In 2011 we made loads of prototype games; some small, some funny, some that sucked, almost all ugly (except the lucky few that receive Tian’s touch ). Here’s a visual tour of 20 of the 24 games that we made in five months. Together they paint the picture of what Voxel Agent games look like when they’re born – a mish-mash of squares, circles and terrible colour schemes!

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We’re proud to announce that Train Conductor 2: USA is finally available for android phones! Launched in early december, the new Android version is double the size with twice the content of the iOS version. We’ve spent many months creating cool new unique content for this release. It’s the biggest update to the Train Conductor series that we’ve ever attempted. So what’s new?

Challenge Mode

Stopped Train Timer

The existing survival mode feels like you’re running a marathon compared to the fast paced, action packed new Challenge Mode. In Challenge you’ve got to deliver as many trains as you can in about 2 minutes. One thing we noticed about the old survival mode is that you can draw out the experience by stopping lots of trains and dealing with one a time. This is fine, and we’re leaving survival mode as it is so you can continue to play that way, but in Challenge Mode if you leave a train waiting for too long, it will signal to the train network that there’s a delay and all new trains will stop from entering the screen. This keeps it fast paced and rewards players who can “Enter the Matrix” of Train Conducting with finest of crash-avoidance skills.

If challenge mode sounds stressful to you – don’t panic! You can toy around and make mistakes without stress as you’ve now got three lives up your sleeve in Challenge Mode. We all love the new three-lives feature, and in the later challenge levels, you’ll need it!

Three Strikes

Updated Game Icon

If you look at all the best icons, they feature just one element and look very clear when miniaturised. Finally I think we have a very distinctive and clear icon to represent the game, also it looks HAWT

Updated Game Icon - worthy of your home screen

New location: Chicago – the six track demon

Like Challenge Mode, Chicago is not for the fainted hearted. Players have always asked for six tracks, and here it is – it’s a demon!

During the course of a typical day on a busy city train network, there will be peaks and troughs in the flow of trains as commuters pour into the city in the morning and out again in the evening. Agent Henrik and I were trying to recreate these peak times of the train network in this new design.

We found that six tracks is at the EXTREME limit of human train conducting abilities Seven was out of control, to the point where it’s hard to target the right track because they were so close together, whilst also being hard to find the right track instinctively without having to count down from the top every time. So this is it, the maximum number of tracks we’ll ever put in a level.

Control trains across 6 tracks in Chicago

Android Exclusive: New Train Droid gives extra points

This Android character is one cute little robot. We couldn’t resist putting her into the game. You’ll find Train Droid in Challenge Mode levels, but she can’t be everywhere at once – so keep an eye out for which level she’s in each day.

Droid Train appears in a different challenge mode each day.

Deliver Gold Trains to unlock Challenge Mode

The new Gold Train

Existing players of TC2 are thinking, “Gold Trains? They already exist!”, but what I mean is Double Awesome Super Special Gold Train, it’s just a bit long of a name. In this update there’s a new “golder” train, maybe its 24 carats? In all levels except Miami, you can deliver Gold Trains (or Gold Ghosts at night) to collect Gold Tracks, and with enough Gold Tracks you’ll unlock Challenge Mode of that level.

The Gold Trains are rare, and boy when one appears, you do not want to stuff that up!

New Nashville level art and special FX

Previously we redid the Miami art because it just wasn’t up to standard, now Nashville has also had a make over too!

We’ve also updated the colours on the ghosts. Previously, the ghosts and demons were similarly coloured (i.e. white), and users were smart to complain. It most adversely affected the Nashville level, and you can see the results of Agent Tian’s touches.

The new nashville is much brighter.

Improved score screen

We always felt that the score screen didn’t really reflect your excitement each time you beat your high score – it didn’t erupt with awesome like a cream filled awesome cake. Hopefully now when you break that high score, you’ll feel like a king. We’ve also added some great feedback in-game for when you deliver that trains that puts you in the record books. But you’ll just have to play it for your-self to experience it.

New High Score!

Keen conductors will notice that we’ve also brought the score screen over the level. This means it takes less time for you to hit the ‘retry’ button. Some players are playing levels hundreds of times over in one session and we don’t want to waste their time jumping between screens.

Improved “Level Unlocked” Screen

Unlock a new level and be showered in awesome

Just unlocked Challenge Mode!

New Level Select Screen

The previous level select screen was entirely superfluous once you’d played the introduction. It really didn’t do much for you. Although I don’t think the new design is without it’s own flaws, you now have access to both modes (an unavoidable decision making step) and the introduction button is appropriately de-emphasised. Also, you don’t have to jump into a level to see the leaderboards anymore, it’s right there on the next screen.

Shiny new Level Select screen

Lite Version

Not to be forgotten. we created a whole new Lite Version that will bring the game to a wider audience. If you’re not sure if you will like connecting trains, test out the Lite Version and see what you think. It’s got the first three locations there and will keep you busy for hours. Almost all of the changes above are in there, with the exception of Challenge Mode.

Get Train Conductor 2 Lite Today

And more!

• Sparkles and Fireworks - New celebration for players who beat their high-score
• When you beat your high score, you want to know about that in-game, not just at the end. Break a high score and you’ll see it, hear it, and feel it.
• Menu backgrounds and buttons are more pretty
• Simply, we let Agent Tian loose on the graphics, and she worked her magic.
• Added a screen to let you know that “You finished the game!”
• It just seemed odd that you spent so long unlocking levels, and then suddenly there were no more to unlock. At least you can feel good now that you’ve unlocked every location! (and now go collect Challenge Mode levels )
• We made the sound effect and music mute buttons bigger.
• Tutorials are shorter and more to the point.
• All buttons are now blue.
• This helps show what you can click, and what you can’t. There are a few minor exceptions, but the major pathways through the game are cleaned up.
• Twitter and Facebook integration have been rewritten to improve the login and posting processes.
• The pacing of the trains appearing in Miami has been made more interesting, less repetitive and more friendly to new users.
• The fonts in-game throughout the HUD, menus and in-game are more consistent.
• Numerous graphical elements were upgraded to HD.
• Improved the induction process of welcoming the player to the game.
• Bug fixes galore.

And this is just the latest in a long history of improvements…

This is the sixth major update to TC2. Here’s what’s been added in the past:

• v1.5 – Massive “high definition” update, prepared the game for iPad’s big display.
• v2.0 – Added world and friend leaderboards
• v2.1 – Added a new level: Roswell
• v2.2 – Added a new level: Seattle
• v2.6 – Update for Retina Display, including the new Miami art.
• v3.0 – Everything mentioned above!

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We like to use paper prototypes to test our ideas. We find it helps to test ideas really quick, and playing board games is a pretty super job to have We like it so much, our next game came from a board game prototype.

It’s the weekend, and maybe you don’t have much to do… Or maybe you’re attending the Freeplay Festival like us and get all inspired to make some games. To help you, we put together a generic set of board game pieces that you can use to develop your own board game! Download the pdfs below, print them on A4 and get started prototyping new boardgames! The set contains a total of eighteen unique pieces for you to play with

Three “good” characters
Three “bad” characters
A house
A treasure chest and a coin
Three environment pieces
A life
Five generic symbols
An 10×10 board to play your game on…
And all of these icons in easy to print PDF’s are available here and here.

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We need to learn to communicate our creative ideas better as a team! We figure that since our diverse life experiences and inspirations shape how we dream up and explain our ideas, we should share more of them with each other. Voila! Voxel Afternoon Tea was born. During Voxel Afternoon Tea we share something that has inspired us recently, and let the discussion begin…

You can also check out the first Inspiration Session from a few weeks ago.

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The judges at GDC China’s Independent Games Festival have announced the winners of this years indie games competition, including Train Conductor 2: USA as “Best Mobile Game” of 2010.

Screenshots from some of the finalists, including Train Conductor 2: USA in the center-top.

Announced as a finalist last month, Agent Simon attended the awards ceremony on behalf of the team and demonstrated Train Conductor 2: USA on the floor at GDC China in Shanghai.

Other winners included Sugar Cube by Turtle Cream of South Korea who won “Best Game”, Skillz: The DJ Game by Playpen Studios, Hong Kong, and ButaVX: Justice Fighter by Nekomura Games, Singapore.

Winner of the “Best Student Game” was The White Laboratory by Huazhong University of Science & Technology, China. Both DeadSteel (Media Design School, New Zealand) and Ponlai (National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan) picked up “Excellent Student” awards.

The Voxel Agents were joined by fellow Melbourne developer Alexander Bruce and his innovative game Hazard: The Journey of Life who was also nominated for the awards. The fact that two Melbourne based indie developers were nominated for the awards indicates the strength and vibrancy of the Australian and Victorian indie games development scene.

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Hour 8 – 12:30am Saturday

We’re at the 48hr Game Making Challenge in Brisbane and we’re going to experiment with blogging as we make

This year’s keywords are: dinosaur, revenge and bar, thanks to @YugSTAR from the ManaBar.

Tom outlined our game plan in the previous post, and so far we’ve been following it pretty closely. We came up with plenty of verbs based on the keywords and started brainstorming ideas around them. We’ve got three concepts we want to take further and we’ve set off prototyping each one of them separately. Derek is busy developing graphics and an art style that works for two of the ideas.

The ideas are loosely;

• stealing eggs from dinosaurs
• dropping dinosaurs into a bar for epic havoc
• serving drinks to punters before they turn into rage monsters

Concept art to come soon. Here’s our setup (thanks for the screens Maggie, you rock!). Notice the healthy bananas! Matt’s eaten 5 already.

Tom and  I are tweeting, and someone occasionally posts to the Voxel feed too.

Hour 11 – 2:47am Saturday

Hour 17 – 8:30am Saturday

The sleeping quarters were surprisingly full last night, and many are still down there asleep. I think it reached its most full state at about 5am. I know this because sleeping on concrete without a pillow ain’t that comfortable and I might have spent more time awake than asleep. The drone of the vending machine didn’t help. Matt and I are back up. Matt’s got some cool stuff happening. There’s a lot of potential in it. Another positive of this “Raptor in a nightclub” idea is that it’s very different to anything we’ve made before and we find that pretty exciting. It has a strong puzzle element to it and it would be fun to deck out with ambient details. On the other hand, Tom’s “egg stealer” prototype in it’s embryonic state was super fun last night and I wonder how far Tom got before sleeping. I think it’s probably worth abandoning my prototype after I’ve had to reinstall Windows and lost a couple hours to crap. Looking forward to hearing from Derek… I wonder when he slept. He did have a cocktail of Red Bull, Mother, V and some other energy drink on hand….

Here’s a playable of Matt’s “Raptor in a bar” prototype. So… you’re in a bar and the green circles are people drinking and chatting. The aim is to eat as many people as possible by placing your raptors optimally. The game currently is self-regulated so you’ll have to use your imagination to imagine the game. To play you have to place three exits in the bar, ie doorways for the people to get out. Click three times, each click will place a blue circle. Now you’ve got exits, you clearly need some Raptors. Click twice more to place the raptors (red boxes) and on the second click the scene will play out. You’ll have to refresh your browser to play again. Enjoy!

DinoDino

PS: Derek is now awake. Good morning Derek.

Hour 25 – 4:37pm Saturday

We still haven’t settled on which of the two prototypes to make.

The “egg hunt” game is a competitive multiplayer game where the two players are competing to steal eggs off a dino. The dino chases the player with the egg, or the nearest player if the egg is on the ground. Without an egg you can outrun the dino, but with the egg you are very slow. It becomes an interesting match of trying to avoid the dino whilst trying to beat the opponent to return the egg to your base. Next up we’re adding more interactions between players and some minor tweaks to gameplay.

You can play “Egg Hunt”, but it’s not easy to setup. Unfortunately you need Xbox 360 controllers plugged into your PC plus this tool to play it. Having said that, its well worth your trouble

EggHunt_Hour25

Animations: Dino_Eating_Hour25, Dino_Run_Hour25

The “raptor in a cocktail bar” (aka DinoDino) game is somewhat similar to a simulation type game where you setup a scenario and then watch the consequences of your action. The aim is to enact revenge on all the punters in the bar, and you do this by unleashing dinos at strategic positions in the bar. Next up we’re making more levels and prototyping three distinct dino types.

You can play it here: DinoDino_Hour25

The bar from "Raptor in a cocktail bar"

Both mini-teams have until 6:30pm to receive their final prototyping before we make the difficult decision. We figure neither has the depth in gameplay at this point, but they’re both of relatively equal “fun”. Interestingly, opinions given by passers-by have been equally divided.

Hour 29 – 7:57pm Saturday

WE HAVE A GAME!

“Egg Hunt” has become the clear choice for us to polish up for the 48hr comp. We just played it for a good twenty minutes and we didn’t want to put it down. We’re off to list all the remaining tasks and reunite as one team to polish “Egg Hunt” up for submission tomorrow. After the meeting, we’ll be back here to post the playable.

Below is the final version of Dino Dino (aka “Raptor in a bar”) game at Hour 29. Click once to place the large and slow dinosaur. Click again to place the small and fast dinosaur. Imagine that the yellow circles are marked targets (ones you must get), they don’t do anything different, its all in your head. NB: you can get stuck in a level, where you have no choice but to refresh the browser.  Play Dino Dino at Hour 29.

Just realised Egg Hunt can sound a bit funny when you say it fast in an Australian accent. So we need a new name for it. Thoughts?

Updates coming soon.

We’re going to be adding a stack of new visuals and a couple minor gameplay tweaks. Visuals wise we’re planning to add: level background (seen above), a mother dinosaur, lots of particles, cloud shadows, animations for being various actions, a stun effect, a hit effect and lots of minor things. We’re considering game music that sounds like the Benny Hills theme song crossed with the Flinstones theme song – but getting that made depends on Joel… our musician in Sydney.

Hour 32 – 11:48pm Saturday - Update on the music

It’s looking like we might get a custom loop written for the game!! Joel says: “4pm tomorrow? Jeez! Sure, I’ll give it a go tomorrow. Something weird, fun and mental, with a prehistoric theme…” He’s risen to the challenge of writing something like Benny Hills VS Flinstones hehe Good luck Joel.

Hour 35 – 03:30AM Sunday Morning - Triceratops Trauma? – Latest build before sleeping

A little over 12 hours remaining…. This just in: Footprints!

[Play the game!]

With 4 player keyboard support!
P1: WASD + QE (Move + Hit/Drop)
P2: Arrow Keys + Shift+Enter
P3: IJKL + UO
P4: Numpad8456 + 79

Hour 46 – 2:20pm – YIKES!!

So much to do. No time to post! Tom’s network has gone wacky, causing the controllers to stop talking to flash. This is TERRIBLE …

We have music though, and I’ll post some shortly. Joel’s made some cool tribal “ougachucka” music.

The Following Day – after a good sleep

Just in case you’re sitting on the edge of your seat since my post at Hour 46, I want to let you know that we did resolve the weird network issue and our submission went just fine. So, rest easy kids

The game turned out really well! We’re very happy with it, and at times, playing it was our biggest distraction. It’s called “The Egg Beater”, and in the sprint towards the finish we just wanted to polish it. We did complete many of the graphical improvements we had planned at Hour 46 – see our backlog of tasks to see what got done. There was one absolutely critical task, the win screen, that didn’t get done… Yep, that has got to be what cost us most dearly! Because of this the game didn’t have an end, and therefore after it started the first time, it never went through the start again. This meant that each new person to approach the game would pick up the game where the last players left off, and they would be dumped into the middle of a match with the scores maxed out already at 10 (where it was supposed to end) and they would totally miss seeing the instructions. Fortunately there were always people standing around and some became short term fans, introducing new players to the game – thanks to all the players and voters! We were just one vote off tying the Pro League.

Regardless of our mistakes, we’re really happy with what we produced. I overheard players standing around discussing strategies, and I saw numerous players stick around for multiple matches with some rivalries quickly brewing. The game has an instantly fun veneer to it, bash opponents, grab eggs and drop them at your hut. But there is a subtle and deep strategic element that unfolds with each play. The best feeling is knowing that we’ve made something novel. We’d love to take it forward… I know I can’t wait to get back to the office to beat Tom in a quick match

Congratulations to the Winners of 48Hr Game Making Challenge 2010

Congratulations to ‘Big Al’s Revenge’, from Cratewerks, winners of the Pro League! Their game was very polished, with a great intro, lots of humour, light hearted gameplay and it looked absolutely amazing for 48 hours. We were blown away by it.

Immigration Office took out the Indie League and it too was an excellent game. Although I didn’t get a chance to play it, their novel concept sounded very cool. I was amazed by so many games in the Indie League! There were numerous games that really stuck with me and I hope to see the teams continue producing great games. Good luck! The indie scene is waiting for you!

The Evolution of the Music (by Joel)

Working with the Voxel boys, I’ve been given a lot of weird briefs before. When most composers get asked to write something, it’s usually “punk with a bit of hip-hop” or “electro-pop with a soulful vocal” or “tense strings and brooding trombone”.

Voxel Agents music briefs are more like “Nashville country music but with horror themes in a midnight thunderstorm” or “early 90s’s Japanese computer-game electro except that it’s underwater”. This one was “Benny Hill-type chasing sexy nurses across the field except set in pre-historic Flintstones cartoon-land.”

As I was walking out the door of my apartment, about to head to the recording studio, my girlfriend suggested the classic “ooga-chuka” vocal percussion that is somehow supposed to be the way that cavemen sang songs (how did that come to be? did someone dream it up for a b-movie?) . That was the idea I ran with.

Here’s the initial embryo – a multitracked caveman Joel choir:

First draft.

I was slapping my hands rhythmically on thighs, stomach, calves and a tambourine for percussion in that first draft. I then spent a good hour programming sampled orchestral and ethnic percussion to build the sound up to a convincing tribal thump.

Second draft.

Ok, so at this point I’ve got about an hour-and-a-half left. In music production terms, that is but a fleeting whisper of time. Working on a normal project, I’ll give a musical idea maybe three or four hours to develop before I’d break for tea, clear my head, and come back to evaluate whether to discard it or not. Generally, I do.

90 minutes to completely finish? I just had to run with whatever idea I came up with first. Here came the tough bit: cavemen were rhythmic, but they didn’t apparently write melodies in the sense that modern music expects. “Ooga-chucka” doesn’t suggest a thing in terms of harmony and melody. I felt I had two choices for inspiration: Hanna Barbara’s Meet The Flinstones or Paul Simon’s Graceland. I chose the latter, as I’d always loved the electric bass in “You Can Call Me Al”. It’s African, right? Cavemen were in Africa mostly, right..?

Third draft.

So three hours has yielded 7 seconds of audio. Now, 25 minutes has to yield another 80 seconds or thereabouts. I’m already realising that the idea isn’t particularly strong; the bassline is cool, but coupled with chord sequence it isn’t catchy, clever or culturally familiar, and those were the qualities I was hoping to give the game’s music. With no time to look back, I rush forward, programming a nice and clean pop-funk drum pattern, and extending the chord sequence.

Fourth draft.

I don’t want the music to just loop over and over ad-nauseam, so I spend most of the remaining minutes adding variations to each part over the course of the now-extended 90 second runtime. No two bars in the final piece are the same: either the percussion, bass, chords or drum kit is doing something different at any given point. Oh yeah, and I’ve added another “You Can Call Me Al” tribute: a brass section.

The final mix finishes suddenly so that it can loop back to the start perfectly.

The final mix: Caveman Afrobeat.

And that’s that. I email it to Simon and go home for the afternoon, having experienced another reminder that a good music idea is a precious commodity.

And finally, A video of the game

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