Sevnborne: Fortress of the Demon King (Indie Dev Grant)

[Gnome's Lair and the Kyttaro Games blog are presenting the Indie Dev Grant nominees that Bundle In A Box will be funding. Voting for the indie dev that will get the grant will begin on Monday June 4.]

Zed (@dedhedzed), whose real name isn't exactly Zed and who runs the Games by Zed site is apparently throwing himself "upon the mercy of the voting public to try and salvage a career from the wreck that is [his] daily life... Bloody hell, that sounds depressing, doesn’t it? Must lighten that up".

Happily he did lighten the mood by reminding us of his most famous game so far: the Intense Staring Simulator. He then added: "I’m relatively well-known for entering Ludum Dare, multiple times, and other such gamejam things. I do a lot of ‘messing about’, which goes a long way to explaining why I am where I am, career-wise. I’ve never had the time or resources to be able to sit down for an extended period and develop one title to full ‘commercial’ quality, which is something I’m optimistically hoping to rectify, with the Indie Dev Grant".

The game he is submitting is called Sevnborne: Fortress of the Demon King. It’s a narrative-driven, dungeon crawling twin-stick shooter that owes a lot stylistically to Gauntlet and Smash TV, and thematically to Terry Pratchett’s universally loved Discworld series. 

Here’s a breakdown of its key features:

·         Fast-paced twin-stick shooting action, with pickups and three levels of attack power for added depth and strategy.

·         A whopping 200 levels, with (technically) 200 more in a ‘remixed’ European Extreme difficulty mode, which offers a complete overhaul of enemy placement and challenge, rather than just bumping up the enemy’s ‘HP’ stat.

·          Hundreds of optional collectibles ranging from jewellery to weapons, and hand-written notes, each with a robust and comedic description.

·         A (hopefully) well-written, comedic plot with fully voice-acted dialogue in several inter-level cutscenes, telling the story of ‘Raika Sevnborne’, an orphan and wizard’s apprentice who must leave his relatively comfortable home life, where his biggest challenge is washing up dishes, to rescue his Master from the malicious Demon King Malleus, all with his transgender demon sprite friend Pixie in tow.

·         20 boss fights and 15 original enemies for added variety throughout the monstrously large number of levels.

The current state of the game is basically a debug room that shows off the main gameplay mechanics, allowing you to spawn enemies in a safe environment. Watch an early video of the project here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK9rMa55WiI&feature=youtu.be 

Under the Ocean (Indie Dev Grant)

[Gnome's Lair and the Kyttaro Games blog are presenting the Indie Dev Grant nominees that Bundle In A Box will be funding. Voting for the indie dev that will get the grant will begin on Monday June 4.]

Under the Ocean (link) will be a direct sequel to Under the Garden and is being developed by Paul Greasley and Michael Reitzenstein with music from Chris T Geehan. It will of course be a platformer/survival game and it will use all the grants it can get to be an even better game.

Have a look at two devlog videos:  Part 1 & Part 2. Oh, and do visit http://underthegarden.com.

Dungeon Hearts (Indie Dev Grant)

[Gnome's Lair and the Kyttaro Games blog are presenting the Indie Dev Grant nominees that Bundle In A Box will be funding. Voting for the indie dev that will get the grant will begin on Monday June 4.]

Christopher Pavia, the artist/designer/programmer for Dungeon Hearts, is asking for a bit of funding to help him hire people for the parts of the process he's not so great at. He maintains a development blog over at www.cube-roots.com where you can see plenty of artwork and find out quite a bit about the game.

Dungeon Hearts could best be described as a blend of the ever-escalating pace of Canabalt, the puzzle/action hybrid style of Puzzle Quest, and the nostalgia of old-school Japanese RPG’s such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior. A brave party of adventurers dashes quickly from battle to battle, using a match-3 puzzle system to defeat their opponents. Mastering the balance between offense and defense is key. Between each battle, the player must quickly level up the warriors, as each encounter is more difficult than the last. As the party wades through wave after wave of enemies, they must adapt to the twists and turns thrown at them as the gameplay evolves. If they can survive long enough, they may encounter the Dark One himself! 

Here's a most enlightening development video.

Untitled Metroidvania/RPG (Indie Dev Grant)

[Gnome's Lair and the Kyttaro Games blog are presenting the Indie Dev Grant nominees that Bundle In A Box will be funding. Voting for the indie dev that will get the grant will begin on Monday June 4.] 

Dustin Booher is currently working on a still unnamed open world, metroidvania RPG, but, as his puts it, "at 0$ my funding is a little low". The Indie Dev Grant could thus really make all the difference in the world. Oh, and the game is to be heavily inspired by Cave Story.

It's A Ruff Life (Indie Dev Grant)

[Gnome's Lair and the Kyttaro Games blog are presenting the Indie Dev Grant nominees that Bundle In A Box will be funding. Voting for the indie dev that will get the grant will begin on Monday June 4.]

Stephen Sanders (Design/Script/Programming/Voices), Jake Singer (Color) and Elizabeth Drybread (Art) are working on It's A Ruff Life; a family friendly adventure that aims to entertain children and parents alike in the same way the old Humongous Entertainment adventures did.

It's all about a young puppy named Alfie on an adventure to find his tennis ball. The game will come with a lively cast of characters including Meekers the mouse, Nikita the kitty, and Colonel Butsnifs, owner of a giant doghouse next door to Alfie.

As for the Indie Dev Grant? Well and to quote, it "would allow us to buy better software and equipment in order to bring better quality voices and music to the game. It would allow us to hire a musician to score the game. Also, it would allow us to make making this game our job and thus give us more time to work on the game and shorten the production cycle in order to get it done faster".

Here's an audio promo: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25802922/RuffLifeVoicePromo.mp3

Jack Houston and the Necronauts (Indie Dev Grant)

[Gnome's Lair and the Kyttaro Games blog are presenting the Indie Dev Grant nominees that Bundle In A Box will be funding. Voting for the indie dev that will get the grant will begin on Monday June 4.]

Warbird Games and game-loving* film writer/director Stacy Davidson (of Shadow of Lost Citadel and Star Wars fan-adventure Han Solo Adventures fame) are working on a 1950's pulp sci-fi inspired point & click adventure experience called Jack Houston and the Necronauts! 

What will they do with the grant money? Well, here's what Stacy told us: "I will be able to pay artists to help visualize the world, a world class composer (who happens to be a good friend of mine and will give me a tremendous break!) to record a riveting score, voice talent to contribute to the characters and, quite frankly, I will be able to put aside my video work and go full time designing and coding Jack Houston without starving and having my lights turned off!"

*Has tested games for Origin Systems in the QA department where he served on the teams for games like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Ultima Online & Ultima Ascension. Later still, he joined GarageGames and contributed to the 3D modeling on Jeff Tunnel's update of The Incredible Machine titled Chain Reaction.