Freedom Planet: coming to a Wii U near you! Indie Assault starring Spade is also a thing!

[Salamander]

Isn't this only reminiscent of Sonic games that simply aren't being made any more?  Even if it was as derivative as it sometimes looks, it wouldn't even be in direct competition with Sonic - rather, it would be filling a now-empty niche.  See also: Shovel Knight, Mighty No. 9, probably a whole bunch of other Kickstarter games...

[Sean]

Seriously. If Sega's not going to make the Sonic game that I want to play, then I'll let someone else make it. Freedom Planet looks like that game.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Also, having played the latest alpha build (not gonna give out any specifics), but I just remembered that the later bosses can be challenging. And I do mean genuinely challenging, they're a genuine test of skill alongside merely memorizing patterns - I actually feel the kind of adrenaline that I normally feel from games like Devil May Cry 4 and Bayonetta has with their boss fights, which is a good thing. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the boss fights here are even better than anything Sonic has ever produced. Yeah, I said it. Also, in at least two of them, the other playable characters actually help out. It's shown in the latest trailer with the big mech, but in the newest stage, I was on the ropes for a bit right before Milla suddenly burst into the scene like a boss, threw me some health petals, and started reflecting enemy shots with her shield, and we kicked ass. It was so much fun.

Wait, they've released a new build with that new mech boss?

 

 I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out, provided the price is right.

Wasn't it priced at like $10 in the kickstarter? How much right does it have to be?

[Candescence]

Wait, they've released a new build with that new mech boss?

Not the demo, I have alpha tester access, hence why I'm really not giving out any real specifics aside from stuff we've already seen in the trailers.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Well damn...wish I had gotten aboard the kickstarter in time then...

[t0ms0nic]

Newly updated demo's out! Carol regains rolling! Lilac has a new aerial move! Dragon Valley's layout is redone to be more explorable! New SFX and redone music! Groovy menu update! And apparently the A and B buttons my 360 controller aren't automatically detected as those buttons for the gamepad controls! What an update!

 

Also, the rest of the Kickstarter update this demo came with! Freedom Planet's been submitted to PAX East's Indie MEGABOOTH for next year! They won't know if they've actually gotten in for a while, so fingers crossed that they can get that kind of exposure. Oh, and Lilac and Syntax's voice actors having some silly banter over gameplay!

 

Can it be Spring 2014 already?

[TheOcelot]

Update for Freedom Planet.

 

The release date could be as early as 30/5/2014.

 

As you might have noticed by our estimated shipment dates on Kickstarter, our original intention was to release the game in February. After we were Greenlit by Steam and learned that they needed the receive the game a month in advance, we pushed this back to late spring.

 

Our current target is May 30th.

 

This might change. At most we would push it back another two months, but we'll know for sure as we get closer.

 

 

We're down to the wire with the game's stages, as we've completed Pangu Lagoon and Trap Hideout, Lilac and Carol's exclusive stages respectively. All that remains is the arctic wasteland of Battle Glacier and the final stage, a tense four-part affair within the depths of Lord Brevon's starship.

 

Meanwhile, we've also been chipping away at some of the cutscenes. All of the voice acting has been recorded at this point, so now it's just a matter of building each scene and animating the characters accordingly.

[Crash]

I'm looking forward to it, here's hoping that it turns out to be a good game!

[Gabz Girl]

I'm looking forward to this too! It's a shame I didn't see the Kickstarter before it ended as I would have definitely supported the project. D: Anyways, the game looks great at the moment and here's hoping it plays good too. May can't come soon enough!

[TCB]

Same as Gabz; would so supported this in the initial Kickstarter page.

 

It's just that I don't think this laptop can handle Steam. So I may just miss out on playing this awesomeness...

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Shit! That's a day before my birthday!

 

 

I am so excited to play this! I really hope all things go well, cuz I'll be sad to wait another 2 months.

[Candescence]

Soooooo. I've been playing the latest beta. I'm not gonna spoil anything... But I think this game, for me, is already a GOTY contender. It's gotten way better since I last played it, it's currently got some cutscenes and an opening sequence, and only one stage missing... And I'm already confident in saying this game is amazing.

 

I don't really like cutscenes on principle, but FP's were so charming and and well-written that I can make an exception - there's so much heart and character. It's not easy to make me laugh, but there were moments where I actually laughed, as well. I wasn't expecting the voice acting to be phenomenal, and while the quality varies from character to character, the quality is fairly solid overall. Not to mention the game wades into territory Sonic would normally completely fail miserably at from a narrative perspective, and with genuine confidence, even doing things that Sonic wouldn't touch with a ten-foot-pole in the opening sequence, in a genuinely chilling scene without being gratuitous. And Lord Brevon? Move over, SaTAM/early!Archie Robotnik, you've been replaced. Brevon is a truly threatening antagonist, he establishes himself superbly in the title sequence, essentially taking the Black Doom's basic concept (as in, an alien overlord attempting to invade the heroes' home planet) and doing it right.

 

I played through the new stages with Lilac. Absolutely phenomenal. I didn't think this game would get any better, I was so, so wrong. Fun, but also challenging, I've died quite a few times in this game, especially against the bosses, who I once again state mostly surpass anything Sonic's ever done.

 

Maybe I'm overdoing it with the praise, I still haven't gotten off the adrenaline high from completing the current adventure mode, though the fact that I have such a high in the first place is probably a good sign, few games give me that sort of great feeling.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I'd bet a lot of the stuff Sonic wouldn't touch might not be an issue if the people behind the series were actually competent at implementing them. But I digress - I'd have to wait and see what you're talking about before I put my money where my mouth is on this one, but it's making me anticipate it all the more. Hopefully I'll get a taste of that come around May.

 

For curiosity's sake tho, what principle makes you opposed to cutscenes?

[Candescence]

I'd bet a lot of the stuff Sonic wouldn't touch might not be an issue if the people behind the series were actually competent at implementing them. But I digress - I'd have to wait and see what you're talking about before I put my money where my mouth is on this one, but it's making me anticipate it all the more. Hopefully I'll get a taste of that come around May.

I'm mainly talking about narrative-based stuff, but the introduction sequence is surprisingly violent without spilling any actual blood (aside from one character looking rather beat-up with a bloody nose). Including...

The king of Shuigang being decapitated by Brevon. On-screen. In front of his own son. Granted, his head merely explodes into feathers, but the headless body is still there for the entire scene. It's a ballsy move to show something like that in what some would mistake as a kids game.

The introductory sequence, as I said before, is chilling and does a superb job of establishing Lord Brevon as a sinister and genuinely threatening villain who walks the walk just as well as he talks. Put him in a room with every sapient Sonic antagonist and he'd probably leave behind a bloodbath.

 

Freedom Planet feels like a shonen anime in tone, it shows little blood but isn't shy about death and violence and references to it when it needs to. What violence does occur doesn't feel gratuitous, but instead played for proper drama. It isn't dark or edgy, especially not for the sake of it, but it does what it requires to tell its story without any real restrictions. Were it a retail game, many publishers would probably 'sanitize' it to get a certain age rating.

 

For curiosity's sake tho, what principle makes you opposed to cutscenes?

Mainly the whole 'non-interactive narrative sequence' thing in what is supposed to be an interactive medium. Cutscenes are useful in a limited capacity, but the whole industry should be trying to stop relying on them.

[Chaos Warp]

Damn, I knew it was gonna be good but it's that good? This might become a Day 1 buy for me now. 

[Candescence]

Damn, I knew it was gonna be good but it's that good? This might become a Day 1 buy for me now. 

Might as well elaborate a bit more on the gameplay:

 

• In total, there'll be around 11 stages. The final stage will be a grueling 4-part affair, apparently. In short, as much as the entirety of S3&K. A few of these are exclusive to certain characters.
• The newer stages are just nuts, and have some pretty sweet level gimmicks.
• If you liked the core gameplay from the demo, the main game won't disappoint, it's refined, tight, and fun as hell. It has the feel of a classic Sonic platformer, but with tight controls and unique playstyles for each character. Honestly, were this a Sonic game, I'd say it'd be a cool possible route for the evolution of 2D Sonic in terms of core mechanics. The game wears its inspirations on its sleeve proudly, but at the same time really does feel like its own thing without question.
• I've said this before and I'll say it again - Freedom Planet's bosses trump anything Sonic has ever done. They're very much something out of a 2D Treasure game, and they are actually challenging. This is compounded with the use of an actual health meter, which means, unlike Sonic, you can't rely on grabbing fallen rings to keep yourself alive (which also enables the game to present stage obstacles aside from insta-kill ones that you actually need to be wary of). And they're fun to fight.
• As we already know, the soundtrack is AMAZING. And the visuals in general are fantastic.

 

This game needs more attention, I have no doubt this will be a phenomenal indie title.

[MegasonicZX]

Might as well elaborate a bit more on the gameplay:

 

• In total, there'll be around 11 stages. The final stage will be a grueling 4-part affair, apparently. In short, as much as the entirety of S3&K. A few of these are exclusive to certain characters.
• The newer stages are just nuts, and have some pretty sweet level gimmicks.
• If you liked the core gameplay from the demo, the main game won't disappoint, it's refined, tight, and fun as hell. It has the feel of a classic Sonic platformer, but with tight controls and unique playstyles for each character. Honestly, were this a Sonic game, I'd say it'd be a cool possible route for the evolution of 2D Sonic in terms of core mechanics. The game wears its inspirations on its sleeve proudly, but at the same time really does feel like its own thing without question.
• I've said this before and I'll say it again - Freedom Planet's bosses trump anything Sonic has ever done. They're very much something out of a 2D Treasure game, and they are actually challenging. This is compounded with the use of an actual health meter, which means, unlike Sonic, you can't rely on grabbing fallen rings to keep yourself alive (which also enables the game to present stage obstacles aside from insta-kill ones that you actually need to be wary of). And they're fun to fight.
• As we already know, the soundtrack is AMAZING. And the visuals in general are fantastic.

 

This game needs more attention, I have no doubt this will be a phenomenal indie title.

If you say they're THAT good (the boss battles I mean) then I might finally have a contender for sonic unleashed's boss battles and for the other things I'm getting pretty excited for this, it might just be what I always wanted from a classic 2d sonic game.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I'm mainly talking about narrative-based stuff, but the introduction sequence is surprisingly violent without spilling any actual blood (aside from one character looking rather beat-up with a bloody nose). Including...

The king of Shuigang being decapitated by Brevon. On-screen. In front of his own son. Granted, his head merely explodes into feathers, but the headless body is still there for the entire scene. It's a ballsy move to show something like that in what some would mistake as a kids game.

The introductory sequence, as I said before, is chilling and does a superb job of establishing Lord Brevon as a sinister and genuinely threatening villain who walks the walk just as well as he talks. Put him in a room with every sapient Sonic antagonist and he'd probably leave behind a bloodbath.

 

Freedom Planet feels like a shonen anime in tone, it shows little blood but isn't shy about death and violence and references to it when it needs to. What violence does occur doesn't feel gratuitous, but instead played for proper drama. It isn't dark or edgy, especially not for the sake of it, but it does what it requires to tell its story without any real restrictions. Were it a retail game, many publishers would probably 'sanitize' it to get a certain age rating.

Yeah, I'm not fully about that spoiler part as far as things the Sonic series wouldn't do. Okay, maybe not 

behead a character

if played for proper drama...or maybe it would. But we do have that scene in Unleashed where Sonic plows through Gaia's eye and makes it gush (green) blood as it seemingly "dies". For what it's worth. I'd chalk that up to execution, but again, I'd have to wait and see it to believe it in Freedom Planet before I can be totally sure. Though I have enough of an image to guess that it's not that far beyond what Sonic would or wouldn't do. 

 

However, I wouldn't doubt publisher's trying to sanitize it for a certain age rating, which is probably why Sonic wouldn't do it. So I'd have to concede that part considering Sonic isn't an indie game that can get away with this stuff.

 

 

Mainly the whole 'non-interactive narrative sequence' thing in what is supposed to be an interactive medium. Cutscenes are useful in a limited capacity, but the whole industry should be trying to stop relying on them.

Ah, I see.

 

If I were to make a game myself, how exactly would you advise the limit in the use of cutscenes for the narrative? I'm not exactly a fan of barebones, but at the same time I'm not fond of wanting the game to hurry as I wait for the scene to let me play the game. I suppose that's the litmus test?

[MegasonicZX]

Yeah, I'm not fully about that spoiler part as far as things the Sonic series wouldn't do. Okay, maybe not 

behead a character

if played for proper drama...or maybe it would. But we do have that scene in Unleashed where Sonic plows through Gaia's eye and makes it gush (green) blood as it seemingly "dies". For what it's worth. I'd chalk that up to execution, but again, I'd have to wait and see it to believe it in Freedom Planet before I can be totally sure. Though I have enough of an image to guess that it's not that far beyond what Sonic would or wouldn't do. 

 

However, I wouldn't doubt publisher's trying to sanitize it for a certain age rating, which is probably why Sonic wouldn't do it. So I'd have to concede that part considering Sonic isn't an indie game that can get away with this stuff.

 

 

 

 

Ah, I see.

 

If I were to make a game myself, how exactly would you advise the limit in the use of cutscenes for the narrative? I'm not exactly a fan of barebones, but at the same time I'm not fond of wanting the game to hurry as I wait for the scene to let me play the game. I suppose that's the litmus test?

I would say to try and keep them short and simple while making them fairly interesting and entertaining.

[Candescence]

Ah, I see.

 

If I were to make a game myself, how exactly would you advise the limit in the use of cutscenes for the narrative? I'm not exactly a fan of barebones, but at the same time I'm not fond of wanting the game to hurry as I wait for the scene to let me play the game. I suppose that's the litmus test?

How I really define 'cutscenes' are sequences where control is completely taken away from the player - QTEs do no exclude them from this category, and arguably only makes them worse in some respects.

 

Well, basically, as a game developer, if you're going to use cutscenes at all...

 

• Try and limit them to two possible uses - establishing context like in, say, an open sequence ("war never changes", etc etc), or establishing a sense of powerlessness - and that one is something that should be handled with care.
• With narrative sequences, try and not limit the player's ability to control one's character. Half-Life 2 never artificially restricted a player's controls, and felt more engaging for it, as the player could feel like they were an actor in the world. Granted, this had the side-effect of forcing Valve to lock players in a room until the sequences were done, but an easy fix for this would be letting the player skip such sequences like a cutscene if they wished. Of course, the perk of that style is that you can mess around with the environment and physics objects for the hell of it while you wait for the scene to finish. One of the typical criticisms of this is that players could be a spaz and just ruin the whole thing by doing stupid stuff, but those players were never gonna pay attention to begin with, so it's not worth catering to those idiots.
• Following on from the above, you could give the player additional methods of interacting with NPCs - such as, say, dialogue choices. But not typical "stand around and stare at each other" sort of choices, those are barely any better than cutscenes. Allocate a button to bring up dialogue choices at any time, which would essentially break the limits of what would typically be possible in traditional dialogue sequences - that's something I'm doing with my own projects. Small things like that go a long, long way towards making the player feel like they're actually involved in the narrative. Sure, it's extra work, but it's worth it.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

 

How I really define 'cutscenes' are sequences where control is completely taken away from the player - QTEs do no exclude them from this category, and arguably only makes them worse in some respects.

 

Well, basically, as a game developer, if you're going to use cutscenes at all...

 

• Try and limit them to two possible uses - establishing context like in, say, an open sequence ("war never changes", etc etc), or establishing a sense of powerlessness - and that one is something that should be handled with care.
• With narrative sequences, try and not limit the player's ability to control one's character. Half-Life 2 never artificially restricted a player's controls, and felt more engaging for it, as the player could feel like they were an actor in the world. Granted, this had the side-effect of forcing Valve to lock players in a room until the sequences were done, but an easy fix for this would be letting the player skip such sequences like a cutscene if they wished. Of course, the perk of that style is that you can mess around with the environment and physics objects for the hell of it while you wait for the scene to finish. One of the typical criticisms of this is that players could be a spaz and just ruin the whole thing by doing stupid stuff, but those players were never gonna pay attention to begin with, so it's not worth catering to those idiots.
• Following on from the above, you could give the player additional methods of interacting with NPCs - such as, say, dialogue choices. But not typical "stand around and stare at each other" sort of choices, those are barely any better than cutscenes. Allocate a button to bring up dialogue choices at any time, which would essentially break the limits of what would typically be possible in traditional dialogue sequences - that's something I'm doing with my own projects. Small things like that go a long, long way towards making the player feel like they're actually involved in the narrative. Sure, it's extra work, but it's worth it.

 

Yeah, I hate most QTE's like the plague myself, no way in hell would I go for that unless I can't avoid it (and even then I'd probably rewrite the scene to avoid that shit if possible).

 

Thanks for the tidbit, although I have to admit it the first two sound a bit limiting or complex for me depending on the game I'd want to make and the story you want to tell. Not that I won't try, but some game ideas I had in mind have cutscenes that are more or less action events that are basically "explain the situation and try to get out of it." I guess that's the standard thing we're currently have.

[Salamander]

I have no problem with cutscenes myself, but I respect that they're not always the best storytelling choice for games of a certain genre - platformers, for instance, I don't think are the place for cutscenes of any great length.  Fortunately, there are plenty of ways of telling a story without cutscenes - Kid Icarus: Uprising did a great job at unintrusive storytelling by having the majority of the dialogue play out over the top of gameplay, but equally, level geography, graphics, and world maps can also communicate plot, in part by your progression through them.  It's important to tailor your story to the kind of gameplay you're aiming for; RPGs can get away with being wordy because the form is historically story-based and innately slow-paced, and you spend half your time looking at boxes full of words and numbers anyway.

 

...This is probably the point at which to admit I don't know much about Freedom Planet as I simply don't game on my PC, but if it were to show up on the 3DS eShop I'd snap it right up.  I respect any attempt to preserve a game style that has fallen out of fashion.

[Candescence]

Latest beta report: stage-wise, game's basically done, only cutscenes left. June 30 is the current release date. The final stage, Final Dreadnought, was added, and it's literally four stages long - basically, it's a Wily stage in Sonic form, and it's hard. And not the cheap kind of hard, though there is a bit of checkpoint starvation, though that's not too much of an issue. The bosses will get you game overs a few times at least, but thankfully, the game takes you back to the start of the boss fight if you get one.

 

And it's fun as hell, it's at the same level of quality as the previous stages, if not better. Brevon actually communicates at times while you're progressing, and he will occasionally escalate the threats you'll be facing -

look forward to facing down at around a dozen enemies at a time, damaging auto-turrets, and Brevon flushing all the oxygen from the damn ship.

 

 

Brevon himself is a three-stage fight (expect anything less?) and he's hardcore. Eggman has nothing on this guy.

 

 

tl;dr: the final gauntlet of stages is fun and hard and pretty much cements this game as one of my favourite indie titles in recent memory.

 

[SuperStingray]

Between this on June 30th and Shovel Knight and the 26th this is going to be the best week for retro platformers in a LONG time.

[TheOcelot]

The release date of Freedom Planet has been pushed back until 19th July.

 

"We hope everyone is enjoying their summer so far! That being said, we should get right to the point of this announcement.

We have decided to postpone our release by two and a half weeks. Our final release date is Saturday, July 19th. We're quite sorry about this and we understand that not everyone is going to be happy about it, but we think it's for the best considering all of the stuff that's going on in the next few weeks.

 

Our biggest reason for this delay is, quite simply, Steam summer sales. If we released at the end of this month, not only would Freedom Planet be drowned out by the huge selection of discounted games on Steam, but the huge amount of traffic they're getting would make it hard for players to load our storefront. Not only that, but we're sure that many of our outside fans will be emptying their wallets during the sale, so we hope that waiting a little longer will give them a fair chance to save up again. (In case anyone is curious, the retail version of Freedom Planet will be $14.99. We think this price is fair considering the amount of content and soul we've put into it. This and the fact that we skipped over going on sale was done out of respect to our backers who have been so patient with us since the beginning.)

 

Entire articles have been written about why releasing an indie game in the heat of summer sales is suicidal. We're quite bummed out that we didn't anticipate this, and we're relieved that we caught ourselves before disaster struck. We'll take it as a lesson learned for next time, and we really hope that other indie developers don't make this critical mistake!

 

Another big reason for this delay is, of course, Florida Supercon. Our trip to Miami is going to give us a valueble chance to see people playing the game in person. For the first time ever, we'll be able to get real-time feedback from a large number of players, and it would be silly of us not to take advantage of it to help make our game as polished as it can be. (On a side note, if we released at the end of June, we'd be flying off to the convention right as the game launched and would be unable to manage any problems that come up until we returned. Whoops!)

 

Thank you for reading, and we'll keep you informed on our progress. With all the stages complete and the cutscenes coming along smoothly, we'll be pumping out new trailers, screenshots and gameplay footage very soon!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Waits patiently for the game to release*