Support us with the IUP Bundle!
In just over 9 hours, Parabox Games, Joe Hubert of Epic Vessel Games, and 4 other developers will be releasing the first “Indie Underdog Pack” bundle, featuring Caveman Craig: SE and 5 other brilliant indie games!
For those who are unfamiliar with bundles such as the Humble Bundle or The Indie Gala, indie bundles are seriously good value and are usually designed to support good causes and celebrate the little men of game design!
IUP is designed to support further development for the developers behind available games. For us, you would be supporting porting CC2 to Mac, iOS, and Android. You’ll also be helping us expose CC2 to the world and begin development on our next projects (Which are yet to be announced!)
For just $5 (that’s the same price as CC:SE on its own!) or more, you get CC:SE and 5 other games! Contribute more to this great cause and you’ll get a number of other benefits.
Even if you already own CC:SE, $5 is still great value for the other games!
WATCH THIS SPACE!
www.iupbundle.org
March’s Etc
Hello all!
It’s been a fantastic couple of weeks for Parabox Games, pushing through our first major launch and all the promotion that proceeds it.
Almost all the feedback for Caveman Craig 2 has been extremely positive, and it’s very encouraging to see the interest growing in a number of indie game communities.
We are now making plans for our next projects and goals. We hope to be making some announcements soon, so do stay tuned! We are also participating in a very exciting indie game cause in the next week and will keep you updated.
Support Caveman Craig 2!
While we are doing all that we can to promote Caveman Craig 2 to the masses and give it the attention we think it deserves, we believe that the support and response of the fans gives the best impression. If you do love Caveman Craig 2, please consider supporting the game so that others can love it too!
Some ways you can support us include..
- Tell your friends about the game! If they like it, encourage them to follow our and pages to stay updated on our future projects.
- Know any indie game reviewers or journalists? We would love to get in touch with them! Please send us an email, and link them to our press release!
- Have any thoughts on the game? Write up a review of the game and post it to us, either here as a comment, on our IndieDB page, or our YoYo Games page!
- Post about Caveman Craig 2 on any gaming forums that you are a part of!
- If it’s your sort of thing, why don’t you put together a “Let’s play” or video review of Caveman Craig on youtube?
- Like, vote up, or rate posts appropriately on other sites relating to Caveman Craig 2! Consider rating the demo in the two locations where they are available: indieDB and YoYo Games
“Carbon Based Caveman”
Ricky Garcia has released the last track in the Caveman Craig 2 soundtrack on his soundcloud page. You can find the rest of the soundtrack on here too!
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/38379027″ iframe=”true” /]
-Rhys
The Dunes of Zogg
The next Caveman Craig 2 soundtrack piece is now freely available on Ricky Garcia’s soundcloud! This piece, “The Dunes of Zogg” is my personal favourite.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/38034594″ iframe=”true” /]
Stay tuned for our March 1st Release!
Pre-Launch Event
Yesterday was our “Caveman Craig 2″ Pre-Launch LAN! It was a large success, and a very productive day.
Tim and I invited some friends/BETA testers and played through the release candidate of Caveman Craig 2 with them, from 3pm till around 10:30pm.
BETA Testers were bribed with rather delicious Pizza
Ultimately everybody seemed to have plenty of fun and I now have a gigantic list of things to tweak, fix, and add. Bigger than hoped, but not surprisingly so.
Tim and some BETA testers pose while itching to get back to their game.
This leaves us with a final shopping list for CC2 before it is ready for release! I’ll be working very hard to get this done as soon as possible.
Some of the larger things to test is the difficulty curve of the game and ensuring it is challenging, but not impossible, and tailors to most modes of play. Yesterday showed that CC2’s play length is approximately 4 hours with plenty of replay value in all of the bonus gametypes!
My job wasn't to play the game, but keep tabs on how everyone was going and updating the build throughout the day
It wouldn’t be a LAN without some actual network-gaming, so we finished the night off with some classic Call of Duty (United Offensive). I find this game far more thrilling than its successors.
On an unrelated note, as everyone left we came across this gigantic moth.
Download the Demo
Receive the demo FREE when you preorder Caveman Craig 2
Excitement is brewing as we come to the final stages of CC2’s production.
I have finished all my graphic work, and can (mostly) put my feet up as Rhys finishes up his programming duties on the game.
The last graphical things I had to make, were a series of icons to represent 22 “achievements” that can be… um… achieved in the game. Here are just a handful to whet your appetite:
Don’t forget to pre-order!
Hey everyone,
With the majority of my animation work done on CC2, I just wanted to take a moment to encourage you to pre-order the game!
Over the past few years that we’ve been working on this great sequel, I’ve also had the opportunity to work on a number of animated TV shows and films (Disney’s Kick Buttowski, Big Green Rabbit, Wakkaville and feature film; Santa’s Apprentice – just to name a handful) which have fueled and nurtured my animation skills beyond what you would have seen in the original Caveman Craig game. This is just one small reason to have confidence that CC2 is gonna be great!
CC2 has over 12 new dinosaurs. There are 4 challenging stages in which you must defeat 4 different enemies (we’re keeping the last one especially secret!). There are also 5 or so bonus levels and minigames between each stage. There’s a big rewards catalogue with well over 35 items you can buy to help Craig through the levels. Things like catapults, mammoths, natural disasters and lookout towers.
As an incentive to pre-order the game, we are offering “Caveman Craig: Special Edition” as a freebie to those who preorder before the game’s release. We’re hoping the game will come out early in the new year. Get onto www.cavemancraig.com to preorder.
Have a Merry Christmas and a happy new year! Treat yourself (or someone you tolerate) to a preorder of CC2!
My week off.
Hi all!
As you all know, a week ago we announced the CC2 pre-order deal and launched our new flashy Caveman Craig website. Simulteanously, we released our first BETA version to some private testers.
Tim and I had worked during every pocket of time we got to get these two milestones ready as soon as possibly possible. It was with great excitement that we found ourselves at the top of the final stretch as of last Saturday evening.
Having worked on the game at every chance I got during the past month or two, I decided to have a week “off”. It came to my attention that I had not played enough games recently, so I made that a priority.
After being blown away by the demo, I bought Playdead’s “Limbo” and played through within hours. The animation and graphics are stunning, sure, but the music and sound’s contribution to the atmosphere got me the most. The puzzles were challenging but not frustrating – for some I was so sure I was missing an element to the puzzle that would make it a little more possible, but eventually something always clicked in my lateral thinking mind.
Mostly, Limbo just got me thinking more about game design, and also some of the old games my brothers & I used to play. “Another World”, on Mega Drive/Genesis, was a christmas present when I was a very young child. I was terrible at it, and I think most of us thought it was a pretty B grade game as none of us had heard of it, and, what the hell man, no dialog or colourful sprites or bloopy sound effects. Retrospectively I think it’s one of the more respected games that I grew up with. Also, I never finished it.
Next up was “Sixty Five Million and One B.C”, a really good plot-driven platformer, created in Game Maker by snailfox. The game did originally have a price tag but is now free – a very generous move by snailfox, although it left me feeling sorry that I never bought the game to support him originally.
65m&1bc is actually really funny. There’s great dialogue that makes fun of the game and doesn’t take itself too seriously. The feel of the prehistoric forests and mountain ranges are just really friendly and light. The puzzles are challenging and clever, although sometimes it feels unpolished and I did come across some annoying glitches. Some of the music, art, and feel of the game really inspired me when working on Caveman Craig and I’ll always hold this game in high regard.
The last two games I played this week were America’s Army 2 and Call of Duty: United Offensive. That’s right, the very first Call of Duty (with an expansion pack that we don’t utilise). Tim and I spent many hours playing 1 on 1 over the LAN with our sniper rifles or MP40’s. Just recently we had an opportunity to relive those times all over again with some friends, and it was all rather exciting and with a welcomed slower pace from the later games in the COD series. It’s also funny seeing some of the sprites and ideas that are still unchanged in CoD: Black Ops.
I went through high school playing America’s Army at every chance I got. I was obsessed with this game – clan wars and all. Returning to this game after years of dulling my brain with newer renditions of Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto meant it took a few days to get used to the slow, tactical pace of this game. In COD, jumping like a maniac is your key to survival. In America’s Army (and real life..), jumping is the worst thing you can do in a firefight. You lose your aim and you become useless for about 2 seconds while you get your gear back in place – 2 seconds, while your firefight lasts about 1.
AA is free, and brilliant. I’m not so sure about the current AA3 version, as I’ve heard it’s still very glitchy. I’ve been playing AA2, which is now dereliect with only a few servers. But it’s worth it!
And that, friends, has been my past week.
And now, back to CC2 =)
Regards,
Rhys
PRE-ORDER CAVEMAN CRAIG 2 NOW!
It is with great excitement that we announce this pre-order deal for Caveman Craig 2: The Tribes of Boggdrop! The long-awaited and highly anticipated sequel to the award winning indie hit will be available sometime between now and 2012 (so you get a chance to play before the world ends).
After over 2 years, Craig is back, and ready to conquer the 4 tribes of boggdrop! Caveman Craig 2 provides a whole new twist while remaining faithful to all the things we know and love from the original!
- Over 12 dinosaurs, including the classics and a grakload of new frightening threats!
- Featuring a whole new gameplay experience in which you must take over 4 increasingly difficult tribes with unique Craig equals!
- Smarter cavemen can sleep, eat, improve their skills (eventually unlocking a special ‘veteran bonus’), and prioritise their tasks.
- Over 3 extra gametypes including ‘Classic/Survival’, where you must build your tribe as large as possible while facing harder and more frequent threats – just like the original Caveman Craig!
Pre-order Caveman Craig 2 for just $9.99 US, and get all these additional benefits because you’re all so awesome:
- You will receive Caveman Craig 2 a week before everyone else
- You also get a FREE copy of Caveman Craig: SE to keep you entertained while you wait!
- Finally, we’ll chuck in an exclusive content pack including a CC2 wallpaper and some BETA screenshots.
In preparation for the CC2 launch, the Caveman Craig website has been completely redesigned. Go there NOW to pre-order the game and check out our other Caveman Craig games if you haven’t already! http://www.cavemancraig.com.
The private BETA is being distributed to a few friends and family members for testing over this weekend. The focus for this round of testing is on enjoyability, replay value, the game mechanic, and learning curve – of course, bug and glitches will be found too along the way and we’ll be working on those.
Once this is done, we will be completing the frontend/HUD stuff, creating each level in the conquest gametype, and then putting together all the other gametypes.
Thankyou all so much for your support!
Rhys & Tim
A change of pace
Hello all!
I thought I’d post something a little bit different today. I didn’t want to bore you too much with technical details on Caveman Craig 2, as that’s pretty much all Tim and I have been doing for the past week or two – refining and refining to prepare for BETA stages.
So instead, I thought I’d have a think about what happens [i]after[/i] Caveman Craig 2.
We don’t want to milk the Caveman Craig series too much – we’ll get bored, and so will you guys! Also, we all know how terrible and disappointing it is when our favourite movies have crappy sequels. We don’t want the same thing to happen with the CC franchise. That said, I don’t think we’ve exhausted all our potential. An online Caveman Craig would be a lot of fun, particularly with the gameplay mechanic that CC2 has. Anyway.
Below is a poll! I’m interested in what you’d like to see us do next. You can tick multiple answers if you like.. e.g a topdown shooter & massively online game.
Ultimately, we would love to be spitting out unique and fun games every month or two while working on larger projects throughout the year. And we’d love for you all to be along for the ride – so what do you want us to do?
[polldaddy poll=5442892]
August’s Etc
*Yawn*.
I’m tired and about to go to bed.. thought I might post an update though while I’m still thinking about it!
We’re making good progress.. Tim’s sent over a large number of the sounds we’ll use in-game, and I’ve been developing a bunch of scripts designed to handle and workaround the terrible design of Game Maker’s in-built sound engine. Most of the scripts deal with sounds that need to loop.. like struggling caveman sounds or the sound of leaves being pulled when you harvest fruit. The scripts make sure that the sound is only played once at a time, and pans it in the average spot between all the requested positions. Example, if 1 caveman is being eaten on the far left side of the screen, you’ll hear the sound being played in the left speaker. But if another caveman starts getting eaten from the far right side, the sound is centred – but still only played once.
The result of this, comparing from the original game, is two things:
-> Positional audio / stereo panning
-> No sound glitches with looping sounds, this was present in CC1 and CC:SE.
So far it seems to be working really well. Hopefully the way it deals with data structures isn’t going to mess with the performance too much. I’m yet to test this.
We are pushing to get a (private) BETA release out soon. Sounds, tutorial, and some general tweaking have been the last things to do before this can happen. We are also looking at design concepts for a new Caveman Craig website to promote and reflect the new look that CC2 will bring.
Stay tuned for an exciting pre-order deal! The time is near..
-Rhys
