EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

June 13, 2015

Retro Arcade Game Made in a Day

If you thought Flappy Bird was hard, you gotta try this app. It is hard, retro, hard, simple and super hard. Lasting 10 seconds pretty much means you are a gaming god. Tell you what. Get over 1,000 points and the entire internet will bow down before you claiming you are the ultimate gaming god of the universe.

Gameplay

Hurl down a wormhole in an 8-bit spaceship… that has a proven track record of exploding… in this retro arcade runner (technically speaking, a space-time continuum flyer). Your only goal is to survive as long as possible. The longer you last, the faster you go, and the higher your score climbs.

Simple, right? HA!

Survive breakneck turns as you dash through geometric wormholes that will shatter your spaceship — and hopes of a high score.

Share Your High Scores!

If you think you can beat my high score, or Cysero's, or Rolith's - show us!  VelocityAE is up on the iTunes App Store and Google Play store right now.

Please show Rolith and his hard work some love by giving VelocityAE 5-stars and help us spread the word, then tweet screenshots of your runs to Rolith, Artix, Korin, or Cysero!

Rolith's Surprise Mobile Game Release: The Story

If you’re a long-time player of Artix games, then you probably recognize this fellow.That’s Rolith, our resident code monkey. He’s been Artix’s longest coder, cracking away at DragonFable in 2006, and has dabbled in just about every Artix game ever since. But, man, Rolith LOVES his job. When he’s not typing code at breakneck speeds here at the Secret Underground Lab, he’s at home writing even more ridiculous code “for funsies” (Rolith’s words exactly). I bet his dreams are in C#.

So it should come to no surprise that Rolith decided to make a game in his spare time... because, funsies. So one night, Rolith started building something he was really passionate about (retro arcade runners), and 24 hours later… VelocityAE was born.

But before anyone could ask him why, Rolith quickly pulled aside Cysero and Korin, asking for their help to build some assets for his overnight game. Cysero whipped up the 8-bit artwork for the spaceships and Korin was on 3D mesh duty.

“Have you told Artix about your game, Rolith?” Cysero asked. “Um, No...” whispered Rolith, “Don’t tell Artix about Velocity yet. 

Finally Rolith approached Artix and said, “I know you got a ton of games coming out this summer, but what would you say if I had one ready to go…. right now?”

A skeptically-curious Artix was given Rolith’s iPhone and he started playing. He died 3 seconds later. “Hard. Retro. ...and SUPER HARD!” exclaimed Artix as he spent the next 17 minutes replaying the game over and over again, trying to beat his high score. He didn’t last longer than 10 seconds. “I love this! How long until we can release it for the players”

Rolith smirked. Artix went o_O, leaned in and asked, “Did you, uh… already submit it?” Rolith was taken aback. “Should I have waited?” “No, no…. this is great!” Artix reaffirmed. “At least you did not use your spare time to making another game about Ponies! Let it go live secretly, we can make fixes and then tell the whole world about this!"

Tags: Nightwraith Velocity Rolith New Mobile Game Classic Arcade