
Killer Queen: Half Joust, half StarCraft and one giant snail - cpeterso
http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/8/29/4593934/killer-queen-joust-starcraft-giant-snail
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yzzxy
I had a chance to play this game at California Extreme last year. There were
about 16 controllers hooked up, and most were full at any given time. Very
fun, and extremely chaotic. It's probably one of the most interesting of the
couch multiplayer games coming out right now - Samurai Gunn, Divekick,
Sportsfriends and the like. There's a bigger difference between 2v2 and 8v8
multiplayer than you would think, and that dynamic is really multiplied when
you're all in one physical location. That said I worry about the viability of
these games because it's so hard to get a group of that size together in the
absence of arcades. I bet they could get really big at college dorms, though.
I know the Wii still does very well in dorms because of Smash Bros. and Mario
Kart, which have similar optimal player configurations.

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barbs
Oh man, these sorts of things are my favourite kinds of games. I love any sort
of esport level multiplayer, but I also love the amount of fun that local
multiplayer games can bring (Bomberman, Nidhogg, Smash Bros. etc).

I'd be interested to know the rules in detail. A quick google hasn't turned up
anything though...

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DanBC
Bomberman is god tier game.

Absolutely amazing.

I am surprised at just how terribly wrong they got it in later iterations -
weird 3D and horrible styling.

Has anyone done an analysis of franchises that stopped being great? Bomberman,
MicroMachines, etc etc.

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mzs
When my youngest son played bomberman for the first time with the rest of the
family, I went and got the camera and took some photos of him playing because
of the joy and surprise so clearly visible on his face. Later I tracked down
an email address for the designer of the game and sent the photos. I got a
very nice reply from a coworker in English passed back.

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AndyKelley
This game is awesome.

Here is some footage of my team from the tournament in February:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44O1fWfj2QY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44O1fWfj2QY)

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dvanduzer
The bi-coastal Come Out & Play festivals are probably the best place to learn
the importance of field testing.

It's already a pull quote, but this really deserves emphasis:

"""

"The way that we really playtest [the video game] is by playing the field
game, because the iterations are just easier to implement," says Mikros. "We
just change it, no coding involved."

"""

Get out into the world, fellow hackers!

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Kiro
Is the Unity middleware really as good as he says? I'm not a Unity developer
but I can't imagine what kind of middleware would help that much.

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JoshDeBonis
Hey I'm one of the designers of the game. In Killer Queen the only middleware
we used was 2DToolkit for 2D rendering, although this is no longer necessary
since Unity has 2D tools built in. However with other projects, especially 3D
ones, I use stuff from the asset store all the time. Some of the code we're
using from the asset store handles pathfinding, procedural terrain generation,
tweening, and GUI rendering. Plus, we get a lot of art assets from there
(especially for placeholders.)

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VonGuard
A hoot of a game, but there's really only one, I think. And you really want a
full compliment of players. It was on display at GDC this year.

~~~
JoshDeBonis
There's two cabinets right now: one in NYC and one in SF. We're making more
but it's a slow process. If you're in NYC you can play it at Spring Fighter in
June: [http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/event/spring-
fighter/](http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/event/spring-fighter/)

~~~
cpeterso
How powerful is the computer driving your Killer Queen game?

The article says your first cabinet cost $3,500. How much of that was just
materials? If you built more cabinets (perhaps less fancy and with lower-end
computer hardware), how much cheaper could they be?

Also, I'm curious what kind of game play tweaks you've made based on player
feedback after your unveiling at NYU's No Quarter exhibition?

~~~
nmikros
Hey cpeterso the first cab was somewhere between 3500 and 4K to build but we
did all the labor. If you calculate that into the equation, it's more like
20K. Our current cabinets are more expensive, they retail at 12K, so it's not
the kind of thing you will buy for your room. They are built in Wisconsin, are
of higher quality and also feature better TVs. We'll ship wherever. They
include a coin door and are really made for public spaces like arcades, bars,
student unions etc. We're figuring out how much money can be made on them and
it's looking very good that you can recoup the money in less than a year if
it's in a well trafficked area. Our goal is to get them closer to 10K or less.
Believe it or not the computer is only about 400 of those dollars, the bulk of
the money is the cabinet, joysticks and TVs. We are looking at ways to make
them cheaper but we'd have to build quite a few of them to get economies of
scale working for us.

As far as game play tweaks, it's not really any one big thing, it's more about
little tiny changes that we keep doing in response to tournament performance.
We did change the way the soldiers look and made variants on the workers so
they are easier to distinguish from each other. The big changes have been in
making it Arcade ready, adding an attract screen, music, code for taking
money, UI elements to let people know that the game is about competing with
the other cabinet, instructions etc.

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cpeterso
Thanks for the details. I missed Killer Queen at California Extreme 2013. Are
you going to California Extreme 2014? :)

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colanderman
Halfway through I thought this was going to be a hybrid video/physical game in
the vein of Natural Selection 2, where two teams each had a "commander" using
a computer interface to give them high-level real-time strategic direction,
while the other players engaged in physical melée to determine the outcome of
individual battles. That would be even cooler.

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has2k1
Is it guaranteed to blow your mind?

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nmikros
of course.

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Tiktaalik
This was the best game I played at GDC this year.

Recently there's been a great groundswell of local multiplayer games, and this
is one of the top ones out there.

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saganus
Are there any videos that showcase the game?

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elliottcarlson
There is one on the right of the second section,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zorgpC93Aq4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zorgpC93Aq4)

~~~
thefreeman
Reminds me a lot of Warcraft 3 custom games (minus the in person setting and
arcade game input)

