Hallelujah! Brother Bernard brought us our first dollar!

For the first time ever, the words "Pixel Cows" and "money" on the same phrase don't mean that I'm getting poorer - this is one of those miracles that can only be performed by a monk with an axe!

In a twisted turn of events, it seems our little game about piety, arrogance and chopping the heads of little Cthulhus was the winner of two category awards on the inaugural edition of Indie Speed Run!

On the awards announcement video, the organization of the event had some very nice words for our game Dissonance: "This team not only came up with a great premise to explain its mechanics, but followed it through all the way to the end, effortlessly blending its tale of arrogance and piety with solid gameplay all the way through. We won't spoil the plot for you, but give this one a try if you wanna see just a wonderful example of weaving story with play."

As if the recognition itself was not good enough, there was also a modest cash prize! This is how our office looks right now:

Our programmer João Pedro getting his first pay from Pixel Cows

Our most sincere "thank you" to the Indie Speed Run organization, to everyone who rated Dissonance, and to you guys who follow us and give us encouragement and honest feedback. It would be much, much harder - probably impossible - without your support!

Some useful links:

Download Dissonance, our Indie Speed Run game
Watch the Indie Speed Run Awards video.
Finally, take a look at Protein Pirates, the game made by our good friends from AbstrAKT Games which won the Indie Speed Run main prize. Their game is awesome, and they promised to pay us some beer if we manage to meet them at GDC, which automatically means they are some really fine folks!

Cheers,

Gabriel and J. Pedro
aka Pixel Cows

Dissonance - Our game for Indie Speed Run 2012!

What's up, folks? Have you seen our new game, Dissonance?

Brother Bernard with his tools of trade

Dissonance is a free game, you can download it straight from its Indie Speed Run's page, or from the download page here at our blog! :)

How do I get started in programming games??? - by Tommy Refenes, programmer of Super Meat Boy

Dear Sirs,

today I'll drop our regular news to give place to a text written by someone much smarter and experienced than us - Tommy Refenes, the programmer of Super Meat Boy!

Tommy recently wrote an article targetted at all people who want to start or are getting started in making games. If every once in a while someone is led to believe that us here at Pixel Cows have any idea of what we are doing and come to ask for guidance on making games, then try to realize how many similar questions are received on a daily basis by someone who actually knows what he is talking about? Well, after a good thousand fans reach out for Tommy in search for illumination, he decided to put together some sort of a FAQ - a very good and straightforward one!

For those who have just left Vault 101, this is Super Meat Boy

Before the article itself, a quick explanation as to why I decided to share this (and even translate it for the PT-BR version of this blog). Well, we recently had the opportunity to show a demo of The Journey of Eko to a bunch of people on an expo in Brasilia - Brazil (as we shared in another post). One of the coolest things of being on that expo was all the people that came to talk to us and ask us how we had made our game, and how to get started in making games. We felt just like time travellers, looking at younger versions of ourselves! It was really cool to talk to everyone, answer basic doubts, give some encouragement and even share programming tips, from C++ to RPG Maker! It was very rewarding to think that, hopefully, we may have helped these people somehow, and we thought how good it would have been if we had someone to share some pro tips when we got started!

Then, a few days ago, I stumbled on this article by Tommy Refenes, who is obviously much more competent and experient than us, and I thought it could be useful to some of you. :)

Tommy is the guy on the left, and the programmer in Team Meat. The one on the right is Edmund McMillen, artist and designer of both Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac

Well, with no further ado, HERE IS THE LINK FOR THE ARTICLE. If you like it, make sure to share some love with Team Meat on their blog - they deserve it!

This guy knows what he's talking about. Also, if you wanna get started in making games and haven't watched Indie Game: The Movie yet, I strongly recommend you to do so! It will help you see that the developers of amazing games such as these guys who made Super Meat Boy are actually normal human beings, who have to fight on a daily basis to improve their skills and to keep themselves motivated. The success of these games isn't only a consequence of their intelligence and competence, but also of their perseverance. That's why I keep saying that, if his article has been helpful to you, then go to their blog and share some love!

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming, we've been on a major sprint here improving The Journey of Eko on these past few weeks - specially the performance and graphics. We almost doubled the game resolution and increased the framerate,  and now we're making a major graphic overhaul on the topview map (the ugliest part of the game until now, in our opinion). The forest and water are already looking much better!

New topview map water and forest. Coming soon: new mountains! ;)

I have to run now. Soon I'll find the time to write a more detailed post on what we've been up to lately.

Cheers!

Gabriel 30k
@pixel_cows

Pixel Cows at SBGames 2012 - The Journey of Eko finally revealed to the public!

Good evening, loyal readers! (all the three of you)

For the first time since we started working on The Journey of Eko, we had the chance to show our progress to a huge crowd! We've been at SBGames, a great expo that took place in Brasília (Brazil) on this last weekend. It was also our first time showing anything at an expo. Butterflies in the stomach? Hell yeah!

Anyway, we packed with a version of Eko specially tailored for the expo, built at the cost of three weeks of sleepless nights and an unreasonable amount of caffeine, and we built our micro-stand with a nice TV and a scenographic Super Nintendo found in an obscure chest at Pixel Cows' basement.

Our humble stand. The SNES was there just for the looks, but our veneration for it is very real! ♥ 

And then the miracle happened. For some obscure reason, despite of our game balancing having been made in a hurry, of the few levels and the massive usage of placeholder graphics, it seems as the public really liked our game! Between game design students, Zelda 2 fans, some Brazilian indie devs that we idolize, guys on their 40's missing the SNES era and a bagizzillion smiling kids, our SNES' joystick was under constant usage on the fight against giant ants, monochromatic pterodactyls and horrible archer totems inherited from the last Ludum Dare!

The second dungeon of the game, which became the final resting place of many players. muhuhuhohahaha!

The version of The Journey of Eko that we've shown on the expo was also our first public alpha. In it, one controls Eko on a topview map full of enemies, dungeons, cities and treasure chests. When he reaches any of these situations, the game changes to a sidescroller view where all the action happens. The fun side of it is that all of the external levels and dungeons are procedurally generated (in other words, they are different at every combat and playthrough), and the items that the player gets are also random. This means that in one playthrough you might have a powerful longsword but no long range attack, in another you have a bow, in the other an almost limitless flight ability... Or, more often, a little bit of each. On this version, the topview map is always the same, but we're already working on a procedural map generator as well, aiming to make each playthrough really unique!

The current look of the topview map.

Due to the unexpected success of The Journey of Eko's alpha, we decided to publish it here on our blog as well. We're just fixing some random crashes, tweaking the interface and testing an automatic updater, which will offer the option of downloading the newest versions of the alpha when we update it with new levels, items and enemies. Be sure to check back in a few days, as the download should already be available on a new post and on The Journey of Eko's page.

Finally, we wanna share here our most sincere appreciation for the organization of SBGames, who gave us the opportunity to show our work to the public, to the many players who tested Eko for their encouraging comments (except for the kid who said our game is really strange - I hate you, kid!), to the indie dev colleagues who helped us with several ideas and constructive criticism, and to my older brother who made it possible for us to participate on the expo, not only by hosting us on his apartment but also by teaching me how to make games in QBasic about 20 years ago (even though according to his questionable memory, all relevant facts of his life actually happened 15 years ago).

Be sure to check back soon to test The Journey of Eko v 0.1!

Cheers,

Gabriel (or "30k" for the close ones)
@pixel_cows