Here's my blog post covering Multiplayer in Band of Bugs. Enjoy! There is still a couple more sections to come as well. To see all the visual aids, hit up my blog with the link at the bottom.

Tacked on? Not a chance. Multiplayer was clearly important to the design of this game from day one. When paired with the level editor (I haven't forgotten...I will cover the Level Editor in detail in my next section.), the multiplayer experience of Band of Bugs can extend into infinity. BoB's strong replay value results partly from said user created content and partly because the basic gameplay is simple but has enough variance and depth to make it interesting and new each time you play.

Let me (finally) explain more about the turn structure and its importance in multiplayer. Each game is divided into rounds. Each round is broken up into individual turns within which a player can move one unit. A full round is completed once all units have had the opportunity to move and perform an action (e.g., attack, switch weapons, cast a spell, use a skill, use an item, or just wait). The series of dots in the upper right hand corner (see picture) show you the turn order. The example here currently shows that it is Blue’s turn followed by Red's, then Purple's and so on. The dots are on two lines to denote the teams (Blue/Purple and Red/Black in this case). The number on the right is the round number. (Not important in Multiplayer really, but the number of rounds it takes to complete campaign levels factors heavily into your score and ranking.)

As part of BoB's casual-friendly philosophy, NinjaBee has avoided using a speed stat to determine the order in which units move. The onus falls to the players to decide when to move each unit within each round. The back and forth turn structure might be strange at first to those used to traditional turn-based strategy games like Advance Wars (It honestly confused me for a while because I was so stuck in the Advance Wars mindset). However, this seemingly small change brings a solid pace back to the genre. Pair that with the emphasis on combat (and not resource management, unit creation, etc.) and you get some really engaging and entertaining multiplayer. And most importantly, it does not drag on forever before you have some input into the outcome. (Click below to read on...)

Unfortunately I was not able to experience the full effect of the sound design in Band of Bugs as I was playing on a mono TV or a mono headset (blasted faulty headphone converters!) for most of the time.

Here’s what I can tell you: The character voices were fun in that Simlish way. (Where does NinjaBee come up with these fake mumble languages?) The music matched well with the style of the game and avoided becoming grating even after many hours of play.

As for sound effects: As I dug deeper into the game I got very used to the "Thwack" sound of hitting someone with a melee weapon but it never truly annoyed me. In fact, I felt a certain satisfaction in hearing that sound as I brought the smack down on some unsuspecting Warrior or Grunt. Maybe the satisfaction worked as counterpoint to the anger, confusion, and disappointment I felt when I heard the sad bubbling sound of a "Weak Hit". Damn those pitiful dice rolls! (Grr...that is another thing I forgot to mention in my Gameplay section...guess I will update the Addendum!)

Overall, I think the sound adds the appropriate dimensions to the game without ever overpowering or distracting from BoB's focus: combat, combat, and more combat. But I am warning you now, the NinjaBee's voice will cut through your soul like Hanzo steel.

[via Lunar's Duality]

To cut my XBLArcade.com posting teeth, I give you my in-depth preview of NinjaBee's upcoming XBLA title Band of Bugs. As a crazy result of being a huge fan (read: stalker) of NinjaBee and their games and also frequenting their forums (yes, I have more posts than their president now) I got a rare and unbelieveable opportuntity to go out to Utah to preview Band of Bugs and get a feel for what it's really like at NinjaBee. The first results from that trip are found on my blog. Take a gander and tell me what you think. (I'll update this post as I prop more content so stay tuned.)

• Editor's Note
• Intro
• Story
• Gameplay
• Gameplay Addendum
• Graphics (w/ new screens!)

P.S. Beware the NinjaBee. Their website doesn't say "Great Games. Severed Bee Heads." because it's funny.

This morning there are a few new Xbox Live Arcade related interviews on the net. The first is an [url=http://xbla-info.livejournal.com/1327.html]interview about Worms and Team 17[/url] over at XBLA Info. One of the interesting parts of this interview is that Martyn Brown mentions that they are working on other Xbox Live Arcade games, which hopefully points to a possible Lemmings release. Martyn also mentions that there will be no downloadable weapons for the game. Meanwhile on the otherside of the internet, Tales of the Rampant Coyote has an [url=http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2007/02/console-indie-interview-with-steve.html]interview with Steve Taylor of Ninja Bee[/url]. This interview itself is insightful due to it's back history into Ninjabee and Wahoo Studios. It's long so clear out a chunk of your afternoon for this one.

Gamasutra has a new series called "[url=http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12630]Road to the IGF[/url]" in which developers whose titles are finalistists in the 2007 Independent Games Festival answer some questions about their game and current gaming habits. As you may recall, Band of Bugs is [url=http://xblarcade.com/taxonomy/term/92]finalist in the Technical Excellence category[/url].

[quote]We had a lot of wild ideas on how to approach the strategy genre, but the size of our staff and budget didn't support a lot of room for too much experimentation. This was especially the case with out decision to ship an editor with the game. The editor was a whole project in itself.

What we ended up doing was taking a lot of the staples of tactical strategy and stripping away any excess baggage. We took a hard look at a lot of the reasons a casual gamer would like or dislike a turn based strategy game and based a lot of our decisions on that. Encounters in our game aren't epic, they are kept to a small scale, and our turn order is very fast paced for a turn based game. The last thing we wanted was players sitting around and waiting for minutes on end for their turn to come around.

On the flip side, we didn't want players to feel they had to master the game right away to be competitive. We wanted to make sure they didn't loose that sense of security that comes with a turn based game, where you can strategize, plan your move, and go when you are ready.[/quote]

For the entire interview, check out the [url=http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12630]Road To The IGF: Band of Bugs' Jeremy Throckmorton feature at Gamasutra[/url].

This one is certainly filed under the rumor section!!

OK, now that that is out of the way, our eagle eyed forum member qwerty noticed that the German version of the ESRB, the USK, has just rated a game for the 360 called "EETs Chowdown", with a spelling like that could this be the first signs that Eets could be making it's way to XBLA like many have asked for?

Here's to hoping! We'll update you as soon as we can get a hold of anyone who can make an official statement.

Thanks to qwerty and McLean78.

As many of you know, of the developers that have released games so far on XBLA, NinjaBee has to be my favorite. The number of hours I've spent playing both Outpost Kaloki X and Cloning Clyde are countless. There has always been one issue in this love affair though; two of the twelve achievements in Outpost have been broken since launch. Well not anymore...

Next time you launch the game, it will ask you to update the title, and when you do it's now possible to get those final 40 points for the game. The fix is actually to the amount of time remaining to get the "gold" rating on certain levels, thus allowing you to get all golds in adventure mode as well as gold on the 8 port challenge. Here's the quote from the ninjabee forums:

[quote]

Here are the level times we're planning on fixing:

(Adventure Story, time remaining)
level gold silver

Level 1 8,00 6,00
Level 2 9,45 8,00
Level 3 19,30 7,30
Level 4 14,50 8,30
Level 5 10,00 8,30
Level 6 12,00 8,00
Level 7 10,00 7,00
Level 8 13,00 10,00
Level 9 14,00 9,00
Level 10 17,00 14,00
Level 11 6,15 5,00
Level 12 13,00 9,30
Level 13 28,00 23,00
Level 14 2,00 1,00

Eight-Port Challenge (time elapsed)
gold: 1:00:00 (1 hour)
silver: 1:30:00

The Crucible (time elapsed)
gold: 1:20:00
silver: 1:45:00

[/quote]

So while Steve Taylor over at NinjaBee has certainly gotten some of the monkey's off his back about the achievements, something tells me they are going to be replaced quickly by ones asking about the release of Bugs of War.

So, Mr. Taylor, any news? :)

 

Well it seems that something finally got past one of the NinjaBees. After teasing us all with "SWAT" as the codename for there next project, we finally know what it's real name is going to be: "Bugs of War". While it slid past us on our first read through of the IGF finalist list, it was pointed out to us that NinjaBee has the forth XBLA title on the list. The Entrant Page for Bugs of War describes the game as:

[quote]

Bugs of War is a fast playing, accessible, tactics strategy game. Gameplay is deep enough to be satisfying to established fans of the tactics genre, but friendly enough to appeal to more casual gamers as well.

[/quote]

I don't know about you guys, but with the absolutely brilliant atmosphere that they brought to both Outpost and Clyde, I can wait to see what wacky things they put in a tactics game. While were still waiting for an official announcement from Microsoft, which hopefully will bring some screen shots and more info, this is certainly enough to get us excited.

And to think, it has only taken them 5 months to create it. MS better get a few more XBLA Wednesday slots available for them.

You can check out the entrant page here.

 

Betcha guys didn't see this coming... .. ....

Ok, ok, we all seen it coming. Following the Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays release schedule, Cloning Clyde has released today for 800 Microsoft Points.

Do you think it's worth 800 points? Are you disappointed? Surprised? Love it? Hate it? Let us know. I personally love the game thus far, and I like the fact that these small developers can create original, fresh, innovative content and give us the 'bang for our buck'.

Many kudos to NinjaBee.

With the highly anticipated Cloning Clyde expected in just a couple days, we took the opportunity to dig around and see if we could find out what the team at NinjaBee will be working on next. In a post on the NinjaBee forums Steve Taylor, Lead Programmer, let it known that the next project is known internally as "Swat". While I'm certainly happy to learn about another NinjaBee game, I think it's pretty safe to say that with the off beat story design behind their first two XBLA titles, speculating about what "Swat" could mean is most likely useless.

At the risk of sounding like an infomercial, but wait, there's more...

Not only are they working on a new title, but both the long awaited patch and new DLC are in the works for Outpost Kaloki X.

It certainly is a busy time for Mr. Taylor and the rest of the team at NinjaBee