News

Little Snake, Big Scores (Pro Tip)

2012-05-16T03:30:22Z

I thought I'd put up some more details on the scoring system in Snakester.

Every time you eat a dot, the score multiplier goes up by 1. You then have 1 second to eat another. If you don't the multiplier goes down by 1 every half second. So, hitting 5 dots in a row quickly will get you 75 points (5 + 10 + 15 + 20 + 25). If you ate 5 dots slowly, you'd only get 25 points (5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5).

With well-timed use of the turbo button, you can get the multiplier really high (I've gone over 300 points per dot, and I'm sure somebody can get it a lot higher than that).

Anyway, I hope this helps you get the most out of Snakester!

The 52,630 Point Challenge!

2012-05-11T18:08:18Z

Win a free copy of Snakester by beating my current high score of 52,630 in the trial version of classic mode!* Just contact me on twitter @eyehookgames, or drop me a line through the contact page.

There's already been one winner with a score of 53,520!

And, for those of you that already own Snakester. I'm curious to see if somebody can break 75,000. Even better, if you put up a video of your high score run over 50K, I'd love to post a few here.

Have fun and good luck!

* I've got a limited # codes, so first come, first serve!

Snakester is Available Now!

2012-05-08T21:29:18Z

Snakester is now available on the Xbox Indie Game Marketplace.

I had a great time making it, and I hope everybody enjoys playing it!

Check out the Snakester Page for more details.

The final stretch...

2012-04-30T00:36:17Z

So, a few weeks later and Snakester is 99.9% done. Basically it's just down to some more bug testing and tweaking a few things here and there. I'm hoping to put it into review testing by the end of the week, so it should be available in about two weeks.

I ended up throwing away the original concept and decided to make a few game modes that were more closely aligned with the classic, but with a few added twists...

First off, I kept the "analog" snake from my original concept. It definitely adds more strategy (particularly in the co-op modes). And, for fun, I added "turbo" to the right trigger, which doubles the snake's speed. As it turns out, it works quite nicely with the multiplier system I added. To achieve really high scores requires a lot of speed and a lot of precision. So, it really feels like those two concepts work well together.

The co-op modes give you and a friend control of a two headed snake. It's hard, but a lot of fun (imho).

(Footage of some not-so-graceful co-op action in Snakester)

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy Snakester! It should be coming soon!

Challenge Complete

2012-04-09T19:22:58Z

So, it's 48 hours later, and here's a video of SNAKESTER:

I think I'm going to spend a few more days on it to add sound and multiplayer (co-op & vs), and hopefully put it in playtest by the weekend.

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about Cursed Cosmos!

48 Hour Challenge

2012-04-08T06:24:49Z

I've been pretty burnt out on Cursed Cosmos lately, so I thought I'd take a break and try to do something quick and fun to get me back into the zone. So... I'm trying to write a new game in 48 hours. I'm about 10 hours in so far, and here's the result so far:

SNAKESTER!!!

It's a mashup of classic Snake and everybody's favorite party game from the 70's. What's not to love?

Basically, you guide the snake around and try to match the colored parts of the snake to the colored rings on the playfield. Not rocket science, but I'm having fun making it.

Anyway, we'll see if I get it done by my deadline, but I think I have a good chance, since I have the concept and gameplay working now. Basically I just need to add levels to it, playtest for fun factor, and hopefully time for graphical bling!

Cursed Cosmos Progress Update (and Video)

2012-02-03T19:45:29Z

Most of last month was spent adding new equipment to Cursed Cosmos and related UI stuff (inventory/shop screens). So, ships in Cursed Cosmos now have 9 different equipment slots (including the brand new NUKES!). There are also different manufacturers of equipment and different tiers of equipment, so there's going to be a lot of equipment to choose from. Enemies also drop equipment occasionally (you'll see item pick ups in the bottoms left of the screen...)

Cursed Loot style encounters are also now implemented, and we have a lot of fun ideas for them. Beyond that, the ultimate plan is to have a (light) story arc that results in a final boss battle, but that work still needs to be done!

Lastly we've been working on navigation and have implemented a nearby "point of interest" ring that you can bring up with the "B" button that points out nearby star systems, asteroid fields, and encounters, as well as a more traditional map that shows some of the surrounding area (although it's still less that 1% of the overall galaxy... tbd if we'll support zooming or something else...).

Anyway, that's about it. We feel we've been pretty productive, but still so much more work to be done!

Next up: more encounters, new enemies, a big boss, and a ton of audio work.

2011 in Review

2011-12-30T20:21:03Z

A lot has gone on here at Eyehook Games over the past year. What started as a hobby in 2010 has become a real (small) business. After getting our new company up and running, we released Cursed Loot at the end of August, along with a shiny new content patch in October.

To date, Cursed Loot has had 6,677 trials and 4,442 purchases which comes to about $3,100 in the past four months. So, we're not getting rich here, but at least it buys lunch! The numbers for December are pretty interesting, with 519 trials converting to 500 purchases--that's over a 95% conversion rate! So, no complaints there. Now, if only we could get everybody with an Xbox to try out Cursed Loot, we'd be rich! :)

A lot of this year was spent on several different games, improving our game engine, and learning some nifty new tricks. But, now, we're firmly focused on finishing development of Cursed Cosmos. The Cursed Cosmos engine is working great and we are mostly focused on adding new content at this point. You can definitely look forward to Cursed Loot style encounters, a ton of upgrades for your ship, a good number of enemies, asteroid mining, and... wait for it... boss battles!

After Cursed Cosmos is out the door, odds are that we will be looking at other platforms. Right now, I'm pretty excited about doing something on iOS, but PC is definitely a possibility as well. And, of course, I'd love to do another content patch for Cursed Loot.

I also wanted thank everybody for your emails, comments, tweets, and forum posts. They've been a huge motivational boost and a great source of inspiration. You all are great!

That's it! Have a happy new year and see you in 2012!

Some more Cursed Cosmos gameplay

2011-12-16T20:22:09Z

After a pretty productive week here, I thought I'd post another gameplay video (now with sound!).

(I know it looks like a pretty generic space shooter right now; I'll try to highlight the RPG elements in my next video of Cursed Cosmos.)

Sneak Peek of Cursed Cosmos

2011-12-04T21:07:21Z

So, still trying to figure out the name of our next game, and "Cursed Cosmos" is the latest concept... Anyway, here's a short gameplay video I put up a few days ago to see if people liked the orbit rings or not. I'm currently leaning toward having them be a graphics option (so you can adjust how bright they are--or turn them off completely.)

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!