By John Walker on February 25th, 2011 at 1:22 pm.
I love it when I look at a trailer for a game and I both want to play it and have no idea what’s going on. My Country, My Name is from Brazilian indie team, Vortex, and looks like it may well be something of a satire of war. Two friends, Johann and Yohahn, escape from a conflict and form their own country on an abandoned oil rig, seeking refuge from the hostilities. But then almost immediately fall out over choosing the name. And so to the fighting. It will offer 2 to 8 player games, groups of mercenaries hired by the two warring parties to take out the other side for control of their rusty metallic homestead. Have a watch of the trailer and see what you think.
Here’s the teaser that explains the plot:
And here’s some in-game footage:
I think it looks rather lovely. You can see some really interesting info on how the game’s being made, along with lovely details on character animation, on the development blog.
25/02/2011 at 13:31 SpinalJack says:
Gameplay looks like a dull 2D TF2 platformer
25/02/2011 at 14:12 Nomaki says:
My sentiments exactly.
26/02/2011 at 00:12 12kill4 says:
Exactly my sentiments.
26/02/2011 at 08:55 dadioflex says:
Yup. Watched the trailer waiting for something interesting to happen. It didn’t.
2D platform PvP has been done to death so you need SOMETHING to create a hook.
Best of luck and everything but compare this to eg Super Smash Bros.
Edit: Oh bugger, the developers are reading this. Quick! Think of something positive to say. Ummm… I liked that it’s not like that video in The Ring where I die after watching it. Thanks for that!
26/02/2011 at 11:59 kristian says:
The trailer doesnt make a really good job convincing people.. “lets show gameplay footage where.. no-one does anything else than jump / move. Awesome!”
25/02/2011 at 13:47 Mike says:
Heh. That looks really cute. The visual style is great and I like the idea of a low-fi multiplayer combat game.
Really can’t get over the visual style, it’s fantastic.
25/02/2011 at 13:48 well says:
I wonder if this was inspired by Sealand?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand
25/02/2011 at 19:27 Teddy Leach says:
I wondered the exact same thing.
26/02/2011 at 00:13 12kill4 says:
The exact same thing? I wondered.
25/02/2011 at 13:51 Mockturtled says:
The headline image made me think a new Gravity Bone game was coming. Where’s a big Gravity Bone, all jokes about in someone’s pants aside?
Also, this looks quite lovely.
26/02/2011 at 03:42 PleasingFungus says:
You are aware that the developer of Gravity Bone has been releasing games steadily for the last few years, right?
His latest is Atom Zombie Smasher, covered on this very site; it’s pretty good!
25/02/2011 at 13:56 Om says:
Love the concept and style but the gameplay leaves me cold. Multiplayer platformer? No thanks amigo
25/02/2011 at 14:05 RaytraceRat says:
Same here. Love how it looks, but have no idea what is happening on the screen.
25/02/2011 at 14:09 harvb says:
Oh dear. What an amazing premise blown by such lacklustre gameplay. I’m not convinced showing us that was a good move.
25/02/2011 at 14:54 Devrey says:
Everything about this game seems absolutely great. Apart from the gameplay. Which is a shame, really.
25/02/2011 at 15:00 Sarlix says:
The jumping looks very floaty and uncontrolled. Also if I hadn’t of read it was Brazilian I would have assumed Russian – I’m not sure why, something about the art style.
26/02/2011 at 08:56 dadioflex says:
Hehe, yeah. I have a legacy of Russian cartoons that made it onto kids TV in the 70s. That wacky mole!
25/02/2011 at 15:50 RadioactiveMan says:
From that viewpoint, your vision range appears to be restricted to about three meters. This makes me sad.
25/02/2011 at 15:58 Faxmachinen says:
I was hoping for some Worms/Clonk type gameplay.
25/02/2011 at 16:13 The Army of None says:
Seconded. Always need more Clonk-esq games. Still, this game does look rather interesting.
25/02/2011 at 16:49 hocevar says:
Nice to see something from my country here heh
25/02/2011 at 17:54 Alexandre Ribeiro de Sá says:
Hello everyone!
I’m Alexandre, I’m working in My Country, My Name game!
First, thanks for every comments! All the comments, suggestions and any other kind of feedback is very good for the game development :D
So, I’m reading some of your posts and I see some questions about the game, and here I’m, to talk a little about our game and solve some questions :)
So, let’s start :D
@SpinalJack – Yes, the TF2 is one of our reference for our game, some referencer are, TF2, Lost Vikings, Super Smash Bros and Worms :)
@Faxmachinen – The Worms was another reference for our game :)
@well – Yes, the Sealand was one reference :D hahaha :) A very nice thing, a little later after our blog come online, we got an email about an hotel in a oil-rig too :D
I’m not sure, but I think there a post about this hotel in our blog :)
@RadioactiveMan – You will can change the camera in the final version, there 4 preset camera modes, very near (like the video), near, your team and the whole map :)
@Om, @well – About the platform, yes, this is a realtime multplayer platform game… But first let’s talk a little about how the game work… In this video there two teams, the red and the blue, and each team have two players where each one play with two characters… Each character have their own weapons, attacks, specialties and combos.
The idea of this game is take the control of the flags and swaping the characters to keep the game running to affect the other team moral.
Just a note, this isn’t the final version yet! This is just a demo build for a public gameplay test. :)
What will have in the final version, you will can build the weapons with stuff in scenario, natural disasters, you will can destroy part of the map as part of your strategy, level and ranking, traps and other games like capture the flag (a very coop game!), king of the hill (the video), battle (just a point battle) and solo game.
And to close my post here, I’ll send a very big thanks for the art comment :)
Everyone can check our blog where you can see a little about how we are building our characters :D
And I leave a invite to our new page at Facebook :D
(http://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Country-My-Name/180551098636894)
If there any question, comments or just like to say “hi” :) I’m here now :D
All the best!
Alexandre Ribeiro de Sá
Vortex Game Studios
25/02/2011 at 18:30 RadioactiveMan says:
Awesome! Sounds like there is more here than is shown by the video.
25/02/2011 at 18:44 Alexandre Ribeiro de Sá says:
@RadioactiveMan – Yes! There much more!
This video was just a video made from a build to test the gameplay in two events here in São Paulo.
Was a very nice event and we had the opportunity to talk and get a real feedback from the people who play videogame and was playing the My Country, My Name demo!
I’ll post some photos from the event on My Country, My Name Facebook page today :D
25/02/2011 at 18:14 HardClumping says:
The music in this trailer is…. awful