By Kieron Gillen on September 6th, 2010 at 4:17 pm.
You remember Outerlight? Creator of ahead-of-its-time Multiplayer sleuth-assassin game The Ship, who you suspect is influential on both SpyParty and Assasin’s Creed: Brotherhood? Well, their new game Bloody Good Time was revealed at PAX and is bringing its 8-player multiplayer to Steam later in the year. It’s another quirky multiplayer game, where a number of actors compete – murderously – to be cast in a film. As well as weapons (from standard to somewhat stranger – rat-bombs, frying pan) there’s also the promise of environmental traps. It’s even a little progressive, in that there’s 50:50 ratio of male to female characters*. Except all the female characters are hot, so not that progressive really. The teaser trailer follows…
Hmm. While it’s totally possible it could pull through by sheer chutzpah, it doesn’t yet seem to demand your attention in the way that the Ship did. Hopefully there’s more to it than can be compressed down into marketing buzz-points.
*The bloke in the middle is the director, who’s presumably non-playable, pedant.
06/09/2010 at 16:23 Alexander Norris says:
I miss The Ship. What really did it for me was the 1920s atmosphere, so I don’t think I’ll like Bloody Good Time that much. :(
06/09/2010 at 16:24 Sweedums says:
All it needs is the hunt mode from the ship… thats all it needs and it will be great, but from what i can tell, it doesnt look like that will be the case. (though i sorely hope it is)
The Ship was fantastic… it was a bloody good time… so many opportunities for hilarious moments and memorable fights. but nobody plays it… WHY!?!?!?
06/09/2010 at 16:45 Toby says:
I thought it wouldn’t have the hunt mode either. But it will. It’s in the list of gamemodes on the Bloody Good Time website.
06/09/2010 at 16:46 Theory says:
From the website:
06/09/2010 at 19:06 Sweedums says:
oh thank god for that.
im now very very interested.
06/09/2010 at 19:53 DrGonzo says:
Yeah, it actually sounds just like the ship but with a new style. This leaves me worried, I loved the idea of The Ship. But it wasn’t actually any fun online and the bots were rather pants. Though I never played the original mod so that may have been better.
With a little tweaking though, I could see this becoming my favourite First Person…. Um… Game.
06/09/2010 at 19:57 Sweedums says:
you didnt enjoy it online? i LOVED it online. My one wish now is that the guns are rare again, becuase they make the game too boring if everyone is just shooting, instead of actually using mad weapons, like the umbrella or croquet mallet in the first game.
06/09/2010 at 20:06 DrGonzo says:
No it was pretty awful to be honest. There would be me playing the game, one other person who understands it playing along side me. And then everyone else would be running around randomly killing anyone they saw, ruining the game.
That of course was on the handful of occasions I ever actually managed to get a game with humans.
06/09/2010 at 20:16 DrGonzo says:
Gah fail post. What I meant was, my experience of it was pretty awful. Game was genius but flawed, needed to give the player tutorials I think.
06/09/2010 at 16:25 Simon says:
The Ship style ‘assassination’ multiplayer with Spy vs Spy style environmental traps wrapped up in a cartoon aesthetic? I think I may well be keeping an eye on this one.
06/09/2010 at 16:27 Ian says:
The fifth character (starting at the left on that image) could be Kieron in an enormous wig.
06/09/2010 at 16:40 qrter says:
Half of RPS’ readership probably looks like the fifth character (the other half looking like the sixth).
06/09/2010 at 17:04 Ignorant Texan says:
Except for me. I, sadly, look like the third.
06/09/2010 at 18:44 panther says:
so we are all wearing suits n sneakers, classy.
06/09/2010 at 20:15 Metalfish says:
Personally, I look like a combo of the middle three.
06/09/2010 at 16:31 sana says:
Hot.
06/09/2010 at 16:33 Legionary says:
The blood is on the inside of the pan, but who hits people with the inside of a wok? The clown clearly doesn’t, as he’s demonstrating his technique there and he’s opted for the traditional approach of using the outside of the wok as it allows him to generate more momentum and concentrate the force of the blow. This is an inconsistency.
For this reason I won’t be buying this game or any others from this developer.
06/09/2010 at 16:42 Ian says:
Maybe he was midway through making some kind of sauce.
06/09/2010 at 16:46 Lukasz says:
You are indeed correct about the technique of hitting with a pan Mr. Legionary.
What you didn’t notice that the blood is close to the edge not spread around the pan.
That tells us that after hitting a person with the outside surface of the pan (like it is presented in the picture) he then proceeded to finish off the victim (as a single blow with a pan which are notoriously soft was not sufficient) by hitting the neck with a handle. That caused blood from cut arteries to splatter in visible pattern inside of the pan.
The developers clearly paid attention to the killing techniques one can employ with a frying pan, therefore, I would recommend you to consider your boycott of the game as it shows great promise.
06/09/2010 at 16:43 Moonracer says:
gah for trailers that don’t say anything. This is thread is making me regret not playing The Ship though.
06/09/2010 at 16:51 stahlwerk says:
Honest question: who says the clown is a he?
(don’t say it wouldn’t work!)
07/09/2010 at 08:34 Matt says:
well, judging from the fact that all the women have rather substantial knockers, while the clown is flatter than Gigi Edgley….
06/09/2010 at 16:58 Jac says:
Someone should make a Tom and jerry game
06/09/2010 at 18:44 panther says:
Was my very first game idea when I was a little one :)
06/09/2010 at 17:25 Trollface says:
I hope this game gets a mac release too, seeing as it’s powered by the Source engine.
06/09/2010 at 17:44 Bob Arctor says:
Looks like an expansion to the Ship 2 if anything. And the Ship 2 lost the pace and fun spirit of the original HL1 mod, too slow, maps were too big, too many similar weapons. The original remains the best, but I don’t think I’d find anyone playing it if I looked.
RPS night?
06/09/2010 at 17:50 bleeters says:
Based on the male character design and apparent theme, I’m assuming the point was less to make the female characters abstractly hot, and more to make them ridiculous caricatures.
06/09/2010 at 18:12 Sagan says:
Still they could have gone for a sophisticate or a hippie or anything else really. The clown or the hipster could also have been female.
So I think you’d have to say there is sexism present here.
06/09/2010 at 18:21 bleeters says:
This is true. In fact, given the length of the playboy bunny’s legs, I can only assume she’s actually part flamingo.
06/09/2010 at 19:18 CLANG says:
Sagan is correct.
I could easily see a reverse of each of these character archetypes. And on top of that is “Playboy Bunny” really a caricature of an actress? Also how is there variation between “Playboy Bunny”, “Showgirl”, “Baywatch Girl”, and “Hot Goth?” They really selected from a very narrow group of aspiring actresses.
Anyway, sexism aside I’m interested as I never got to play The Ship…
06/09/2010 at 20:10 DrGonzo says:
The representations of men are completely unrealistic and stylised. So why would the women not be? I think the characters look ace.
06/09/2010 at 23:45 Bhazor says:
Reply to DrGonzo
To paraphrase feminists commenting on comic book characters. The men either look like caricatures with exaggerated features to emphasize their underlying character or else are bulging personifications of strength, self actualization and power. The women look like fuck dolls.
06/09/2010 at 18:07 Gosh says:
i really hate the frying pan as a weapon. i mean have anyone here ever tried swinging one of those things? most people think it would be nice considering the weight but the handle is usually to short and makes you loose your grip really easily, especially if the frying pan was recently used and is still a little greasy.s
06/09/2010 at 18:22 bleeters says:
It worries me that you know all this.
06/09/2010 at 18:41 Tei says:
I bet there are worse things on the internets.
Like that thread on the XKCD forums about the better weapons to kill zombies, with saucy details. (I will spoil you here: the baseball bat)
06/09/2010 at 18:42 Jake says:
I’d like to see a rolling pin revival, I feel they are underused.
06/09/2010 at 18:28 Bhazor says:
The Ship was a great game. Was.
Last time I tried to play I couldn’t find a single server running Hunt just two dozen servers running deathmatch. When I finally did find a hunt server it had disabled AI civilians which is, y’know, the point of the game.
What a shame.
06/09/2010 at 19:41 Oak says:
There’s a Steam group called The Ship is Alive that’s been hosting games of Hunt every aftertoon for a little while now. Every time I’ve joined it’s been packed for a good hour or more. No AI passengers, but that’s an unfortunate compromise you have to make if you want to play the game now. Worth checking out.
06/09/2010 at 18:31 Nurdbot says:
I wondered what happened to Outerlight, I thought they went under when the The Ship Website stopped working.
06/09/2010 at 19:13 Vague-rant says:
Or perhaps they stopped working when The Ship went under?
07/09/2010 at 06:55 bill says:
Maybe they went down with The Ship
06/09/2010 at 18:58 Jimbo says:
Yeah, stop getting your virtual sexism in my virtual murder simulator!
06/09/2010 at 19:12 CLANG says:
It’s a “funny” weapon not an “efficient” weapon.
Also, it makes an interesting noise.
06/09/2010 at 19:26 Sagan says:
I bought The Ship way too late when there were barely any servers left. I think as a whole I have had less than 5 hours of good fun with it. And that’s just because there was nobody to play with. I would have loved to play the game more.
So I’m really glad that they are now making a new, similar game. Also with the marketing muscle of a publisher behind them, maybe this one will attract a larger, more enduring audience.
06/09/2010 at 20:00 Gordon Freeman says:
I really want this game to be good because I loved The Ship.
It’s too bad that not many people play it anymore, But that’s also probably because of the steep price on steam for it and no one really knows what it is.
06/09/2010 at 20:34 Max says:
I’ve always considered The Ship to be one of the best HL mods ever. It suffered only from having a small audience (most likely due to its atypical gameplay). I really want these guys to get noticed.
06/09/2010 at 20:50 Chaz says:
Pretty sure I saw a gameplay trailer for this on Xbox Live, and it looked to me like it was just a quirky death match FPS game.
06/09/2010 at 22:13 Navagon says:
But this looks like it could be fun. It’s the kind of game an intelligent publisher with a keen eye would want to publish. So I wonder why Ubisoft were interested in it?
07/09/2010 at 08:51 pipman3000 says:
you answered your own question
07/09/2010 at 12:50 chipper says:
Outerlight closed down last year. Ubisoft seem to have taken over the IP and finished the game themselves. I gather there were….problems….with dev-publisher relations.