I’ve sent out the unedited final proof of Exploding Lips, and now it’s up to the testers to determine if it’s ready for prime-time — I think it is, but they’ll tell me if there’s anything profoundly out in either the Orb or the .ini file. My bet is that we’ll have a DEMO within a few days, and a release soon after that.
My plan is to make Exploding Lips a full release, meaning that it downloads from payloads and is listed on Steam under “goddgames” of course, being a shooter.
Even though it is a shooter, there’s no blood, no gore, no guns, no dead body — just magical weapons that make the lips explode into a zillion pieces in a “toon-like” manner, and the little balls of tiny harmless lips bounce around, and then vanish.
It’s actually a non-violent shooter, if such a thing is possible, and could maybe serve as a kid’s game, although I wouldn’t know what ages would be okay. Personally, I think it’s no more violent than Mario Bros. or Zelda, and they definitely fall into the “okay for kids” category in my opinion.
I don’t pay any attention to the ratings that come from government — they’re well-paid to favor the big guys, and indie game producers have zero chance of success, unless you consider the game itself.
If the game gets out there and nobody makes any money, that’s probably the only game you’ll ever see from that game developer.
On the other hand, if a game makes money, it’s because a big guy stole it and dared the original creator to do anything about it.
I don’t expect much in the way of income from this game, although it took me 25 years to come up with the concept and write it as a working game, with the help of the goddgames team, which is Dick, Claude, Barbara and myself.
The thing is, we own the engine, the graphics, the sounds and all the effects in godd, and we can do whatever we like with those resources.
The other thing is, the editors for the godd engine were designed with me in mind, meaning that they operate on instinctive levels and allow creative design without the usual high-level math.
The godd editor is very instinctive, easy to use and very artist-friendly. I have made several museums with wall art, table art and large sculptural forms of bronze, marble, steel, wood, glass and more.
If you want to sell your original sculptures, you can do it, using the godd engine, but the key is, it has to be ONE OF A KIND or an edition of TEN — please believe me, these numbers are good. I have spent 30 years researching other options, and those two are the best.
Besides, making a very limited number of items is the only way to ensure that it’s an original, and I have a method of capturing a godd level as a unique work of art, signed, sealed and delivered, and you won’t want to sign too many of them to earn your living.
Frankly, the more things you produce, the cheaper you have to sell them, and it’s a downward spiral that never ends, a rabbit-hole that has no bottom.
Some of my testers and all of my Blueline Academy students have been asking “What is the storyline of Exploding Lips?”.
My answer is simple: what’s the storyline of human life on Earth?
It can be summed up thusly:
MOVEACT CODE INSTRUCTIONS:
- GO FORWARD.
- SHOOT ANYTHING THAT MOVES.
- BEWARE OF STRANGERS.
- REPRODUCE THE SPECIES.
- NEVER EAT ANYTHING LARGER THAN YOUR HEAD.
Gosh, that’s about it, folks. There isn’t much more to human life than those simple straight-ahead moves.
Am I kidding about the simplicity of human existence? I wish I were, but there’s only so much you can pack into an Orb, and I only have 19 bipeds at my disposal, plus of course the variation skins, but the INTERNALS are still the same, and “zombie” is the easiest and most reliable MOVEACT CODE to put into the flatties, the ones without an OSOUL and no BOSS attributes, such as full restoration, powerups and levelups.
Actually, push comes to shove, I have about 200 possible characters that are very mobile and quite sophisticated in the movement department, but if you add to that all the inanimate objects, I have thousands, including the mustard and ketchup dispensers and the kitchen sink.
Kitchen sinks are deadly, and you have to watch out for that clutching claw that emerges at odd intervals from the depths of the nearest toilet bowl.
All this by way of introducing my next venture into the 21st century gaming world, “Epipla Phobia”.
It means “fear of furniture”, and when you hit the skids in my Killer Sofa World, you’ll really get a taste of what paranoid can mean for the average neurotic.
Psychotic paranoia doesn’t happen until about the Third Level, but then it reigns supreme.
So what is it?
It’s a world within which furniture and other inanimate objects suddenly and inexplicably come to life and attack you if you get too close.
Do you remember “Operation”, where you picked things out of a box with a pair of wired metal tweezers, trying to extract the thing within the patient, without touching the metal rim of the holes and setting off the buzzer? Remember that popular board game?
Well, this is the same game. You try to get through a maze of rooms that are peopled with furniture, some alive, some not, some reactive, some passive.
It’s a brutal game of kill or be killed when those horrible inanimate objects come barrelling down at you, and you have to shoot one of them.
Of course, every kill lowers your score. I TOLD you it’s a weird game.
If you want to spend some time in the graduate library reading up on epiplaphobia, you might also take a whack at “submechanophobia”, which is specifically a fear that inanimate objects will attack you if you don’t stare them down more or less continuously.
“This is the stuff,” said Humphrey Bogart, “psychiatry is made of”.
Okay, I may be reaching a bit here, but the idea is sound and basically true: the operant motivation in this game comes from the deepest depths of the ID, and therefore this game ranks as possibly the first game created to respond to the most absurd fears of the human psyche.
Is it a real fear? The answer is “Yes”. Is it justified? In this game, it certainly is, and I wouldn’t hesitate to blow a sofa into smithereens if it ever let out a deep-throated threatening growl and unexpectedly launched itself across the living room carpet at me.
And that goes double for the table lamp — I’ve noticed that it’s been looking at me funny. I can sense its inner ferocity and desire to go for the throat, and it’s not just the table lamp.
I think my fridge is trying to kill me. I definitely know my soda pop dispenser has turned violent, because I had to blow it into a zillion pieces on the way here to type out this blog, and I’m only too well aware that I face a veritable wall of framed pictures on the way back.
My desk is friendly, that goodness for that, and so far my Dixie water cup has shown no sign of animosity.
The violent tendencies of the tissue boxes and the reading glasses are well known, but have you ever noticed how that plant near the window has been staring at you? Its eyes follow you around the room, did you know that?
Is your Sharpie Pen waiting to get you? Have you been noting the evil tendencies of the books on the second shelf from the top? Those are always the ones.
Have you been attacked from behind by what you thought was a friendly rocking chair? Were you forced to deliver a blast to the bathroom scale when it bit your ankle?
Fear no more! “Ipipla Phobia” won’t help you overcome your fears, but you will be able from this to earn a living.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby