A small announcement this time around – the DRM free version is finally available for both Windows and Mac. So if you ordered directly from us, check out your humble store library and download the DRM free version whenever you like!

Regarding the linux version, this is still in the works and hopefully we can share some actual dates soon. I can tell you it will take at least a couple of months from now – sorry about the delays linux guys but it will come.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=83URPt-xIaI

Link to HD version on Youtube

And one last thing, not to leave this blog post void of any color, here’s a let’s play video from “Nerd³” it not really recent but it’s mighty funny. As always, if you have any questions/quandaries post them in the comments below or just contact us directly.

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It’s getting so close we can smell it!

Super Splatters will be available as of June 26th on Steam for Windows and Mac users. Here’s the accompanying launch trailer which Sagi orchestrated with the help of so many others, I think it turned out pretty sweet.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIIxz9Vcaww

Link to HD version on Youtube

I’m really excited as to how this version turned out. All the hard work paid out – this one flows better, looks better and plays better than the original. The way Splatter-TV integrates with Steam is really cool as well. I can’t wait to see your top scoring game clips up there, especially on some of the new ‘extreme’ difficulty challenges which i’m sure will take a while to crack. And we also have an energetic, official soundtrack from Idan Egozy (Egozot) which will also be made available – expect a separate announcements on that soon.

After launch we’ll be pick and showcase some of your game-clips along with commentary explaining strategies and techniques so be bold and creative and you might end up getting featured!

For all the guys that pre-ordered the game, thanks so much you’ll have your steam keys available through the humble store as soon as it launches. Unfortunately, as hard as we tried – both the Linux and the DRM free version will take a little while longer. Thanks for your patience we’re working as fast as we can …

If you are press and interested in covering the game, please get in touch here!

Press: Get the latest Press Kit here!

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We’re VERY excited to announce that Super Splatters is coming to Steam at the end of June! Hit play for our short announcement below.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=atF5D-35SL8

Link to HD version on Youtube

We’re also working really hard to wrap-up final stuff on our to-do list and we have already started making our super awesome launch trailer. In the meantime, if you haven’t already, you can pre-order Super Splatters now and receive a shiny brand-new 30% discount!
And that’s a great opportunity to thank those who already purchased. We REALLY appreciate it!!!

Pre-order is obviously over,

check out our home page for your purchasing options.

You might also want to hit Like on our Super Splatters Facebook page and get all our latest info right on your feed.

More stuff to come real soon!!!

– Sagi

Press:

Click here to download the latest press kit!

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Indie MEGABOOTH

If you are lucky enough to attend PAX East, drop by to say hi to me or Sagi and play Super Splatters – we’d love to hear what you think. We’ll still have time to make final tweaks before it releases. We still don’t have a date to give out simply because we decided to stop thinking about ‘release dates’ and focus on ‘it feels ready’ kind of metric for that. Right now it ‘feels’ pretty close to done, but there’s still more to do plus we gotta make sure we properly test it. Stay tuned for yet another announcement right before we get on that plane to Boston. Niv

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You may or may not have heard the latest news, but we recently received some funding from Indie-Fund to take ‘The Splatters’ to PC. Now we didn’t really need any funding just to port the game over to PC we could have done that in a few weeks of hard work – so what’s going on?

Well, we wished the XBLA release would allow us all to sit comfortably and keep doing what we want without worrying about the financial side of things (wouldn’t we all?) but that wasn’t the case. There’s many reasons for that and the best we can do is speculate. The important thing is we are very happy with how the game was received and we’re very very thankful anyone who supported the game in any way.

Still, this is our first game and the first time either of us actually designed a game of this scale. We learned so much during the development, but also learned a great deal after its launch (mostly thanks to SplatterTV, which allowed us to actually see how you guys were doing). That made us think there are some aspects of the game we can improve on. Being the fanatic perfectionists we are, we wanted to make those changes instead of porting the game, as is, to PC.

Alas, we hit a catch 22 – if we don’t release the game for PC soon, we might not have enough resources to keep working. If we do release as soon as possible, we won’t be doing a good service to ourselves and the customers (which is to do the BEST we can do, at the very minimum) which might result in being back in the same situation. That’s where the good folks at Indie-Fund come in, that’s the noble cause they set for themselves – to help indie developers “get financially independent and stay financially independent”.

So what’s going to happen? Well we’re already hard at work making changes to the game we think are an improvement. For those of you who already love the game, don’t worry – we’re not changing the actual game itself, only the ‘delivery system’. The rules and mechanics in place will stay intact, we love them you love them it’s all good. What we aim to improve is the method of introducing those onto new players. If you played the game you probably noticed already, it takes a good 20 minutes of your time to actually ‘get’ what’s going on and have that ‘ohhh, that’s freaking awesome’ moment from which you cannot stop. It’s not to say the beginning of the game is not fun, just that it’s not indicative of things to come. You can play the trial or the first few minutes and think – this is really polished ‘angry birds’ style game. Nothing could be further from the truth as this is a game of skill mastery and creative thinking.

So we set out to plan a whole new way of luring you into the world of Splatters while being clearer than ever on what the game is about. As it turned out the changes we want to make don’t involve only the early parts of the game but they resonate throughout the game, start to finish. For the fans of the game it would simply mean you’ll get to see a different way of saying the same thing only with greater clarity. If you liked the message last time, you’ll probably like this even better. Hopefully those who didn’t get what we were trying to say before, will now.

Oh, and last thing, we’re also adding a new crazy gameplay mode and tons of other surprises to keep you smiling as you make those crazy moves and blow up those happy Splatters. Stay tuned.

— Niv

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwNn-fxXYjQ

Link to HD version on Youtube

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The Splatters will be getting onto PC and will debut on Steam. We’re also planning on going completely cross-platform and support both Mac and Linux with DRM free versions (Mac version will be available on Steam as well).

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwNn-fxXYjQ

Link to HD version on Youtube

It’s not just a port

After we’ve given this a lot of thought we decided against simply porting the game over to PC, even at the cost of delaying the PC launch. As much as we love the XBLA version of the game, we also learned so much from it. It wasn’t an easy decision to take as it has financial implications.

But knowing what we now know, the urge to change things around and try to improve the experience is stronger than anything. Besides, it’ll make our work a lot more interesting (straight up ports tend to get boring and technical). Big game development groups can do simultaneous launch on several platforms, we cannot. So our edge here is we can keep improving our craft as we go from one platform to another if we choose to. And in this case, we definitely want to do that.

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While The Splatters were well received by its fans, the fan base is still too small – which means lots of people are missing out.

So to get more people on board “The Splatters” goes on sale for only 400 MS Points.

So, for those who didn’t get a chance to check it out with the flood of mega-hits landing on the Xbox marketplace, or accidentally (we know you didn’t really mean it) dismissed it as just “another physics based casual game” – now is your chance to get it and experience yourself the level of challenge, skill and depth it has wrapped in an “arcade-style” packaging.

If you are already fan (thank you!), now’s a great time to spread the word.

Look for us under Sales & Specials on the XBOX dash between July 10 – 16. For one week only and at half the price, it’s really a steal!

We’ve also updated our trailer!

We had so many great reviews that we decided to update our trailer and add quotes from some gaming sites who had a blast playing our game. We called this one “Reviews are here”. Check it out below.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GJEpNULItc

Link to HD version on Youtube

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After 3 years of countless hours of developing, inventing, trying, tweaking, polishing and more words that end with ‘ing’ – we can finally sit back and watch The Splatters run away to have some fun with other XBOX owners. The feeling is like reaching a huge checkpoint in this amazing journey and we’re all looking forward to the amazing path ahead.

Some early reviews :)

We got some amazing reviews and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that this trend will continue. Here are a few:

Want to join the party?

Go and download The Splatters on XBOX Marketplace.

Watch our Updated Launch Trailer (“Reviews” Version).

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Have fun :)

— the SpikySnail team

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We’re happy to announce The Splatters has passed certification and will be hitting the XBLA store on April 11th.

Also, new explosive launch trailer is ready (amazing editing work from Sagi once again). The music track is the work of the truly inspiring “Infected Mushroom” which, turns out, are even more awesome than expected and let us use their track for the trailer. It’s a classic track from their early album “Classical Mushroom”.

Enough text, here it is, crank the volume up or put on your headphones:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6xcJnexDJU

Link to HD version on Youtube

Some media coverage

Last month I was at GDC again showing the game around and attending the Indie Games Summit (which was really interesting). It’s always really motivating just hanging out with some fellow developers and friends talking games all day and just having fun in general. It does get pretty exhausting with standing all day and then parties going on each night (in one of those I got to play Hokra – which is pure FUN).

Taking the opportunity while being in San-Francisco I met with some local press, here’s some of the stuff that came out of that. First two are videos and the other two are hands on impressions:

GameSpot LIVE interview/demo talking about “The Splatters”

A video with me playing plus my own commentary while visiting GamesRadar

A hands on piece written by Ryan McCaffrey for Official Xbox Magazine Online

Another hands piece by the awesome John Laster on XBLAFans

See you on April 11.

— Niv

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Onto the subject at hand, which is one of main mechanics in The Splatters and the one I’m most excited about. We named it ‘The Flip’ – you’ll soon understand why.

Sandbox physics-driven play

The physics based game-play in The Splatters has a sand-box feel to its mechanics. Even more so the ‘Flip’ mechanic which is free to use, once you unlock it, whenever you want and without limit. This turned out to be so versatile and deep as a game mechanic that it opened up so many things to explore. It’s a bit hard to explain what Flip does and the best way to wrap your head around it is actually trying it out in the game. I’ll try, but no matter how I put it, it’ll either sound technical or just not as impressive as it turned out, but it’s one the game’s best features. Trust me on that ;)

So before we continue, here are few examples of Flip during real gameplay. Watch for the “LT” button symbol whenever the player is flipping.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT2BKzfSPpE

Watch HD version on Youtube

Flip vs. Rewinding time

Our ‘Flip’ move looks like it’s rewinding time, but in reality it’s doing no such thing. When you ‘rewind time’ (like in Braid) everything goes back exactly to where it was, but with our Flip – it probably won’t.

In a very sterile environment where there is a single bomb flying in the air in one direction, hitting Flip will make it go back to the opposite direction, which might seem exactly like rewinding time – at least for a short while. But the main difference here is that as soon as you hit Flip and the motion changes direction, normal physics of the game kick back in and everything continues normally from there.

So for example, if liquid is falling down from the ceiling, it won’t start flying up just because you hit Flip. What it’ll do is go up just for a split second and resume its free fall right after that. You can hit Flip again and again to keep doing a little ‘Liquid Dance’ in mid-air – but the liquid will hit the ground sooner or later.

Timing is everything

While activating the flip requires a single button press (actually pulling either trigger on the controller will do), the choice of when to time it becomes the most significant choice. If you flip before a Splatter hits a wall, it will come flying back pretty much from where it came from. But if you let it hit the wall, which will absorb some of its energy, then hit flip, you get a totally different result. The same goes for when you push some bombs away by slamming hard into them. If you flip before your splatter is “liquified” they might not all get soaked. But if you wait a little and let your dude explode to liquid and only then flip, you’re much more likely to get them all.

Of course this is not as ‘binary’ a choice as I put it (before or after), it’s much more nuanced and ultimately (after some practice) gives you an impressive amount of control with a single key-press. Also, it integrates so well with the game’s stunt/combo system, giving players even more ways to execute stunts in unexpected ways. Some you’ll only discover after spending a lot of time with the game and experimenting with the controls.

It also turned out that overusing Flip has its own disadvantages built-into the game, so we didn’t have to limit the player’s use of it in any way. He is practically already ‘penalized’ for using it too much and it’s up to him to figure out just how and when he wants to use it. This is done in two ways:

• When you flip too much, without generating new stunts, your combo will eventually time-out and reset.
• The way liquid is simulated, flipping too much after the Splatters explode will eventually make the liquid explosion cover a smaller area just by a result of the liquid simulation’s dampening forces.

Keep your finger on the trigger

Overall, we ended up having a control mechanic which seems to have all of these properties, which I think is pretty amazing:

1. Easy to use (just a single button press).
2. Profound – the effect of this mechanic is felt everywhere on the game.
3. Versatile – can be used in a wide variety of game scenarios with a different effect to each.
4. Requires skill to execute well – the choice of when to time. Notice this is not a ‘timing challenge’ – there is no concept of a ‘correct’ time.
5. Self-Immune to player abuse – we didn’t need to implement any limitation on using the mechanic as it, in itself, was not useful when used excessively.
6. Integrates and complements the rest of the mechanics/rules of the game.

Granted there were a few ‘special conditions’ I had to code into the game to make it as useful as it can be, but my objective was to keep everything flowing naturally so only the very keen observers will notice the game actually behaves a bit different during the flip period.

Next post I’ll cover a totally different aspect of the game, which is how we addressed the issue of ‘teaching’ people how to play without resorting to over-tutorializing the game. Hope you enjoyed this.

Niv

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