift with help from Meta3D studios, and addressing all the game play issues from old versions.


Links

Greenlight page (already Greenlit!) - http://steamcommunity.com//sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93189467
Hyperspace Pinball Home - http://www.gamieon.com/hyperspacepinball
Twitter - https://twitter.com/gamieon
Gamieon Home - http://www.gamieon.com


Screenshots

[Gamieon]

Near the top of the table are six switches. If you hit them all, you enter a simple mini-challenge where you need to loop the ball three times or hit custom targets. I just made it so once you're down to a few left to hit, you get a notification in the text area at the top. It used to be a simple blinking animation, but I added some flair to it.

[Gamieon]

Working on the level 4 mini-boss now. It takes too long to defeat (and it's a bit dark) so some touching up will take care of that.

[Box99]

Looks fun, if a bit dark contrast wise.

[Gamieon]

I should also look for better ways to convert videos to GIF's; both of the ones I posted look a little darker than what I recorded.

[Gamieon]

Time to start choosing screenshots for the Steam store. I think I can do better than this one...but it's definitely in my top 40. It's difficult to show the game off as still images; and if I can't get a good screenshot in a level, that means I should fix the level so that I can.

[Gamieon]

My new way of converting videos to GIF's looks to be working much better. Here is a Boss Run level which is a tribute to 80's arcade games

[Gamieon]

Spent most of today going through levels making sure each one was worthy of screenshots on the Steam store. Level 12 was a bit of a disaster so I did a complete makeover of it. I was proud of it until I realized level 13 looked almost the same, so I had to redo that one too. I still need to go through 16-19.

Here's 12. If you look really, really carefully you can see the black hole in the background on the top left.

[Gamieon]

Started taking screenshots for levels 1-3. I think the still images just don't do it justice. I expect that by the time I'm done I'll have taken over 2,000 screencaps, and narrowed it down to 10. That doesn't include GIF's and trailer footage.

       

[Gamieon]

Posted a video that demonstrates time dilation and one of the mini-challenges.

[Gamieon]

Up to just under 1,000 screenshots from my first ten levels. Of those I have it narrowed to about twenty that are worthy of showing on the Steam store page.

One benefit to getting screenshots is that it's simultaneously bug hunting; I fixed a few minor things along the way such as enemies not spawning in the presence of another particular enemy and too enemies being on the screen at once.

Here are the top five from today.


       

[Gamieon]

You might be wondering "What kind of bugs come out of QA when developing a simple pinball game?" Well here are the bugs I fixed so far:

- Power-up object radii was too small; ball would breeze right past them sometimes
- The replay arrow was too dim
- Mini-challenges started too fast; the user had no idea what was going on
- It took forever to advance a level because you had to destroy so many aliens
- Ball sometimes went too fast
- Too many loops were required to do a jackpot challenge
- The shake key did not appear in the control hints display
- The skill shot sequence yanked the ball away from the player; bad game play
- Default keys were inconsistent with other desktop pinball games
- The "enemies remaining" icon on the lower left disappeaed after level 1
- The table edges were too dim
- The ball left too thick a trail when being replayed
- "Left Control" + "Right Control" keys on the control hints display were bad; "Control" can have different meanings
- If you applied 40% pressure to the plunger, the ball can teleport to the bottom center of the playfield
- Jackpot grew out of control (you increased your score by ridiculous amounts)
- The black hole was too strong at its center and the ball would instantly fly across the screen
- Levels that used black holes did not fade to yellow when the portal appeared

[Gamieon]

Just got the Steam in-game leaderboard working. It "works for me" but I won't know for sure until i have other people play. I pondered how often to load the scores from Steam. I start by loading the top 100 scores. As I page through, if the current page shows scores over 100, I'll load the top 200. You may wonder why I load the top 200 rather than the second 100...the reason is the scores are always changing and loading in pure segments could cause disparities over time. If I keep paging, it will load the top 300...but that's as far as it will go. I'm open to other ideas though.

[Gamieon]

I'm starting to build a "database" of game journalists to e-mail a few weeks before the release. Many of you are probably already familiar with the hub for finding them:

http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-indie-game-sites/

Working my way out, I also found huge lists of YouTube gamer channels:

https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/category/games
http://videogamecaster.com/tagged/arcade

A huge list of video game sites:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R6UsXU_VeE4zhms4t0b1vwbbn7Fv5Z1TRlYsrfLghXc/edit#gid=1810066597

A huge list of Indie game sites:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1liBG5RRHvp8DPBPxIauPMWlsxjOjXewa1LBCjEPvKKc/edit#gid=700085094

[Gamieon]

Oh, and this is a must-see video if you're doing your own marketing:

How To Get Your Game Noticed - By Alejandro Hitti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqlDpVm2s2U&feature=youtu.be

[Gamieon]

Lets not ignore sites catering specifically to Mac and Linux gaming:

http://www.macgamerhq.com/
http://www.insidemacgames.com/
http://www.macrumors.com/
http://www.macworld.com/
http://www.cultofmac.com/
http://www.imore.com/

http://linuxgamenews.com
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/
http://www.linuxgames.com
http://rootgamer.com
http://linuxgamecast.com
http://www.lgdb.org
http://linuxgamenews.biz/
http://PenguSpy.com

[Gamieon]

Starting to experiment with logos. Not a fan of this one; but its development has improved my Photoshop skills a bit.

[Gamieon]

Two more logos, each a different style.

[Gamieon]

First big update: the store page is up at http://store.steampowered.com/app/349020. I'm not releasing the game yet; but this was the last big milestone before announcing the open beta key giveaway. The only thing holding me back right now is feedback from a friend of mine who revealed a critical issue with players not knowing what the progress bars on either side of the table are for due to lack of instructions or cues. The screenshots also reveal all that open space on either side of the table I'm not using...maybe I could come up with something to fill the void.

Second big update is a new game play video at

. It's longer than the other one and includes more "screenshake." The first minute also reveals to new players how the game is intended to be played; the rest of the video is mainly a feature exposé.

[Gamieon]

The Hyperspace Pinball open beta key giveaway has begun!

If you want a key, just do the following:

1. Follow me on Twitter! My Twitter name is Gamieon (@Gamieon); use your favorite client or follow me at https://twitter.com/gamieon

2. Send me a direct message on Twitter that you'd like a Hyperspace Pinball beta key. I should get your message even if I'm not following you.

3. If there are any keys left, I will reply back with your key within a day or so. If there are not any keys left, I will try to reply as a courtesy anyway.

Once you have your key, please install it, try it out and join in the community discussions!