And yet it moves
I guess, not many of wannabe indies think about motivation. You are on fire with your wild ideas and dreams, what could be possibly wrong? But then… you know it. The passion fades, the inner deadlines are broken, and turns out the project is far from being a piece of cake. It’s getting harder and harder to just put yourself to the project and start working. And the work itself happens rarely (and if it happens, it starts usually from “ok, where we were…ohh, shiii, I can’t even remember!”). You already know the end of stories like this, right? The bad one.
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!
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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
Nothing personal
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine gave me a nice hint – major media company looking for game journalists for one of its franchise. I instantly thought about it like a good side-job opportunity. A nice match to my skills and interests. I was working as a reviewer for a small news site in high school days and my last full-time job was in scenario department. What could go wrong?
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New firmware for your cyberdeck
Ding! BYTE 0.5.5 version is live! What’s inside:
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Bug fixes. Bug fixes everywhere!
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Minor level design tweaks
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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!
New project, new teammates, new horizons
Surprise! Still alive we are. And this time, we got some major news.
WARNING! A wall of text incoming, so for those who want to catch up quickly, here’s TL;DR
- We have redesigned BYTE game mechanics from scratch. A playable alpha demo available here in the web.
- New teammates! Nik, Sergey, Sasha – guys you rock!
- …and thanks to them, we are happy to announce our new project – SpaceCat! SpaceCat is a VR endless runner for iOS and Android about cats, cosmos, and high-speed velocities.
- ..and yes, pre-alpha demo of SpaceCat is also available. Note: demo for Android phones with gyro only, you will also need a cardboard-like device.
Da tools for BYTE
Hello everyone! It’s status report time!
Okaaaayy… aha… hm… well, it looks like there is not much to show right now. But everything in motion, slow but steady: artists working on game objects, our code wizard experimenting with shaders and particles for backgrounds, and me struggling to find god damn time for level planning.
So, we’ll update prototype with some new art and features next month.
Right now, I want to tell you folks a bit about our game/level design tools. Maybe you will find something useful for your own projects.
As a game engine, we chose Construct 2 – HTML5-based tool for 2D games. Extremely easy to use, yet powerful enough for small-to-mid projects, supporting all major platforms (mobile, web, PC, OS X, Linux). But even if you are using Unity (or anything else) for your 2D game, me can recommend C2 as a super fast prototyping tool, thanks to sets of game objects behaviors, drag’n’drop canvas and visual programming through event lists.
Cons: rough version control systems support (problems with parallel commits), lack of HTML5 native support on mobile, and finally C2 is windows-only.
And the next game isss…
Well yeah, dat news probably tells us two things. First – we are not dead, yet. And second – we were REALLY trying to work on something for last couple of months.
So… As you may guess, we call our new project BYTE – it’s a 2D top-down stealth-puzzle game, where player controls a sneaky cyber-worm performing some malicious deeds in the network of the near future.
Main gameplay may kinda remind of “Snake” from your old Nokia phone, but who cares: every time you steal valuable data, your cyber-worm is getting longer, which makes it harder to control and evade anti-viruses.
Throughout the game you will be able to upgrade your worm in both passive (+% to moving speed, downloading, etc.) and active (adding jaws, that help you break ICE, for example) ways.
The game itself is not just a sequence of levels, by the way – there is a web map, where you can choose your next run, examine stolen stuff, read newsfeed and more.
The plot is revolving about mysterious and powerful web virus, capable to down modern, heavy internet-dependent world, on its knees. Player acts as an anonymous hacker, making his own way through the non-linear story.
Ah, almost forgot – the game will be playable on Windows, OS X and Linux somewhere in early 2016.
Next. We start BYTE devlog on TIGsource. Hope to update it regularly, as well as post news here.
And the last, but not least – there is something for you to see! Right here hides little playable prototype, showing off the very basics of gameplay in our upcoming game. Feel free to drop-off your thoughts over the project thread on TIGsource or in our trollum.
Phew… Okay folks, I guess that’s enough for a humble announcement. Stay tuned.