#robotloveskitty

[robotloveskitty]

Good news and Bad news!

Ahoy there! It’s been awhile since you’ve heard from us, we’ve been very quiet on here since trouble began. 

Thank you for sticking around, we have really lovely fans, I don’t know what we did to deserve you all!

I have good news, and I have bad news, I’ll give you the bad news first. We are putting Upsilon Circuit into the “Cupboard of Lost Games” indefinitely.

The good news is that we aren’t giving up, and have a new game we’ve been working on called Super Tony Land that brings some elements of UC with it. ..But more on that later.

It was incredibly hard to write anything about UC. It’s been nearly a year since we initially halted production, but it still makes my chest tighten up thinking about it all. It took me 6 tries, but I did my best to write this, because I feel like I owe everyone the best explanation I can muster. I tried to really be open, because so often game cancellations offer very little real information.

Since this was a 3 year journey, it’s a long tale, so get comfortable!  

The concepts for UC grew from a small idea we had because I really enjoyed watching people livestream our (then) newly released game Legend of Dungeon. It grew into an exploration of mortality in games, and so much more. We loved and still love all the things that UC was supposed to become.

So, if we loved it, then why did it get cancelled?

If passion was all it took, I’m sure many other games would exist. Money, time, and luck seem to be big factors based on what we’ve seen and experienced. And the bigger your project, the more you need of each.  

It was an incredibly ambitious project for the two of us. We knew failure was very possible, and I’m proud that we tried anyway.

Why did UC fail?

The oversimplified answer would be that the scope of the game was too ambitious and we underestimated the time and money needed. In reality, for any project, there are many things that can go wrong that influence these things.

As with anything, it’s.. ..complicated.  But the big troubles for us were: Scope, pushing beyond our capabilities, jumping into a partnership for funding, and overwhelming stress.

The scope:

UC’s concept had many game elements highly intertwined and reliant on each other, so cutting features without changing the functionality and direction of UC was impossible. It was also difficult to explain fully to people, including our team.

Pushing beyond our capabilities:

We are just two self taught indie game devs. To make UC, we hired people, signed with a partner/incubator near the end, and then managed a large team, all for the first time.

In hindsight, these were things that we not only didn’t know how to do well, but also made the two of us very miserable.   

Jumping into a partnership:

Instead of scaling the project back when we realized our money would run out long before release, we pushed ourselves harder and kept going, and eventually signed with a partner to help fund the last leg of UC’s journey.

Signing with a partner or publisher and bringing in a larger team are very normal things to do in the industry. However.. they were entirely new to the both of us. Learning (about setting and meeting Milestones, dealing with various issues, and managing a large team) on such a complex project turned out to be very bad for us and UC. No one really did anything markedly wrong, but nothing seemed to go the way it was supposed to. Which in part led to the next point..

The overwhelming stress:

New to running a team stress. New to having partners stress. Crowdfunding stress. Partners pulling out mid failing crowdfunding stress. Having to tell a team “sorry and goodbye” stress. So much stress.

We felt like we had something that could change the gaming world forever, and we were so passionate about it. When things went belly up in the third year, the emotional hit was debilitating.

Bleh!

We really wanted to find a way to finish Upsilon Circuit anyhow, but the truth is, even if it wasn’t saddled with stress and emotional burden.. we’ve already put too much of our money into it. We can’t even support ourselves for long enough to complete a game this big right now.

Looking back on it all now, it’s hard not to feel like we were making a game that the world didn’t want. We knew that it was an out there idea, but that was why we felt that making UC was so important.

We knew publishers wanted something less experimental and risky.. But it was a bit surprising when the gaming community showed so little interest, since articles about UC had reached millions. 

When we lost our partner and shut down our crowdfunding campaign, we made a Patreon, and reached out to the tens of thousands of people on our newsletter. We didn’t get enough pledges to cover the cost of our shared office space, let alone paying even one person.

While there were people who were very generous and amazing, it felt pretty terrible to see something people had seemed so excited about struggling so much to get support when it was truly needed.

When we finally shut everything down, we both thought we might never enjoy making games again. We felt like garbage. We drowned in that for a long time.

You can learn a lot from failure, and we certainly did.

Things we learned from our failure (your own mileage may vary):

Take the project’s timeframe, and triple it. Then triple it again.

A unique idea can add an “I need to get this out before someone else does it” feeling. Let. That. Go. No good choices were made from that feeling.

Don’t bring on full time artists or audio people until the project is really ready for them, use placeholder art and sounds, when you can. Things change, and we redid a lot of our art.

Make sure all contracts clearly state what happens if things get cancelled, or situations drastically change.

Hiring more than one or two people means managing them part time, or full time. We now know that we hate managing people, and are terrible at it.

No matter how smart and awesome your team is, if you can’t get someone 100% behind your idea, your project will suffer.

Having a partner or publisher is a lot like having a boss while also being a boss. Some people like it, but we will likely stay indie or die trying.

Don’t sacrifice your own well being or happiness for a dream. Yes, we’ve sacrificed a lot in the past, we lived in a tree house in the woods so we could keep making games before. But there is a limit, and we found it with Upsilon Circuit, and we stubbornly ignored it and payed the price mentally.

Kittens make things a lot better.

If we had it all to do over again it would have been a very different game, but maybe we could have finished it, or at least avoided some of the worst moments.

So what now?

It’s been a year, and after many conversations, we have found no solutions for bringing back UC. ..But we have healed a little, so we are taking the ideas, story and world, and building them into our future games

We started working on a new game called Super Tony Land this year, and it will be part of UC’s legacy in its own way.

Super Tony Land is a physics platforming adventure game that has many worlds, a story, and easy access to user created levels and entire game worlds. Imagine if Cave story, Mario Maker, and Besiege had a dynamically lit baby.

In Upsilon Circuit the story was something we wanted the players to unfold and influence.. To give creation to the audience, experience it ourselves, and encourage Streamer/audience connectivity. To give real power to the players.

For Super Tony Land we’ve designed an extensive level editor, with visual programming blocks and NPC/Story tools. Anyone can build worlds or challenges in the free editor that we will be releasing alongside the game. We hope that communities and content creators will build and share their own universes, and we are looking forward to playing them!

Here’s the teaser trailer we just released! 

If you’ve been with us for the long haul, you might notice that this is actually a sequel to Tiny Plumbers!

This new game won’t be a lot of things that UC was, but it will be the game that the two of us made that helped us remember how important making games is to us.

It will be available on Steam this spring!

That’s about it for news!

Both of us are thankful to our team during UC’s development, and to our community and friends that have been there encouraging and supporting us throughout this journey. 

We will keep doing our best to make the games we want to see exist, for as long as we are able to make games.

Here are a few links you might want:

If you want to stay up to date on all things RLK, jump on Twitter!

If you want to chat with us or catch streams we have Discord

If you want to support development we have our RLK Patreon here

Thanks for your continued support and understanding!

Your co-pilot, 

Kitty

[meicheesecake]

It’s Neverdaunt remembrance day

[indiehangover]

Upsilon Circuit Cancelled; Super Tony Land Coming

Sdaly, @UpsilonCircuit has been Cancelled by @RobotLovesKitty, but #indiegame Super Tony Land is Coming...

One of our goals at IndieHangover is to highlight lessons that Indie Game Developers have learned, and help pass those on through the community. Unfortunately, some of the most valuable advice often comes from failure. cancelled

Case in point: Upsilon Circuit, a game we were particularly excited about when it was first talked about. Earlier this week, Robot Loves Kittyofficially cancelled the…

[gordon-pint]

HEADS UP STALLIONS

The GameKid kickstarter is going to be up soon!

This thing is actually happening

The GameKid is an imitation Gameboy with a Raspberry Pi

It is compatible with Raspberry Pi B+, A+, and Raspberry Pi 2

It will have every game in the Gameboy library

Go here to sign up for their newsletter and learn all about the GameKid

[starrmazer]

Rare behind the scenes of @robotloveskitty booting up the Raygon core! #sxsw #indiedev #gamedev

[casua-aria]

Legend of Dungeon got a bit harder with the newest update.... I LOVE IT.

[forestambassador]

Cat Gentlemans Play: Insult Spinner 10 Cents is a game about resolving disputes by RobotLovesKitty.

Play Online

Why Try It: Unusual collage-style imagery; simple two-button controls; cat gentlemen slapping each other with gloves.

Time: Five minutes.

How to Play: Each player uses two keys to perform each task in the game, including spinning the insult spinner, slapping with gloves, walking, aiming, and firing.

Author’s Notes: "Two cat gentlemen, insults, honor, one chance to aim and one bullet to settle their dispute! Who will win? you decide! You can play by yourself and we will both be very impressed by your skills!"

More Info: RobotLovesKitty describes the game as a QWOP-like. QWOP was one of the first games exploring the deconstruction of the ease of movement that many digital games assume in their design.

You can find more games by RobotLovesKitty at their website.

[linuxgamenews]

Upsilon Circuit - Twitch.tv and interactive gameplay

Permadeath is a pretty hot concept in gaming these days. Reloading a save to undo a mistake is something popular games like Spelunky and Minecraft in survival mode do not allow. Still, if you die you can always restart from the beginning. Legend of Dungeon developer RobotLovesKitty is taking that one step further. If you die in their upcoming MMO-like Upsilon Circuit, you will likely never, ever get the chance to play again. And it's one of the elements that makes the project sound so exciting. Here's the deal: Upsilon Circuit is an eight-player, single-server MMO that broadcasts out to the world. That's not mistyped. Only eight people will be playing at a time. Ever. The players are randomly selected from the audience who are tuned into the broadcast through Twitch, or whichever service RobotLovesKitty decides to use once the game is ready to go. Which will be cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux), browser based with the latest Unity engine integration, but " if a need for a standalone comes up, it wont be hard to do", according to RobotLovesKitty.

Now, those eight players will be dumped into a gigantic game world where they'll need to fight the creatures inside to survive. The world is going to be absolutely gigantic, so players meeting each other will be a rare and noteworthy occurrence (and yes, they can fight to the death). Should one of the eight die, an audience member is selected randomly and they'll then get their chance to play. The corpse of the deceased will remain in the world, items, weapons and all. Anyone who comes across it will be able to pick up and make use of whatever is left behind. It's all set to the tune of an alternate future gameshow hosted by Ron Raygun, a mixture between Max Hedroom and former US President Ronald Reagan. Raygun will most likely be voiced through text-to-speech and will converse with the players, or contestants, as they go through the game. RobotLovesKitty is hoping to see special personalities emerge to the point that they'll become in-game celebrities. This, of course, allows players chance to catch the attention of the audience. The audience will determine how a player levels up or receives new equipment, so becoming a fan-favorite has its perks. It's a little bit like a mixture of The Hunger Games and The Running Man in this regard. In order to ensure the eight players will be on at the same time, Upsilon Circuit is currently planned to be available to play for only a limited time each day, much like an episode of a television show. You'll have to tune in to watch, just as they'll have to tune in to play. The amount of time the game would be available each day and how often was not yet determined as of the game's PAX build.

The amount of time Upsilon Circuit will be played as a whole is undetermined as well, though. That's because it's up to the players to finish the game. How will finding the "Dream Tech Fragments" factor into resolving the as-of-now unrevealed mysterious overarching story? It could take a year to complete. It could take two. But once the game is over, there's a strong chance that it may never be played again, coming right back to the theme of permanence that Upsilon Circuit is so deeply tied to. RobotLovesKitty hope the game will be done in six months but that the idea is "probably pretty optimistic", so it's likely we'll see the game at some point after that. They do have an Upsilon Circuit website set up, though, where interested parties can sign up to receive updates on the game.

[robotloveskitty]

Supershow! Upsilon Circuit! Gamekid!  OH MY (no bears, sorry)

Ahoy everyone! This is your co-pilot Kitty speaking!

We’re really not good at updating things regularly, so I appreciate you being here, reading these words!

SUPERSHOW

SO! First things first, I’m putting together another Indie Dev Supershow! 

It’s going to be on Aug. 8th, starting around 10 or 11am EST, and going for about 15 hours! We’ll livestream somewhere between 20 and 30 games, all accompanied by their developers!

If you are a dev, you can enter to be in it till the 22nd with this form 

If you want to watch, the show will happen on our Twitch channel so please follow us to get alerted when we go live!

I’ll also be streaming as I play test many of the entries (there are more entries than show time, so I must JUDGEMENTS at them) so you can discover even more games!

I’m crazy excited to do this, I discovered after the first one that I truly love meeting new developers and being able to connect them with/show their creations to passionate gamers! It makes sense that I love it: I like helping people, I get to play cool videogames (YAY!), and I make new friends too!

UPSILON CIRCUIT

We haven’t talked much about UC in a long while, and it’s because we’re getting really close to something but it’s not quite there, and we’ve been so caught up in the work that we just haven’t taken the time to really sit back and think about what to even TELL people!

Here’s the update for right now: 

Big things are in the works for Robot Loves Kitty, it’s a little scary, a little exciting, and hopefully the result will be more than just a little amazing. If all goes well you should hear about it in a few months, but I actually can’t tell you what it is yet.     :| sorry

Progress is going well though, so keep your eyes peeled (eww?) or sign up to the newsletter here: http://upsiloncircuit.com/

GAMEKID

Now, you’re probably thinking that we’ve been working on too many projects at this point, but it’s not ACTUALLY too many, it’s just enough!

The Gamekid is also moving along really well! it’s mostly Juju working on it, so that Robot can focus mainly on Upsilon Circuit.

We’ve been waiting on getting some price quotes to finalize a few things; then we just need to get a Kickstarter campaign all set up, with some shiny video!

 ...It won’t be me in a giant cardboard box singing and waving my arms :(  (the song also won’t be: Gamekid, gamekid~ Play with me I’m so happy!  Gamekid, gamekid~  I love you and my thumbs love you too~)  Robot said no  ~_~

If you want one of those things that Robot is eating in the picture above, head over to the Gamekid site to learn more; and to get a heads up when we launch the Kickstarter!

OH MY!

That’s pretty much all the game news from us at this point! Other things that have been happening are:

We pitched in and helped start a Dev Co-Working space in NH, called Game Assembly that we now work out of many days a week! 

One of our cats (Star, she’s 18) has a spot on her chin that won’t heal.

We have to clean and are out of food, 

And we are in desperate need of another power strip

Hope you all are well, this is Kitty...signing out!

[lauren-draws-things]

made a cyclaps for robotloveskitty's Legend of Dungeon art call (just in time woo).

[operationrainfall]

PAX Prime 2013 Impressions: Legend of Dungeon

Legend of Dungeon is a side-scrolling co-op dungeon crawler for up to four players developed by rob…

View Post

[failtumblrisfail]

http://robotloveskitty.tumblr.com/post/57054620787/legend-of-dungeon-is-in-beta

Didn't notice that LoD hit beta on August 1st!! It's one of my favourite games and will be looking for people to play it with me (4 player same PC co-op) SO KEEN!!!

[casua-aria]

The amount of apples I had when I died, is absurd....

[robotloveskitty]

3DPCB

So, we’re making this GameKid thing! 

Pretty cool... huh? Eventually we’re going to manufacture nifty Printed Circuit Boards for the buttons to press against (and other electronics parts to attach too)

For our first prototype attempt we cut up a usb controller to make the buttons work... 

that didn't turn out so great. We don’t have stuff like a drill press, so putting holes in the right spot to make them fit in our case was... less than ideal. We needed something precise so the buttons lined up perfectly. Oh wait! we have a 3D printer!

Kazaam! It’s a printed board with holes in the right place, and tracks to lay down these copper strips we have left over from building our own solar panels in our treehouse (long story).

But... you can’t solder to the strips or you’ll melt the plastic ;_; No problem, bend the plastic on, solder a wire separately, then superglue it! 

It’s so pretty! and ready to be wired into our GameKid! the contacts fit perfectly under our buttons! So, not sure who might use this idea in the future, or for what, but if you don’t have any other way to build a PCB, this just might do the trick for you :D We’ll be making lots more GameKid posts now! Prototype is almost ready!

Over and out, Robot i[o o]i

[robotloveskitty]

Upsilon Circuit stuff

Ahoy all you lovely people! It's your R<3K Co-pilot, Alix!

It's been a long time since we've really talked about Upsilon Circuit and we should fix that!

I'll try to make up for lost time a little with this post, and try to give you all an update(and a few sneak peeks) on where things are at! 

We've gotten a lot of stuff done since our last UC post. a lot of that was networking and such, but not all of it! what I'll be showing you is all still a work in progress, but that's still progress!

We've got new weapons including the gun, and this sword

new monsters, like these fairies 

and for the last few weeks we've been making a playable demo for PAX East and SXSW!  It'll be an Arena style level

and it lets the people watching add monsters into the demo arena from tablets! It feels so cool I can't wait to see people trying it out! 

I'm sure we'll learn a lot at the events, it's a great time to see what we're doing well, and not so well, and hear what people think!

We still have a LOT of work to do, but we are really thrilled with how things are coming along, and it's going to be more exciting now that we've gotten most of the networking groundwork laid out and can really flesh out the game!

That's all for right now, but in a little while I'll be posting a map to our booth at PAX and a few other things!

[casua-aria]

I should not have attempted Impossible mode.....but I'm gonna keep doing it anyways.