Online is out of Beta, Twitch Votes and New Content!

Hi UCHers! This week's update comes in the form of a video, which will help describe all of the new things we've tweaked and added to Ultimate Chicken Horse. To make sure you have the newest stuff, make sure you Verify your Game Cache the next time you play. Take a look at the new things:

Grab the 4-pack of UCH (on sale until September 26th!) and play online with friends or join the vibrant community; there are always several matches available online for you to join, and the new updated lobby shows you the best matches possible based on skill, connection quality, and other factors.

We've also added Twitch integration, where Twitch streamers can have their audience vote on which blocks will appear in the Party Box. Once the chosen platform is placed, the names of the people who voted will pop out of it.

Next up is a new level, the Pier!

This level features a giant wave that the players need to run away from... don't get caught underneath! The level makes for an interesting dynamic when players have to place obstacles on the path with the added pressure of constantly needing to move forward quickly.

Our newest block added to the game is a punching plant which gets angry when you come near it, then punches out in a fit of flowery rage a second later. If you get caught in its range, you may regret it.

We're pretty excited to have these updates out, and we're still working hard on the game. Next up is a big new feature, please follow us on your favourite social media site to stay informed!

What are you most excited about? What would you like to see next? Be sure to Tweet at us and let us know :) We're going to start working on Sandbox mode shortly, which we'll talk more about in future updates. Stay posted!

For the full list of changes in this newest update, you can see the patch notes here. 

Impressions from Boston FIG

Last weekend, at MIT in Boston, was the Boston Festival of Indie Games. The BFIG is a smallish expo that showcases games mostly from the Northeast US and Canada, and is more relaxing version of something like PAX. 

Last year, Clever Endeavour went and had a great time. This year, Richard went down with a couple of the members of Artifact 5, another Montreal game development studio, and recorded his impressions. Below are his opinions, not that of the company.

A Few of the Best Games That I Saw

Anamorphine, the game by Artifact 5, was awesome of course and their new demo was good enough to earn them the prize for best experimental game. I know them well though, so I'm going to talk about games that I hadn't seen before.

Perception was a great looking game where you play as a girl exploring an old, seemingly abandoned house. Not quite horror, the game freaks you out a little bit and gives you clues as to what's going on in the world as you explore it. The graphics were outstanding and the audio was perfect; the creators of the game are mostly ex-Irrational Games people (the ones who made Bioshock) so we can expect great things. 

Inari was a mobile game where you play as a cloaked cat who jumps and bounds off of objects. It's a platformer with a beautiful art style, almost low-poly looking but in 2D. Great colours and depth to the scene backgrounds make it beautiful, and the mechanics are fun though limited. 

Lastly, I really liked Dragon Dad. This game was a bit like 'Dumb Ways to Die' for mobile or Warioware, where it's made up of small quick-time events and has a sarcastic, witty bit of humour between. The game is made by a games lab at a university in Boston and one of the undertones of this game is environmental awareness; some of the mini-games involve sorting recycling from garbage, biking quickly, or closing the fridge. Subtle, but nice messages. 

I didn't play everything, so I'm sorry if I missed you! 

Some Trends That I Noticed

There seemed to be some recurring themes this year, as there have been every year. This year shifted a little bit though, and we saw a lot of the following:

- Local multiplayer, single-mechanic arena games: I have no issue with this, except for the "single-mechanic" part. Many games seemed to be local multiplayer battle games that focused on one very specific thing, without variation. I think that games like Towerfall or Starwhal which focus on one mechanic still have enough variation (types of arrows in Towerfall, level changes in Starwhal) that this keeps things alive beyond what a simple, single-mechanic game could. These games also have extremely deep mechanics that are very difficult to master.

- Survival and crafting: lots of this stuff. Lots and lots and lots. It seems everyone just wants to craft! Except me.

- VR: I found slightly less VR than there was last year for some reason... but it seems that at every show there are many VR games that range from proof-of-concept demos to full games. Unfortunately I didn't see many full games.

So that's all for this week folks, we'll be back next time with some game updates!

Self-Skill-Balancing With our New Handicap Feature

Hello internet! This week we wanted to introduce to you our new handicap feature, which will be coming out in the next release. A handicap is a game balancing feature that some games implement to allow certain players to score more points, take more damage, or somehow align themselves when playing against players of a vastly different skill level.

In our game, we've run into some issues where players will feel mismatched, and the game doesn't do anything to help that. This is a common problem in competitive games, like Smash Bros (from where the screenshot above is taken). The answer in Smash Bros (a cartoony fighting game) is to give players a percentage which increases the damage that they take, and thus makes it harder for them to win. In our case, we've decided to do a similar thing, but where players have a score multiplier that reduces their score by a percentage:

Of course, players can't add some amount of points to their score, because that would end up with a race to increase the handicap and would lead to a stalemate. Here we count on the players themselves to realize that they're much better, and use the handicap to even things out. This will be easy to do from the Treehouse lobby, and should be simple enough to agree on when playing locally.

We're not entirely sure how the handicap will be used online, and if players will realize that they're better and / or be willing to reduce their score to make a more fun match, but we'll find out soon enough! This feature and a whole bunch of other stuff will be coming in our next major update :)