TL:DR
Windows, Mac and Linux Alpha 0.2a builds will be available shortly. Greenlight and Kickstarter are on the horizon. Join the community!
Intro
Currently it feels weird writing "we" in descriptions and tweets or in-game, because currently it's just myself working on this game. Neon Overture is not a personal passion project, it's not a game that's trying to tell a personal story and it's also not a game hoping to jump on a gaming craze bandwagon. That's not to say I'm not passionate about making this game.
What is Neon Overture and where did it come from?
Neon Overture was always built to be accessible, fun and pick-up and playable, but also providing enough functionality to keep people interested and playing the game.
But where did it come from? My closest friends and I generally get around one of our houses and spent an evening once in a while playing card, board and video games. It's getting better, but at one point there was a distinctive lack of local-coop PC games available. Hence that was the main foundation that I used to start creating Neon Overture. But more then that it needs to be a game that people can play by themselves, get into it and then get their friends to come join in. Maybe some people might not find it as fun without friends, but that's where the in-game level editor comes in. They can now create levels for next time everyone's wanting to play. And they'll also have the ability to upload any they create publicly. Win-win for everyone.
So what do you do in Neon Overture?
For the casual players: Run around hand crafted levels, shooting guns, collecting coins, get blown around by explosions and recoil and avoid trying to die too much.
For the competitive players: Speed running! Each level will be timed and recorded. Each playlist will also be timed and recorded. Compile your own playlists and challenge everyone to beat your time. Find the best tactics and routes to make it quicker. Movement skill is highly important and there's a lot to be considered and thought about.
For the creative players: Create awesome levels with the highly functional and easy to use in-game level editor that will be continually expanded upon. Share your levels over Steam Greenlight (when its available) and get recognition for your levels. Every level in the game is created within the level editor, so if you see something cool, you can totally recreated it in your levels!
How far is it off release?
I see there not being so much as a release date, but rather milestones. It'll probably end up in Early Access to begin with but it will ship as a fully playable working game into Early Access.
These are in no particular order:
- Weapons 2.0
- Content 2.0
- Greenlight Campaign
- Time recording and leaderboards
- Steam Workshop support
- Trading Cards (Low Priority)
- Multiplayer online matchmaking
- Potentially some PVP modes
- Code cleanup + Bug Fixing
- Community requests
Having competitive tournaments is also something I'm interested in doing with some sort of prize pool. But that needs a lot of thought first.
How can I contribute to it's Development?
First and foremost get involved in the community. Create and share your levels and playlists, challenge people to beat your times. Got questions or feedback, just fire at me on Twitter or wherever. I'll try and write more articles like this to answer questions and get public opinions on certain things. Play the game and use the in-game Feedback and Bug Reporting buttons to also send data my way.
Hopefully the community can assist in the Greenlight campaign especially, but also the Kickstarter when the time is right.
The other thing is I want to see what type of levels people make and what needs to be added to the editor to enhance their productivity and let people achieve what they want to make.
(Also if you develop in Unity why not check out my assets to provide me with a bit of spending money ;) )
How do I get my hands on a build?
I'm testing certain builds today to ensure they work. Hopefully they'll be available later or on the weekend. They'll be available to download on this site. Follow the Bevans Media Twitter account to stay updated!
Thanks for reading, especially if you managed to read it all!
Playable builds shortly! (Also shorter articles in the future)
Ben
