By Kieron Gillen on September 10th, 2009 at 12:59 pm.
You’ll have seen our Aaa(Snip!-Ed) review yesterday. Dejobaan responds to the comments thread. In a micro-youtube video. Bless them.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
AAAaaaAAActually: Dejobaan Respond To RPS
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Read our finest words
Respond to our gibber
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- Jackablade : “7th Guest might have been a little crummy even on its original release (though I still loved it), but this here still stands as some ...” on Bad Old Games: The 7th Guest Is Unleashed Once More
- Campaigner : “@Lars Westergren First off, I didn't find any "reply" button on your comment so had to click on my own (I'm new here so don't ...” on Obsidian Want To Know What You Want Them To Make
- Jackablade : “Shy gypsy slyly, spryly trysts by my crypt. Say what you will about this game, it does tend to stick in the memory.” on Bad Old Games: The 7th Guest Is Unleashed Once More
- KaL_YoshiKa : “Small Box Games does some fine...well Small Box Games that usually suit 2 players. The Silver Box FFG games Citadels and Space Hulk are wonderful ...” on Cardboard Diaries: A Change Of Pace
Those young kids and their ‘replying to questions via the means of internet video”. (lovely stuff tho) :)
An infinite level though…..ooh, interesting.
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I love indie games developers. :) It’s great that they can and do respond so candidly and so quickly.
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More of this, indie developers. More of this.
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What an excellent way to show that they care.
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Sold! Purchasing now…
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I wasn’t going to purchase, but this actually swayed me.
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Super kudos to the devs for this one
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I really like that guy. He seems like a swell person.
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Obviously, the reason more developers (indie or otherwise) don’t do this sort of thing is the huge outlay of time, money and experience required to uh, make the electricity to run a webcam? Push the record button? Speak coherently for longer than two minutes? Edit video? Oooo… read comments on a website?
Ah! Got it! Not get entangled in your company’s (or parent company’s) (or your grandparent company’s) legal/marketing department.
Although that whole “read comments” thing would turn me right off.
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Very nice. Just very nice :)
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To be fair, some devs are just quite shy.
KG
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You can always trust a dev with a goatee!
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I’ve been quoted, I feel so proud *sniff*
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Thats really nice of him to take the time to do that.
After reading the review yesterday, I was intrigued and got the demo. I was dead impressed. Its a simple idea done very very well. On more than a few occaisions I was twisting and turning in my seat as I manouvered about in the air and grinning like a mad woman as a attempted to flip people off or give them a hearty thumbs up. Even quitting the game and listening to the story about pixies was fun.
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Very nice and candid reply. Downloading the demo now.
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(I don’t think he looks like crap, I think he looks quite cute…)
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I’m torn. Super destructo points for post trauma crashing is an awesome idea but I would also love to see dismount style ragdoll bouncies… Maybe the destruction should kick in at a certain velocity?
(I was already sold and paid for, by the way. So sold that I even went back and bought The Wonderful End of the World while I was at it. If I could somehow be even more sold than that, then I am after seeing this vid!)
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“Life is an exam”
It’s sad because it’s true…
:,<
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This is really great – I had been initially put off by the bizarre name (weirdly), but now I’m downloading the demo.
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I thought the final version is already out? Unfortunately I bought the DRM-free version, which has no leaderboards :(
Still a great game.
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Top chap. Yep, will buy this now. As a Dev, seeing another Dev squirm a little bit at the end filled me with glee. I go through that every day… ;-)
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A winner is Dejobaan Games.
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Hahahaha I haven’t played it, haven’t seen any videos, haven’t read any reviews, but I am gonna go buy this now.
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Not to be the wet blanket, but fuck YouTube videos. Some of us have to sneak in our game news at work and can’t sit around watching a video for every little thing. I’m sure I’ll have long forgotten about this by the time I get home.
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Well that is an extra sale they have just made, now hurry up with the infinite level please.
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PLEASE PUT A “RESTART LEVEL” button in the pause menu!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Wow, Huey from the Fun Loving Criminals makes videogames. And they’re good.
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this just pushed me over the edge to buy this game. now to push myself over some edges in the game!
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Dejobaan is the greatest developer ever. They may not make the best games (yet), but they have set a new benchmark.
Go you!
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That was completely grand.
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He’s so cute! ^_^ Can we keep him mommy RPS? Can we?
/gonna have to get around to taking a look at the demo now
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Damn, now I’m obliged to purchase a copy!
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First of all, thank y’all for the love! We just put that video out there for fun, as a different way to talk to folks. Whenever I see a group of nice comments like this, I have an odd reaction, and tend to edge farther away from my monitor. It’s as though I’m waiting for a kikia screamer and someone to say, “HAHAHA, WE’RE JUST KIDDING, WE HATE YOU AND YOUR GAME.”
But! Let me answer some questions:
9> PLEASE PUT A “RESTART LEVEL” button in the pause menu!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah. Our Gameplay dude wanted to have a thing where you hit CTRL-K once, and you heard the cock of a pistol. The second time “restarted.” I’ve just posted your message to our internal forums.
St4> I thought the final version is already out?
I think that I, PERSONALLY, underestimated the importance of leader boards. I don’t use them at all (I think I’m getting old), but if other people do, we’re going to start looking into hooking them up.
JuJu> I’m torn.
You know what? I’m almost inclined to make a mod of the game that does both of those things. I’m going to propose that at our next team meeting!
Wounder> Obviously, the reason more developers (indie or otherwise) don’t do this sort of thing is the huge outlay of time…
To be fair, it did take me an hour to set up the tripod, get all the comments up, record, edit the bits where I went “CRAP crap CRAP crap CRAP crap CRAP crap CRAP!” out, and so forth. I’m still learning about video production. :)
Owen> Those young kids and their ‘replying to questions via the means of internet video”. (lovely stuff tho) :)
An Amiga fan! I feel obligated to say that our interns are young, but I’m no longer so young — when I got my A2000, I felt young.
Thank you all again — we’re going to work to make the game better, and also to make better games. (Also, if anyone’s in the Boston area, we’d love to meet up at the Boston Post Mortem game dev events sometime.)
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He seems like a really charismatic dude, not to mention his wonderfully expressive eyebrows.
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Meh, the leaderboards are not that important, but it gives the game more replay value and some kind of competition. I loved the leaderboards in Audiosurf, so maybe you could look into that, but before you do, finish the level editor.
More Maps > Leaderboard!
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I ended up buying my copy from Steam because it was about 50p cheaper (admittedly, mainly because of the £1.50 VAT).
Would have got it direct from the devs, but I thought finding a game cheaper on Steam than it is anywhere else is such a rare event it needed to be captured for posterity.
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Played the demo, gonna buy it.
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After doing the second tutorial, my thoughts went straight to “I wonder if there’s a never-ending level anywhere in this game…” It’d be cool, I think, to achieve a near Zen-like state of mind, playing an infinitely long level of Aaaaaargh!
I bought the game off Steam purely from what Kieron said in his review on here, and I’ve only played about 10 minutes so far (damn work interfering), but I really like it. Money well spent.
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That’s it, I’m buying this game now.
Dejobaan, make another video talking about how many people bought the game because of your first video, or something!
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I love Dejoban now.
It’s not quite to 2DBoy or Valve level love yet, but it is quickly approaching.
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I was highly impressed by the demo, and this put me over the edge. Sold! By a love for indie devs and frankness and humor.
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Awesome. Regarding the leaderboards, it’d be nice if there was an additional leaderboards with friends on it as well. L4D has this for Survival mode, for reference.
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Props to Dejobaan. Definitely more of this sort of thing please indie devs. Actually, devs in general.
I really enjoyed the demo, I may have to move some money around (ie, scrape some together) and get the full game. My youngest daughter thought it was cool too, but I did show it to her just after the wingsuit base-jumping video on RPS the other day, so that may have influenced her somewhat =)
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In all fairness, these guys are amazing and I wish to partake of the Amazing Sauce™ they’re quite obviously enjoying on a daily basis.
I’ve played their entire released library thus far, and I have to say that these are Tetris-like games that one can just keep coming back to, time and again. I don’t have one of those shiny iPhone, but I’d love to see their games on the humble PSP (I can dream).
What has me really excited though…
http://www.dejobaan.com/galaxy/index.htm
- A procedurally generated Universe?
- A musical adventure?!
- Set in a post-singularity (instead of that boring post-apocalyptic stuff that everyone does) future?!?
- You fly around in a gigantic, sapient squid?!?!?
These elements are brain-bending. Frankly I’m stunned to see the Singularity make it into a game. Who came up with that? That’s truly high-concept stuff that isn’t really seen outside of books. Whomever was responsible for that needs to give themselves a pat on the back.
The concept art and screenshots are beautiful in that unique sort of way that’s hard to replicate. You may know what I’m talking about, that way in which games like Uru and Love are pure beauty, because you can tell the creators will be able to take you somewhere you haven’t been before.
I’m so excited about Galaxy Rage it’s not even funny (well, it is). And well… Dejobaan, I know you’re reading…
GEIF.
GEIF NAO!
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No wait, it’s a jellyfish, I’m tired and mixing up my sea creatures.
Also, did I mention… GEIF NAO?
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OK, now I really want that infinite level. And a level editor.
Thanks for the replies Dejobaan, you’re definitely making yourselves look good.
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Yes, thanks for the feedback. I’m really glad you took the time and effort, it’s just surprising… or maybe sad… that it’s such a novelty. I mean, getting dogpiled with love over a video and some comments! I wish I could get that kind of response. At home. From the kids.
Or, I could be reading the wrong sites. Does IGN get this kind of thing on a regular basis?
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@ManaTree there is a friends only leaderboard. I believe that every level on the Steam leaderboards has a Friends entry as well as an entry for everyone.
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I am the king of leaderboard misconception correctors.
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Dejobaan <3
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never read the review, nor the thread, gonna download the demo cause of this video.
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Dejobaan is amazing. I e-mailed them for support, and the response e-mail was not only tremendously useful, but also amazingly funny! I’ll certainly buy from them again.
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Echoing the general sentiment of the community, more of this sort of thing. Very impressive.
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I’m literally logging into steampowered.com to buy this RIGHT NOW because of this and the demo. More developers need to do stuff like this.
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Oh hey.
He went to the school I dropped out of and then was Senior Unix Admin for. He talked to the game design club for which I was staff advisor before the CS department decided games were interesting and decided to take it over (and which has spawned at least 2 other companies I know of). My wife has had lunch with him. So there you go.
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I’d be really interested in some sort of graph showing how sales went up after this got posted :D
rock on deejoban
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Ah while poking around in the Steam forum for the game, I found another… unconventional method Dejobaan used to communicate with gamers and respond to some issues – http://www.synthscribe.com/media/steam_response_01.png.
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Abhishek’s link is a tiny bit broken, just delete the “.” from the end and it’ll work fine.
And yes, that’s further proof of Dejobaan’s awesomosity.
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Oops, sorry about that.
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IS the wonderful end of the world any good?
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@ Serondal: I played the demo and was unimpressed, but others have enjoyed it. From the small amount of ‘research’ I can remember doing, I think the general consensus was that it was pretty good, but somewhat lifeless next to Katamari. Not sure where I got that from though, or whether it’s accurate. I’ve just remembered though that Alec wrote about it, here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/01/25/wonderful-end-of-the-world/
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TWEOTW is nifty, and frankly plays the way I *wish* Katamari did.
I gave up on WLK because of the god-damned time limits, and the irritating controls (which would have been far less irritating without the god-damned time limits).
TWEOTW solves both my hassles by giving you the option of playing levels with or without time limits, and providing mouse-look control.
Sure, it’s not nearly as big or detailed as the Katamari games, and I think the engine could be better optimised, but it plays well, it’s fun, and there’s some really nice level ideas in there.
I recommend it. I’m not sure about Aaaaa, but I’m going to try the newest demo and see what I think.
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His facial expressions reminds me of Dr. House.
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@Ichiro
You know, you could have just told me that the full game features giant mountains and teleporters. The full version definitley has a lot more variety to offer than the demo, which is what I needed to know.
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Oh! Well. It’s all true.
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Getting old is only in our mind.
Age never prevented people from doing things:
http://www.whatwasdone.com/
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Loved the demo…. didnt buy it for some reason, this vid changed my mind. buying now.
Odd how that foshizzle works…
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you made me burn my toast! i came out and the whole kitchen was full of smoke
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