Nitrome News

Silly Sausage Inspiration

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 11:24:43 GMT

Hi Nitromians,

we have seen a few articles now about our new Silly Sausage game and what people think is the insperation behind it. Most commonly it has been called a cross between Snake and Rovios Retry. Retry was certainly an insperation for the restart element of the game (and it is also a great game that we chose in our Indie Showcase picks) but it is not really an insperation for the main mechanic in the game.

Snake was certainly an influence to the game mechanic but there is a greater influence and we felt we should highlight it as it is also a great game. James Pond 2: Robocod was a huge influence to the mechanic. The game is a platform game but in a twist you can stretch your body upwards until you hit a surface(which you can also grab onto). Unlike Silly Sausage you can't turn while stretching and thats where Snake comes in. So the premise really was what if you could stretch your character like Robocod but could make turns like Snake and we would then not need the Platforming element.

So there we have it for anyone who was curious as to where the idea came from :)

Chick Flick Mobile Update

Sat, 28 Dec 2013 17:18:50 GMT

Hi Nitromians,

when we did the last memory lane about Chick Flick a few of you asked to see the original art so they could see how it had changed. Well that was the original plan but was left out due to Mat being off at the time and him not mentioning it in the notes...doh!

So this is a small update to that to show you the original art. As you can see it is much the same as how it turned out in vectors which is not surprising given that it was the same artists working on both but you can clearly see the pixels in the original phone versions much smaller screen.

A few of you also asked to see the original video we made to show it off. We hunted high and low to find it in all our old back ups but unfortunately could not find it so we will have to consign that to memories.

One final interesting fact was that the phone version was going to have a secret stage that arose from a programming glitch. The way you rendered in J2ME was very different from how we used to program in flash in and you had to tell the screen to refresh the parts you wanted to refresh or it would paint each frame over itself as it moved. We accidentally left this on and thought it looked cool and surreal despite making the game much harder. New had the background designed like a tv tuning card which highlighted the effect really nicely on top. As this was not the way flash rendered things it did not make it into the flash version.

You can see a few other images from the game here on the Nitrome Wiki (yes even we use it to find things about Nitrome)

Memory Lane: Chick Flick!

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 10:59:41 GMT

It's been a little while since we did a memory lane post so we thought it was about time we did another. This time we would like to talk about Chick Flick one of Nitrome's earliest games (3rd to be exact). Chick Flick is noteworthy for a few reasons... Nitrome is known for working in pixel art and this is our only game made in vector art. More strangely, it was originally in pixels!?

First off, for those who don't know what the difference is between pixel art and vector art, pixel art is made up from squares of colour. Vector art is made of shapes of colour with the key advantages of vectors being that you can scale and rotate them as much as you like and the shapes still look crisp and correct. Ok lesson over let's move on.

Back when Nitrome started it was not the plan to make all of the games out of pixels. We weren't even really pixel artists having spent most of our time before that making client games in vector art. Hot Air, our first game, was in pixels but if you look at two other early games Sandman and Roly Poly they are not strictly pixel art either! Both of those games are not vector art either though so they seem less out of place.

So back to Chick Flick. The other interesting thing about this game is that it was originally supposed to be a mobile game... not for iPhone or smartphones as we have now... I mean back when Nokia was king and colour screens were just taking off on phones. We had a version running on devices and it just needed more levels adding. We gave up on it ultimately as we realised we did not have the funds we needed to market it.

When we gave up on the game we made Hot Air (yes it was before Hot Air!) so in a way this was the turning point for what became Nitrome as you know it today!

Back on devices at the time, games had to really be in pixel art to fit the restrictions of the devices and this was the reason we tried pixel art for the first time. When it got scrapped we had developed a love for pixel art so did our next game (Hot Air) using it.

Once Hot Air was out we didn't want to be pigeon holed into one style so Sandman the second game had a smoother digital look. When we came to the third game we thought we should bring Chick Flick back as a flash game and because we wanted to vary the styles and because the original art was too small we decided to redo it in vectors. In hind site we think it looked much better in pixels!

The flash version of the game was mostly the same as what we set out to make for mobile but there was one key difference: Multiplayer. The version you all know lets two players play together with the same aim. For the mobile version it was competitive played over Bluetooth. Each player played their own game and when you got a chick in the nest it would add one to your opponents screen. The idea was to overwhelm your opponent to lose his lives before you did. It was a fun mode that unfortunately didn't really work on a single screen and we weren't really up to making split screen at the time.

Click to Play Chick Flick!

Memory Lane!

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 05:00:00 BST

Hey Nitromians,

Many of you may be excited to see the return of our ‘Memory Lane’ feature which hasn’t made an appearance on our blog for quite a while.

Today’s feature is a project we started way back in October 2009. It was abandoned in its early stages, simply because we didn’t think it was much fun.

You may be interested to know that there have been a number of concepts that reach a playable build before deciding that they just aren’t going to cut the mustard and go on to be a full release.

In this game codenamed ‘Sucknblo’ we had a superhero protagonist who had a push beam device. His task was to clear a number of monster and trap based arenas using his push/pull ability.

You can see a full screenshot mock-up of the game here

Controls and loose concept were as follows (taken from the original game design document):

Use cursor keys or w,a,s,d to move. Space bar to fire your mega beam.

The aim of the game is to kill all monsters on the screen.

The Push Beam:

Your laser will push at a monster till it loses its footing and then flies into a wall, crushed to death by the force of the beam or into a trap. Your laser is so powerful it slowly pulls in objects behind you as you fire it, so you must be careful not to pull monsters into you. Monsters will grab onto poles on the level to stop themselves being flung into a wall. Force fields and walls interrupt the range of your beam.

The bullets fired by the monsters and their basic patrolling behaviour are only a foundation for more complex and varied behaviours we intend to introduce and distribute amongst the player's enemies.

After mocking up the initial rough tech demo, we decided to close the door on this project and work on something else. It was the run up to Christmas at the time and we set to work on our penguin based toboggan game ‘Avalanche’, which may not have seen the light of day if it wasn’t for the cancellation of this project.

Memory Lane - Twin Shot!

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 04:00:00 GMT

Hi Nitromians!

For this week’s memory lane, we have chosen… Twin Shot!

The feature image to this article shows some characters that were designed during the development stages of Twin Shot.

We thought it would be cool to show some development art that led to the final characters in the game!

Play Twin Shot - Click Here!
Twinshot Development Art - Click Here!

Memory Lane - Twang!

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Hi Nitromians!

For this week’s ‘Memory Lane’, we are taking you way back to one of our classic games – Twang!

Twang was made for MTV with programming by Chris Burt-Brown and artwork by Mat and Jon Annal. The game won the Peoples Choice Award at Flash Forward ’08 in which Nitrome became the proud owners of a big orange rubber arrow!

In the time of its development, Twang went through many redesigns. An instance of one of the redesigns is of the background environment. Originally, the background features in Twang were made up of red hues and were then changed to purples. After this decision, Jon was often accused of making all of his games purple! :)

We have posted up some early development shots of the game so you can see how the game may have turned out!

Twang Development 1 – Click Here!
Twang Development 2 – Click Here!
Twang Development 3 – Click Here!
Twang Development 4 – Click Here!

Play Twang – Click Here!

Memory Lane!

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Welcome to our newest blog category ‘Memory Lane’. Every time we feature this in the blog we will be picking out one of our past games to reminisce about. This reminiscing might feature points of interest about the games development, initial sketches or other interesting things about the franchise as a whole.

On the front page there is a picks section (when we haven’t got a category such as winter taking its place) every time we feature something in memory lane, it will take place in one of the game slots. We will use this feature to keep the section fresh and make you aware of some of our older classics.

Our first pick for memory lane is Square Meal which was our last game before we expanded to our London based offices and started taking on more staff. Of more interest to people though would be the fact that we started development on a follow-up which later got put on hold and we never got back to. The Halloween skin actually features one of the new enemies that were intended to be in the game… the Weresquare!

The idea of the enemy was that it would be timid and run away from you but then transform into a beast that would come after you! Although we don’t have any immediate plans we may still go back at some point and make the game, but for now it’s still on hold.

Weresquare: Click Here!
Can you find the Weresquare in the horror skin?: Click Here!
Square Meal: Click Here!