The Indie Mine » Hypership

Interview with Fun Infused Games

Brandon Schmidt — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:50:58 +0000

Arguably equal parts indie game developer and indie promoter, Fun Infused Games founder Kris Steele has gained notoriety within the indie gaming social media sphere. From creating a library of games on various platforms to co-coordinating last year’s Indie Games Summer Uprising event on the Xbox, we have a lot to discuss in this frank chat. Sit back and enjoy!

The Indie Mine: Kris, here at The Indie Mine we became acquainted with your work around the time you were porting Hypership Out of Control! to iOS, but by then you were already a veteran of a few released games on the 360. Going back even further, how did you get into indie development in the first place?

Kris Steele: I’ve had an interest in video games ever since I was young. Before I could program, I drew out game ideas on paper. As I got older, I tried various tools and technologies for making games. After discovering XNA and the fact that I could make actual games for a current generation console, I got into making games much more than I ever had before and I haven’t looked back since.

The Indie Mine: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced when developing your earlier games like Trivia or Die! and Nasty? And what were some of the important lessons you took away from those experiences?

Kris Steele: Finishing a game is a tough, long process and it always takes longer than you expect it to. It’s hard to finish a game, something that is a lot more apparent once you try to do it yourself. It’s often because unexpected issues arrive and can hang you up. With my first game Nasty, I had difficulty getting out all the bugs out of the collision detection. It would work 99% of the time but then suddenly you’d land or turn around and your character would jump across the screen. It’s hard to catch that happening. The game runs at 60 frames per second so each of the collision detections is done 60 times a second. It can be challenging to find that one instance where it doesn’t work as planned.

With my first games, I learned not to let my expectations run wild. There are lots of people making games and only a handful that strike it rich with their first couple titles. I expected too much and I was disappointed.

The Indie Mine: You’re arguably best known for your game Hypership Out of Control! and the Hypership series in general. Where did the inspiration for that game come from?

Kris Steele: I had a game on my graphing calculator in high school where you were a triangle (I think it was supposed to be a car) and you kept going faster and faster as the road you were on curved and progressively got more narrow. It was a very quick, shallow game but I liked the idea. I brought that game to space, added lots of power-ups and collectibles, and a pinch of humor. It worked out pretty well.

Retro space shooter Hypership Out of Control! in all its old-school glory

The Indie Mine: Oddly enough I know the exact game you’re talking about. Moving on, you’ve become a well-known figure in the XBLIG development scene, but you’ve also received notoriety for your involvement in the Uprising events that indie developers have undertaken to promote XBLIG. How did you come to be involved and what have you taken away from those events?

Kris Steele: There was an open call to XBLIG developers to submit their titles for the Winter Uprising, which I entered my game Hypership Out of Control! into. I wasn’t really involved in the heavy lifting of that promotion, I just supplied a title and did my best to let me fans know about it. There was occasional talk of another promotion for some months after that but no one really stepped up and made it happen so I decided to take a lead fearing it otherwise may never come to pass. I partnered with Dave Voyles of ArmlessOctopus.com and we collected feedback from other developers, organized voting and promotion dates, and recruited a few others to help out with the website, trailers, and music. It was really a community event.

The Indie Mine: You were recently quoted in a GamaSutra article regarding your dissatisfaction with Microsoft’s dashboard changes and the effect it’s had on XBLIG sales. You’ve also been outspoken in other venues as well claiming that XBLIG isn’t really the way to go for indie developers to be successful. Do you still feel this way? Do you think there’s anything Microsoft or anyone else can do to help the service thrive?

Kris Steele: I still feel the same unfortunately. The tools for making XBLIG are really great and in that regard it’s a fantastic place to learn. But outside some pretty specific genres / game types, sales just aren’t there for most developers. I believe this to be mostly a visibility and a filtering problem. XBLIG has been moved around and push back too much on the Xbox Dashboard. Casual gamers don’t happen across it as often as they used to. Within the channel, there is a high volume of games released but no good way to tell the good from the bad. Apple has done well on the AppStore with their New and Noteworthy list, which includes quality new titles. XBLIG would benefit a lot from a setup like this rather than a straight list of new releasing being the most visible area of the channel. I believe if gamers found more high quality content, they’d come back more often.

The Indie Mine: So I take it this means you intend to steer clear of the platform going forward? I know you’ve already ported Hypership to iOS.

Kris Steele: For my larger games, the stuff that takes 6 months or a year or more, for sure. It’s too much risk and not enough return to justify those efforts. If there is something I can do in the course of a few weeks that makes sense for the market, I wouldn’t rule it out.

The Indie Mine: What’s up next for you? Will you be doing more ports, or do you plan to start new games and franchises on other platforms? Do you already have some ideas in mind?

Kris Steele: Mainly I’m working on a PC port of Volchaos, a lite version of Hypership iOS, and World of Chalk, which we’ve switched from XBLIG to a PC release. When I get some of the ports done, I’d like to do a brand new iOS title next. I’ve also worked some on my next big game, which will be similar to the SNES Legend of Zelda title. But that’s still a long ways off though.

Volchaos will be making its way from XBLIG to PC soon

The Indie Mine: What’s your end goal as an indie developer? Do you plan to continue flying relatively solo? Do you want to someday have a studio? Or do you want to break into the mainstream at some point?

Kris Steele: I like to have full creative control over what I’m working on which kinda rules out working for someone else. Perhaps some day that does means having some employees if things go really well, but I’m getting by fine so far with contract work for the aspects of game development I can’t do well myself (art and music mostly).

The Indie Mine: Looking back, is there any particular game or moment you’re really proud of or that you especially look back fondly on?

Kris Steele: Hypership iOS was recently nominated for a Pocket Gamer Award for Best Action / Arcade Game (http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/pgawards2012.asp). Considering how many thousands of mobile games are released yearly and what kind of competition we had for this award, this was huge. We didn’t win, but it was really an honor to be nominated alongside other games like Super Mario 3D Land, GTA3, and eventual winner Jetpack Joyride.

The Indie Mine: Before you go, is there any wisdom you’d like to expound either to fellow indie developers or gamers out there?

Kris Steele: Go out and make something. You’ll learn infinitely more by doing than by sitting on the sidelines. Read a game programming book, read some tutorials. There are lots of free or cheap ways to get into game programing. If you’re passionate about making games, you’ve got no excuses not to start making them right now.

Hypership Still Out of Control Released

Brandon Schmidt — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:38:32 +0000

Fun Infused Games, the developers who’ve recently brought us games like Volchaos and Hypership Out of Control for XBLIG and other platforms, have announced the release of their latest title Hypership Still Out of Control. The space shooter is an updated version of their previous Hypership title with redone artwork, modified enemy waves, additional music, and more changes. It’s available right now in the Xbox Live Indie Game marketplace for only 80 Microsoft Points.

Hypership Out Of Control Review

Brandon Schmidt — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:46:52 +0000

In many ways, video games have come a long way in the past few decades. While at one time they only existed in the crowded walls of arcades, they’ve emerged first in our homes and now in the palms of our hands. Their design has changed as well. Back in the days of coin-op machines, games were designed to entertain and hook you, but ultimately to take your quarters. Many of the most popular games like Donkey Kong or Pac-Man had no definable end. The game would keep looping, and sooner or later the rise in difficulty would slip you up or else fatigue would eventually take hold. It’s a design choice that is nowhere near as prevalent in this day of instant, or at least quick, gratification. Many gamers want to be rewarded with a conclusion. Developers want gamers to finish a game and move on to buying something else. Every once in awhile, however, a new game emerges that sweeps us back to the old traditions. Hypership Out Of Control from Fun Infused Games is one such title where there’s no way to win, but you’ll have a hell of a fun ride while you’re alive.

Like many old-school space shooters, the objective here is to stay alive as long as possible by manuevering around obstacles and destroying incoming enemies. The hook with Hypership is that the longer you’re alive the more speed you build up. Gradually those solid walls you were able to easily avoid will become that much harder to miss. Enemies and destructible walls that you had plenty of time to blast to smithereens are now objects that it might be easier to avoid rather than destroying to score the points. One of the most addictive components of the game is the exhiliration that comes with successfully making it to that next wave when you’re zooming along at maximum speed. Should you make it through all ten waves, you’ll restart at the beginning but with your top speed bumped up to make it that much more difficult.

Every worthwhile space shooter has powerups that you can collect while you’re fighting to stay alive. Many of the mainstays are found in this game as well. A shield will grant you one collision without killing you, stars will briefly make you invincible, and so on. My particular favorite was the powershot that beefs up your offensive weapons so that you can destroy giant asteroids and even the environmental barriers with one shot. You can also pick up screen-clearing bombs that will not only help you get through a difficult area, but also earn you the points associated with everything destroyed.

If there’s any one element of the game that deserves close scrutiny it’s definitely the controls. Since it’s an iOS game you’ll be using the touch screen to move your ship around. Both the iPhone and iPad have their unique advantages and disadvantages over the other. While the iPad will give you a more spaced-out view of the game than the iPhone, it also means that you’ll be having to cover more real estate when moving the ship around. This can be a challenge for a game where movement is frenetic and reaction times paramount. However it’s not detrimental to the game and is only worth mentioning because its one of the few potentially negative critiques. One of the nice design choices is that you don’t actually have to have your finger on the ship to move it. You can touch anywhere on the screen and the ship will react to your swipes. One of the problems with touch screen games is that your fingers or hands can obscure your view, but this inclusion by and large negates that issue. There’s a bit of a learning curve here in figuring out what works best for you.

Adding to the replayability of the game are a few additional modes that change up some of the mechanics or rules. While most are a variation on the speed settings, my favorite was actually the Coin Down mode. Instead of having a set number of lives, you start with a set number of coins. As time passes, the coin meter counts down. Hitting zero will result in the game ending so it’s up to you to pick up coins as you’re flying to keep the counter up. The real twist here is that in order to keep pace with the meter you’ll need to keep your speed up, whereas in Normal mode you’ll survive a lot longer by slowing down. Die or slow down in Coin Down and you won’t be able to pick up coins fast enough to survive.

One of the biggest draws to arcade machines was competing for the right to have your initials up at the top of the score leaderboard for everyone to see. Thanks to the inclusion of Game Center, Hypership hasn’t lost any of that old-school appeal. With it, you can have your scores automatically posted to the global leaderboard. Each of the game modes has its own standings, and these can be further broken down by current day, weekly, or all-time listings. I find that few things fuel a competitive fire better than seeing someone else’s score ranked higher, and I believe that will keep players coming back to this game for awhile. The game has an achievements system for accomplishing various feats. The achievements are also tracked through Game Center.

Hypership Out Of Control is one of those games that you just instantly get. It’s a game that is simple and universally understood in its nature to appeal to a wide audience, but with some advanced techniques to stimulate the seasoned gamer. It also hearkens back to an earlier age in gaming so for some it’ll have a certain nostalgic factor. Any way you look at it though, you’d be hard pressed to find a reason not to get the game. Although this review was for the iOS version, the game is also available on Xbox Live Indie Games and Windows Phone 7. Your biggest question shouldn’t be whether to buy it, but what platform to buy it on. The XBLIG version includes local multiplayer, but you can’t take that version with you on the go. The game’s only a dollar though so maybe you don’t have to choose at all.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆