Xbox Dashboard Helps Indie Game

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 21, 2011 (Louisville, KY) – Shoot 'em up "Game Type" launches on the Xbox 360 after Microsoft reserved a special tile on the dashboard for the game since the new Fall update.

Mommy's Best Games, creators of Shoot 1UP, present a new, coop shoot 'em up in which you pilot the iconic Hoodie Girl to battle the evil MediaBall.

"Game Type" box art

Think you have what it takes to explode angry cats and raging SUVs into showers of cash? Show the world with the shared, online high scores table. Game Type is a "score attack"-style game in which you zoom your way through bizarre enemies, going for the high score, all while the game-speed continues to climb. Bring in a friend and fire your Kick Beams for extra power--PARKOUR!

Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard update, Game Marketplace (note Game Type tile in upper right--Sweet!)

"I've been thrilled Microsoft created the special dashboard tile just for our game. It's such a terrible name which I created as a placeholder while starting the project." reveals lead designer Nathan Fouts. "With the incongruous stock photo of a woman in a hoodie doing a jump-kick, and the forgettable 'Game Type' title, it's good to know Microsoft was advertising our poorly-named game, and not trying to label the console's entire digital game storefront. Otherwise, it'd be a horrible match that would simply make no sense and generally lead fewer gamers to find the store and browse on their own terms."

Check out "Game Type" on Xbox Live Indie Games. Find it in the Xbox 360 Games Marketplace. Or just do a search on it. Otherwise, you'll probably get lost in the dashboard, stuck watching advertisement for TV shows.

Game Type marketplace link

Game Type screens, click to zoom:

Will you be able to find "Game Type" on the MediaBall dashboard? It's in there somewhere!

Hoodie Girl slaps some sense into these flying nasties!

Award-winning shows like "Fat Guy and Pretty Girl" now streamable on your console!

Hut-hut-hut! Watch out Hoodie Girl!

Deliver swift justice with the Kick Beam in 2-player mode. PARKOUR!

Gameplay footage:

About Mommy’s Best Games:
 Mommy's Best Games, Inc. is a boutique game developer founded in 2007. We strive to deliver games that push the edges of the medium through gameplay, art, satire, and pie. Our first game, Weapon of Choice, is an award-winning, side-scrolling, action game now available Xbox LIVE Indie Games. And our newest, critically acclaimed games Shoot 1UP, Explosionade, and Serious Sam Double D are available on XBLIG and PC. Follow MBG on Twitter to find out more!

Help Translate Shoot 1UP

We're nearly finished porting Shoot 1UP to Windows Phone 7! It probably won't be out on the marketplace till early next year, but it's exciting to have it almost complete.

Mecha Lilith needs your help!

Microsoft is publishing the title, and has been a great help navigating all their tricky rules for being an official LIVE enabled game. But Mommy's Best Games is responsible for figuring out localization. We're looking at various translation houses (and even Google Translate) but I wanted to check in with shoot'em up fans first.

Bullets speak louder than words, but there's menus and tutorials to be translated too!

Are you interested in helping translate Shoot 1UP? 
We need a few translators for each of the following languages: French, Italian, German, and Spanish. There are about 1,100 words to be translated. I say "a few" people to translate, as I think it would be beneficial to have one translate the original text, and at least one proofread.

Here's a random sample of strings needed to be localized:

Title Text to translate Notes AwardsCompleted Achievements Completed! Back Back go back one menu BestScore Best Best score BuyGame Buy Full Game purchase the complete game CalibrateDescription1 Please hold your device in a resting  CalibrateDescription2 orientation that is most comfortable CalibrateDescription3 for you, then press Ready... I'll provide notes as well so for instance, the "Back" word could mean a human's back, or go back to the previous menu. Obviously here it means "back to the previous menu" which is included in each entries notes. UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who's offered to help!  It looks like we have enough people to translate the game to the above 4 languages. If you're interested in translating the game to any other languages (like Brazilian Portuguese for instance) please contact me and we'll see if it would work. If you are interested in contributing, please email me at nathan (at) mommysbestgames (dot) com and specify what language you can help with. Native speakers would probably work best. If it works out we'll definitely get you in the credits for the game, and hopefully be able to compensate you as well. Thanks a bunch!

Serious Steam Fall Sale

Fight holiday food comas with THOUSANDS OF BULLETS!
Check out the Steam Fall sale, running through this weekend, November 27th.

Serious Sam: The Random Encounter, 50% off, only $2.49!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/201480
2 words: Pixel Sam
2 more words: Kamikaze bait

Serious Sam Double D, 50% off, only $3.99!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/111600
2 words: Gun Stacker
2 more words: Pancake monsters

If you've been on the fence about either game, hop down and snap these puppies up! Tell your friends that would be interested (and even the ones that wouldn't be ), and thanks for the support!

And of course thanks to all the fans that have already purchased and enjoyed--it's very much appreciated. We love getting to make games for you.

Flotilla and Weapon of Choice in Sale Promotion

Microsoft has a "Fan Appreciation Sale" going on now on the Xbox 360.
http://majornelson.com/2011/11/22/xbox-live-fan-appreciation-sale/

Lots of games on sale, from Super Meat Boy to Stacking.
And we're thrilled to announce two Indie Games have been added to the promotion!

The first XBLIG is Flotilla by Blendo Games, a interesting blend of tactical space-combat and odd-ball adventure.

The second game is our own action-packed Weapon of Choice!

Both games are now 50% off, making each only $2.50! (200 MS Points)
Tell any friends who've been on the fence to take the plunge. Thanks!
(And both games still have free demos to check as well.)

Just in time for it's third birthday--Happy 3 years old Weapon of Choice (originally released November 14, 2008)!

I'm not certain how long the promotional sale will continue. I'd guess probably through this holiday weekend. Happy gaming!

Add Ringtones to XNA games for Windows Phone 7

(This is for game developers offering ringtones through their games--for end users adding their own ringtones to their Windows Phone 7, check here.)

Shoot 1UP for Windows Phone 7 will be coming out early next year. We're excited to offer 3 custom ringtones created from game music, that you'll be able to add to your phone from within the game. Turns out though, none of the online tutorials explained everything necessary for our XNA game to install ringtones.

When we heard about the Mango update, we were excited to support new features like ringtones and 'live tiles'. Searching for help on creating ringtones in the game we found the official MSDN walkthrough.

You can have MP3s or WMAs of the ringtones and you can add the sound from the XAP itself or pull it from isolated storage. Since our game was not generating the ringtone itself (as they were previously recorded), our ringtones are added to the solution and will be pulled from the XAP as shown in the MSDN example.
This shows a .wma being used, but we used .mp3s which work as well.

try
{
    saveRingtoneChooser.Source = new Uri("appdata:/myTone.wma");
    //saveRingtoneChooser.Source = new Uri("isostore:/myTone.wma"); 

    saveRingtoneChooser.DisplayName = "My custom ringtone";

    saveRingtoneChooser.Show();
}
catch (System.InvalidOperationException ex)
{
    MessageBox.Show("An error occurred.");
}

The Problem?
When we ran the game and checked for the ringtone file--the file never existed on the phone after we deployed.

The Answer?
We had have "Copy to Output Directory:" set to Copy if newer. This isn't obvious since the default which works with all other content is "Do not copy".




From what we've seen, Live Tiles images work like this too. If you want to use them, you must set them to "Copy if newer" to get them to show up on the phone, as they seems they circumvent the traditional content pipeline. And I believe this issue is only for XNA games (not Silverlight) but if I'm wrong, please inform me in the comments.

Good luck to all devs adding additional, cool content made possible by the Mango update! I think the 'new' WP7 is really sharp and it can help all new games really shine.

Shoot 1UP on Windows Phone 7

We're excited to share that we're porting Shoot 1UP to Windows Phone 7 with a bunch of additions and custom changes to fit the touchscreen hardware. Microsoft Studios will be publishing the title as official Xbox LIVE title meaning the game will have Achievements that register to your Gamerscore, and Leaderboards (at least WP7-style leaderboards, which is all it still supports).

If you're unfamiliar with the original version of the game and the concept, check out this short video. The original is available on the Xbox Live Indie Games channel on your Xbox 360. Basically it's a space-ship shoot 'em up, but you fly all your ships at once!

Here are the first batch of screenshots for the Windows Phone 7 version of Shoot 1UP, which we expect will release in January 2012. Screenshots in a press kit are also available here to download.

Click to enlarge!

The bullet count is much higher than the XBLIG version.

Dead whales return!

Yes, it's a lot of bullets, and yes, it's still very possible to beat.

More suggestive lasers!

Screen-filling bosses for all!

In getting the game working on the touch screen we realized it was waaaaaaaay too easy, even for Shoot 1UP standards. We've worked to continue raising the bullet counts, but also making sure it's still easy and fun to play. The main reason it still works is having all your ships active means you may lose all your ships but one--but if you hang in there, you'll get a new 1UP to help you out!

New Features include:

• Touch-screen controls mean better control for players so we added tons more bullets to dodge!
• New Game mode: Score Tilt. Tilt your phone to speed up gameplay and increase your score multiplier!
• An brand-new level, boss, and enemies!
• Unlock official Xbox LIVE Achievements and compete against your friend for a high score!  

We'll be putting out a gameplay video pretty soon and explain more differences soon!

Serious Sam Double D Demo Out Now

Been curious about Gunstacking? Ready to tear into a Biomechanoid with a Tommy Gun, Shotgun, and Chainsaw all at the same time? Then give the Serious Sam Double D Demo a try!

Say hello to "Femikazes". They are in the demo and would love to show you a good time.

Find out what side of the Metacritic fence you're on! Serious Sam Double D has ratings ranging from 95%, 80%'s, 70%'s, ... all the way down to 20%! What's this madness? Talk about a polarizing game--how about we just stack some guns and shoot monsters!

This is the Chimputee BattleMaster, the first major boss. He's not in the demo, but you can see him in the full game.

Here's a few review quotes from places you may trust:

"Mommy's Best Games' 2D shooter is fun the whole way through." - 7/10 - IGN

"Easily the most insane and downright fun 2D shooter I've played all year, if not ever." - 85/100 - Strategy Informer

"There's quite a lot of cathartic fun to be had with such a reckless onslaught of bullet-flavored justice" - 7/10 - Destructoid

"Check your brain at the door, kick back, relax and enjoy a little carnage. It's worth it. Seriously." - 8/10 - Worth Playing

Go on--give that demo a try and buy the full game for only $7.99 if you enjoy it!
There's 18 campaign levels, 12 challenge rooms, 25 weirdo enemy types, and dozens of giant guns to stack!