Neon Climber – out now!
This is it, THE RELEASE. It’s been already a couple of days, but I still can’t believe in it completely. So what are you waiting for? Go and see the results of our joy and suffering for the past 2,5 years:
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/ru/app/neon-climber-a-cyber-runner/id1519074967
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Dividebyzer0.NeonClimber
It’s meant to be a simple 3-month project, but somehow we got what we’ve got. I have no regrets – in the end, we got tons of new experiences. And the most important thing – a complete game.
Sadly, Neon Climber is a failure, in commercial terms. We’ve tested it 3 times with major publishers, and it turned out that hypercasual audience not a big fan of vertical runners in TRON aesthetics. But nevertheless, I liked the game.
I don’t have words to express my gratitude to our Dividebyzer0 team – for overcoming time, space, and procrastination, and for making this long journey from idea to app stores:
Nikita “teuz” Zhimkov
Georgy “R0ller” Yushkevich
Dmitriy “Stranger” Troitskiy
Also I want to thank our friends and colleges, who helped making Neon Climber in many ways:
Anton Jebrax
Daria Kalinova
Daria Sukhorukova
Mikhail Pomakhin
Dmitriy Soloviev
What’s next? Full speed ahead towards new game! So stay tuned for more.
DevGAMM Moscow 2019
A major milestone for our team has been recently accomplished – we showcased and participated at SpeedGameDating at DevGAMM Moscow 2019!
The SGD went smoothly, despite the fact that I was a little bit nervous at the beginning. The rules are simple – you have to pitch your game in 3 minutes. After the nasty alarm bells, publishers switch their sits, and another round of pitching starts. Good thing that our little game caught an eye of so many publishers and investors.
The showcase went pretty good, too. We received tons of positive vibes about our game, from players, publishers, and in between. Some even said that Neon Climber is in top-5 mobile games of this DevGAMM. So cute! The only complain we have is about timing – the final list of games that will participate at DevGAMM was announced only 2 weeks prior to conference itself. And a major part of this time frame are holidays in Russia. So we almost burned our asses in a hurry to make promo materials (especially that huge poster).
Now, we need to do our homework based on showcase feedback, and drive further. And I can’t shake the feelin’ that something big is gonna happen very soon…just hope it will be a good thing.
Showcasing Neon Climber
Great news! A few days ago we participated in our first showcase! Nothing big, just a local event named #GamedevHouse, but still!
It was almost a disaster at the beginning. Me and Roller arrived at place and realized, that our table just near the center crossroad. Our neighbors already installed some fancy screens, set merchandise, hung branded wallpapers, you named it. And we got..well, two notebooks (one of them was my 10-years-old MBP with battery that died right on a night before the event) with looped alpha trailer, one iphone with 2 months old build of #NeonClimber (don’t ask why), some business cards, and our silly faces. Oh, almost forgot – we were absolutely sure that no one will bother about our game, so Rol took a switch with smash bros with him.
All of a sudden, one by one, people stopped before our table, looking at trailer, asking to play. I cant really describe how joyful these moments were – when complete strangers play in your game and they liked it. Some even returned to play more. No comments.
Of course, there were bugs, known and new ones, comments, critics, suggestions, everything. But overall, people liked mechanics and visuals.
Now, we are gathering it all together. The Release is nigh, I feel it.
P.S. Many thanks to hosts of the #GamedevHouse and to everyone who tried our little game! It really matters, especially for indie devs like ourselves.
Neon Climber – first gameplay trailer
We are still:
- Alive (not that it matters, but anyway)
- Working on Neon Climber
In fact, plenty of cool new features has been added for the past half year, so we decided to make a little video to demonstrate how the game looks and feels right now. Enjoy!
Now making – Neon Climber
Another year – another game. Meet Neon Climber – our very unique runner for iOS and Android about rogue programs looking for shiny stuff in cyberspace.
…I just hope that THIS time we will make it to His Majesty Release itself.
After countless protos and genius paper ideas, now we try to focus on something reeeeally simple. And what can be simpler than a mobile runner game? So we have: Physics-based world; Experimental controls; Combo of 2D/3D art with tricky animations; Characters with unique gameplay mechanics. What could possibly go wrong with this one?
The idea came from Metroid series. See, I’ve always dreamed about making own metroid-like game, but right now we are too lazy don’t have resources to do it. So we just took a little piece of Metroid mechanics to build a much simpler game on it – and thus, runner with walljumps has been born.
As for end of April 2018, the game is somewhere between alpha and beta stages. The core elements of art and gameplay have been set. What’s left is to add some more of everything, polish it, and call it a game.
First 100 followers for BYTE!
Yay! Guys, you are awesome! Thank you very much!
A toast! For our wonderful team and kindly players!
…and just in case, here are the most convenient ways to check BYTE alpha demo right now:
BYTE alpha demo results and progress so far
Firstly, I would like to thank everyone who tried the alpha demo. When you are building a long-running game in your spare time only, the feedbacks (especially, positive ones 
) from the community are your natural fuel, that helps you keep pushing forward.
I also want to thank the community of GameJolt, Gamin.me and XGM in person, because the most comments/play sessions comes from them.
BYTE goes public
Socialization on the move!
Now you can follow our one-of-a-kind cyberworm simulator on IndieDB and GameJolt!
(more…)
BYTE update 0.5.7: stuck-detecting and more
Aaand new version is out!
We added a couple of “user-friendly” improvements to…well, improve “friendliness” of the game:
- Firstly, the stuck-detecting system. From now on, your cyberdeck will show a warning message each time worm gets locked.
- On-screen controls reminder. Just in case you got amnesia or simply tired of reading tutorial chit-chat.
- Small fixes in level design for smoother experience (including the annoying one on Level 11 “9s Bit News Blog”)
- Lastly, many typos have been ruthlessly eliminated. For great justice!
As always, you can play up-to-date BYTE alpha demo here: dividebyzer0.com/byte
New firmware for your cyberdeck
Ding! BYTE 0.5.5 version is live! What’s inside:
-
Bug fixes. Bug fixes everywhere!
-
Minor level design tweaks
-
New sounds added
As always, you can play up-to-date BYTE alpha demo here: dividebyzer0.com/byte
P.S. Electronic music, anyone? Roller just released a couple of his tracks for BYTE on soundcloud. Enjoy!