In preparation for the soon-to-be release we printed some stickers to hand out. The business cards we've had for quite a while but I believe we haven't shared them yet. If you have a game-making-related business card yourself, share it!

Meanwhile, we're solving problems that prevent Nikki and the Robots from running on various computers. If you would like to help us make sure that Nikki 0.5 will run on the operating system of your choice, feel free to drop us an email.

We added a neon pixel heart design to our shirt store. It is based on one of the first game objects that you will see when playing Episode 1 of the story mode:

One of us was at the Global Game Jam in Berlin as an organizer.

The theme was a snake biting its own tail and we made a tiny level referencing it. Too late for submission though. ;)

video: Nikki and the Snake - GGJ 2012 Themed Level

The video also shows the recently added game over screen menu (no more abrupt returning to the level selection) and a new, simple background for the editor.

Episode 1 of the story mode is ready to be released and we are very excited! This will also mark the first public beta version.

We will start selling the story mode using a pay-what-you-want model, which is strongly inspired by the Humble Indie Bundle (which on the other hand was inspired by a World of Goo sale). After one week we will then set a fixed minimum price.

When you buy the game, you pay for the game as it is, but will also get all further episodes and updates for free. With each further episode, however, the minimum price will increase for new buyers of the game. The sooner you buy, the less you pay, hooray! This is similar to the Alpha-Beta-1.0 price increments of Minecraft.

Right now we are working hard on the presale website and we hope to be able to release Nikki and the Robots' story mode until mid February.

In the next post we will tell you some more details about episode 1, in which Nikki's great adventure begins to unfold.

Level "Decemberweenation"

Available on the level server!

Which reminds me, we haven't told you about fail-ly laser tiles yet, did we? Well, they are there. Don't touch!

We want to allow to preorder the storymode very soon but before talking about business plans, let's take a look at the levels in the story mode first!

We used some of the level contest entries as a basis to create story levels. Lootninja by sauer2 for example:

Original Lootninja Level, as included with the latest release

"Upgraded" Lootninja Level

Some of the steps when "upgrading" a level are the addition of...

background, skyline and info/data terminals...

shadows and characters...

hidden areas...

... and new content in general. Most "upgrade levels" are larger and require more time to do a 100% run than the originals.

Here is a big screen of a different, jetpack robot-heavy level, which is not based on a contest entry:

Codename "Jetpack Intro" (1920x1200)

We're nearly done with all the levels for episode 1 but some bugs, the preorder website and paypal integration will probably not allow us to release before January...

Scaffolding, scaffolding, scaffolding...

46 days of no updates...

One of the decorations we use in story mode levels is a scaffolding tile set. Today, I spent some time trying to find an alternative look, which would look better in a single-row/column line of these tiles. I ended up using the original set.

I uploaded the set of alternative 64px scaffolding tiles to OpenGameArt, hoping it will serve some other purpose.

In the next blog post I will tell and show how the story mode levels differ from the freeplay ones.

Indie Connect Prelude. One step of an effort to nurture and build the Indie Games Scene in Berlin, Germany. We will be there.

What? Developers talk (English language) and everybody plays games.

When? This Friday, starting 18:30ish (aka "like 6:30 PM") GMT+1.

Game developers will talk about developing games. For example team GameStrom will introduce their game design brainstorm events, Anjin Anhut will tell us how to "Just do it!" and Christiaan Janssen and I will talk about Game Development Jams in general.

You will be able to play the latest Nikki release and other indie games as part of an exhibition.

So if you're in Berlin or close and haven't played Nikki and the Robots yet or would like to meet one or two of the game's developers, do come!

PS: It's free of charge and no registration required.

If you see above error message when trying to run Nikki and the Robots, please download libstdc++-6.dll here and unzip it to the nikki\ directory or alternatively download the game again - the problem has been fixed in the latest release for Windows.

PS: the updater won't restart the game on Windows! (Also fixed in the new release.)

Video: 0.4 changes [Vimeo | YouTube]

We released Nikki and the Robots 0.4.0 (0.4.1.1 actually), which you can download here or via in-game updater.

The new features are:

• New robot: Cannon! It shoots cannon balls that disappear after 10 seconds
• Players can download and upload levels in the main/editor menus
• Author name and license agreement added for saving/uploading levels
• Sounds added for menu, jumping, buttons and batteries
• Last level switch to be pressed now blinks green
• Added "transient" switches (won't stay pressed)

Some news not directly related to the release:

• There now is a Joyride Labs Reddit, a discussion forum with a social web touch
• The compile instructions on our wiki have been updated, let us know if you run into trouble!

Two of us were at BIGJam this weekend. It was fun! We produced a Haskell- and an Inform-based game prototype. Both are silly.

Video: Acrobots on YouTube

For "Acrobots" we modified our open source Nikki and the Robots Freeplay version to have no gravity and added a new floating robot. The robot is supposed to collect engines and trash that floats around the level which would add thrust and mass respectively.

The Inform-based text adventure can be played here online. It begins with:

You are in a room that looks fancy-dancy. You can see backyard door, a glass box (closed) (in which is a cat) and a unicorn here.

The Inform text adventure language is very natural-language-like and is a good learning tool for some beginner programmers.

We're looking forward to more Game Jams and the BIGJam 2012!

You can check out many BIGJam 2011 games in this thread.