KØЯ.
2010, May 21st 4:00 PMI decided to spend a little more time on graphics this time around. Here's the result.
Windows (.zip version available)
Mac OSX (10.5 or higher)
Linux (read notes below)
A few major things to be aware of.
First, this game makes more extensive use of your video card than any I've written before. As such, if you've got old hardware or bad video drivers, you may have trouble running it. Sorry! It should tell you if anything goes wrong. I did fix a bug causing it to crash if you had no audio output, so that might make a few of you happy.
Second, I now support OSX 10.5. At least, I think I do. Let me know if there's problems.
Third, I now support Linux. At least, I think I do. There will be problems. I know for a fact that it does not natively run on any 64-bit Linux distribution. I've heard there's a way to fix this, but I don't know what it is yet (besides "make a 64-bit build" which won't be happening for a while.) The sound layer also seems to be a bit flaky – there is sound, but you might not get any. I may be rewriting the sound layer in the near future. I'm also hoping to add .deb and .rpm packages in the future.
It's been tested successfully on Ubuntu 10.04, Ubuntu 8.04, Kubuntu 10.04, Fedora 12, and Debian 5.0.4. Success, in this context, means "it either ran properly, or complained about a lack of video card capabilities." It's been tested unsuccessfully on Ubuntu 64 10.04. It's also crashed on a friend's system running Debian 6.0 test. Why? Couldn't really say! I'd absolutely love any data points or debugging assistance you can provide.
Obviously, I haven't said much about the game. That's because you should be playing the game and not listening to me ramble about it.
hcs
2010, May 23rd 1:20 AMFYI it refuses politely on 64-bit Ubuntu 9.04 (my gfx card is not up to the task).
Your Mom
2010, May 23rd 6:14 AMNo luck on Ubuntu 10.04, fine on XP. Great graphics, prettiest game yet. Coxeter would be proud. ;)
Albert A
2010, May 24th 11:38 AMMy first reaction was "Hey, this is kinda neat!" The Shmup genre can always use some new ideas thrown into the mix.
By the first big boss, a few things got really frustrating:
1) The need to be perfectly still while doing the grapple. I would rather be able to keep moving even if my dodges also affected my cursor position on the puzzle.
2) The need to look away from the combat field to see the puzzle. Some sort of overlay would be preferable. (though it may make the screen just too complex)
Randy McRanderson
2010, May 28th 11:59 AMAwesome graphics. Ran great on my quadcore and hd5770 win7 build. Game was fun. I agree with Albert the grapple is really difficult when there are more then one big enemy on screen. Perhaps some bg music would add to it. I can totally see this going well.
Again, the graphics and gameplay were great. Keep it up!
Roger Sen
2010, May 31st 4:29 AMWorks like a charm in iMac 21" Dual core with NVIDIA GeForce 9400. OS: Mac OS X 10.6.3
Tom
2010, June 5th 11:28 PMI had to replay until I stopped getting "you will never reach them" message. I had to reach the aliens! Really weird how something that small got to me.
The only unpleasantness was when every once in a while the enemies seemed to come too fast for you to kill them. Maybe it's because the shmup I've played the most is Chromium, where ships making it to the bottom of the screen is Very Bad, but every time I got to the waves with enemies too fast to kill I thought, "Noooo!"
I didn't mind the formations that punished me for not thinking before I X'd. Kept me from getting too comfortable. :)
Oh yeah, and the puzzle controls felt really unresponsive. I don't think any keystrokes were being lost, but there was so much delay that I always had to wait for the animations to complete to make sure it only registered exactly the number of actions that I meant it to.
Ninwa
2010, July 19th 9:25 PMFinally got to play this on a friends computer. It was a lot of fun! My only gripe is the puzzles seem to really break the flow. Something as simple as being able to move (even if impaired) while doing a puzzle would've really helped in my opinion. It would be hard to find a good control scheme but perhaps WASD for puzzle navigation and continue to use the arrows for your ship. Another thing I thought that could be slightly tweaked was the ship speed. It could be a little faster with the ability to use the shift key to slow yourself down for complicated formations that involve precise movement.
That aside, I really enjoyed this Zorba. Keep up the great work.
Glenn
2010, October 8th 9:33 AMVery nice, actaully quite enjoyed the shear 'difference' of game dynamics of the grapple, although even just overlaying the shape matchups where your grapple hit rather than on the left would make it smoother gameplay wise.
Keep up the good work dude, some very cool stuff here.
Zorba
2010, October 8th 12:35 PMThat was actually in my original plan for the game, but I didn't end up having the time to implement it cleanly.
Thanks :)
KØЯ. | Robert Seaton
2014, June 13th 12:27 PM[…] KØЯ. is a game developed by Mandible Games and can be described as a shmup with a puzzle twist. Play it here! […]