By Craig Pearson on February 22nd, 2012 at 5:03 pm.
Poor Catacomb Snatch, forever destined to be a quirk of game development: the game Mojang made in a weekend and then tossed out into the world, unready, uneducated, unubered. All it needed was a little polish to make it all better, some tender loving uber. But what if it could happen? What if someone took the source code, appended the game with with “Uber” and carried on developing? That would make an Uber Catacomb Snatch. And if such a thing were to happen, they might as well set up a website saying so. It would look a bit like this , and host downloads of the game for everyone to play. And you know, if it did happen, if the impossible became possible, then I might see fit to include a video of it below this here line. Dare you step over it and into the World of the Impossible?
My, you are brave. Anything could greet you in this topsy-turvy world. Welcome to the impossible world of a working Uber Catacomb Snatch. Aside from everything being just a little bit sexier here, the Steampunk Egyptian strategic shoot ‘em up now has has bunch of squashed bugs, tweaked firing and some improved loot gathering help. He even fixed the game over screen.
So far they’re up to version 1.4, which is some hefty coding for a game that only hit 1.0 this weekend. But like I said: impossible. Till next time.
22/02/2012 at 17:14 Lionmaruu says:
pretty cool, will play again with the bugfixes! this game has potential let’s see what these people can do.
23/02/2012 at 02:58 mdcvnvxnb says:
PRE-pend isn’ it? if you append it would be called “Catacomb Snatch Uber” Which sounds equally as good. http://zeig.in/2Zbwb8
23/02/2012 at 07:29 enobayram says:
Are these zeig.in links simply ads? I think people use them to hide long URLs which basically earn them ad credits when others click on them. Doesn’t this make them spammers? Or am I completely wrong, and accusing innocent people?
EDIT: I’ve just realised I’ve accused a bot :S
23/02/2012 at 07:43 pistolhamster says:
Yes, the reply here is a clever contraption. The text is taken from the bottom of the thread
Baggypants says:02/22/2012 at 20:13
PRE-pend isn’ it? if you append it would be called “Catacomb Snatch Uber” Which sounds equally as good.
Add trojan link or what ever you want in the end and bingo. Another fool clicked.
25/02/2012 at 13:10 Phantoon says:
Kind of at the point links need to just be disabled for new/anonymous accounts.
22/02/2012 at 17:16 Ninja Foodstuff says:
I had completely different expectations of what this game was about from the title.
22/02/2012 at 17:20 the.celt says:
Yeah, it sounds like it’s about a girl with hygiene problems.
22/02/2012 at 17:30 RakeShark says:
I thought it was a dating sim about a vapid old shrew.
22/02/2012 at 19:19 Bhazor says:
Insert: Joke about mother.
22/02/2012 at 17:19 Hoaxfish says:
Any news on the other 2(?) games that came out of this?
22/02/2012 at 17:29 GallonOfAlan says:
It looks like a Bitmap Brothers game. Which is nice. Inasmuch as it doesn’t have the bloody Flash-type cel-like pastely graphics that every other app/indie game has these days.
22/02/2012 at 18:38 Berzee says:
Pastely? Examples pl0x! (I want to see if what you think is pastely [by which I assume you mean pastel-y?] is like what I think it is, because I would like to play those games if they are).
22/02/2012 at 19:27 hjd_uk says:
1st time ive seen this game in action and i immediatly thought “Its a Chaos Engine clone! (glee)” And by clone i mean similar pixel-art style and camera, and control method, and its a 8-way shmup.
22/02/2012 at 20:30 noodlecake says:
It’s much easier to do the vector graphics than pixel graphics because you can pretty much draw them as you would if you were drawing on paper. Pixel art takes a long time even to do the tiniest sprite. The reason people used to draw with pixels is because there wasn’t really any other way. I do quite like well done pixel art although I haven’t got he patience to do it myself. I like to use pens and paint myself. :)
22/02/2012 at 17:41 adonf says:
I really really wish they’d made it clearer that you would only be able to buy this game and the other two during the 60-hour jam and not after the week-end. I suppose that they wanted a lot of sales in a limited time, but that should have been said in big red flashing letters at the top of the website.
It’s not so bad for this game since the source was released (although only buyers of the bundle are able to download it) and there are third-party builds, but what about the other two games?
22/02/2012 at 17:54 phlebas says:
Mm, it’s a bit frustrating for those of us who were on holiday at the time and didn’t see until we got back. Looking forward to a bash at this one though!
22/02/2012 at 19:47 Dominic White says:
It wasn’t an issue of ‘sales’. They weren’t selling anything. The games they made were a bonus, but it was a 100% charity drive. They didn’t make a penny for themselves.
23/02/2012 at 01:34 ZephaniahGrey says:
The only really good thing about the Mojam is the charity aspect. Really, as much of a fan as I am of all 3 developers, the games are pretty much crap. You can play any of them for less than 30 minutes, and get all the entertainment from them that you’re ever going to get.
So if you want to donate to charity, please do so. All this money is going to some awesome causes, and every cent they raised will be well spent, plus these guys had a great time doing it. But if you didn’t get in on this one, don’t worry too much. You didn’t miss out on the games.
22/02/2012 at 17:55 PhoenixTank says:
No source for this version? Shame. There are some cool versions popping up on Github, though.
The one I’m following is: https://github.com/Maescool/Catacomb-Snatch
You can have a peak at the source if you are that way inclined, but builds are also posted here: https://github.com/Maescool/Catacomb-Snatch/downloads
22/02/2012 at 17:56 Roshin says:
Looks nice. Maybe what Tutankham would have looked like, if it was released today. :D
22/02/2012 at 18:00 faelnor says:
Nothing is impossible at ZomboCom
23/02/2012 at 02:51 Phantoon says:
Why was that so funny?
I just laughed like being confronted with a terrible impossibility that rends the mind of mortal men asunder, but didn’t have the insanity that follows.
22/02/2012 at 18:16 Beelzebud says:
Has Mojang ever finished a project? Serious question. To me they’re starting to seem like a group of now-rich guys that think its fine to just half-ass everything they work on.
22/02/2012 at 18:23 Soon says:
Is that really a serious question?
22/02/2012 at 18:28 Hoaxfish says:
Only one of them is rich
22/02/2012 at 19:21 Bhazor says:
…. Minecraft finished a few months back.
22/02/2012 at 19:45 fenrif says:
Minecraft finished beacuse they raised the price and said “welp, guess we’re done!” Even though they’re still working on it, at the time there were still a whole list of bugs, and pretty much every feature was woefully unfinished…
22/02/2012 at 19:49 Dominic White says:
The fact that people are kvetching about Mojang not giving enough payout on a CHARITY DRIVE is growing evidence of the horrible entitlement complex some gamers have developed.
I repeat: The mojam was a charity event. The whole ‘fun thing we’re doing for charity’ thing was making several games in 60 hours. It’s like someone running a marathon in a silly costume, but with code. And of course they stopped at the end of the 60 hours, because THAT WAS THE ENTIRE CONCEPT.
Arrgh.
22/02/2012 at 21:11 aerozol says:
If you could do it better, then do it!
I’m also starting to get sick of this angle of reasoning. Just let it go.
23/02/2012 at 03:39 jamesgecko says:
This is pretty incredible for a 60 hour game, too. Just that fact that it’s actually mostly playable and has networked multiplayer is impressive.
…I am ashamed to admit that it’s also way more complete than pretty much any game I’ve made in significantly longer spaces of time. :(
23/02/2012 at 05:06 MasterDex says:
@Beelzebud: Name one game from recent years that was finished? By recent, I mean go back a bit. Minecraft, especially, is a game that could never be finished because it has a near infinitesimal amount of potential and not everything that could be added or even should be added to the game will be added. A good game developer knows when to say stop. It’s one thing to keep on improving a game by small amounts over time and after release but it can be a bad idea to push too hard for a finished product, even if it doesn’t live up to the original vision.
This attitude that Mojang are half-arsing development annoys me. Minecraft is plenty finished in comparison to lots of other titles. I’ve bought AAA titles in worse states.
22/02/2012 at 20:13 Baggypants says:
PRE-pend isn’ it? if you append it would be called “Catacomb Snatch Uber” Which sounds equally as good.
22/02/2012 at 21:46 MadMatty says:
Catacomb Uber Snatch
22/02/2012 at 22:03 Bhazor says:
Comb a cat uber snatch
22/02/2012 at 22:03 Baggypants says:
@MadMatty, In which case he should have used INSERTED
22/02/2012 at 22:27 Sarlix says:
Uber Cat Snach A Comb
Obviously..
23/02/2012 at 16:56 droid says:
CSUaaabbccehmnortt, in which case it would be “Inserted and sorted”
23/02/2012 at 11:13 mingpp says:
http://ppt.cc/7mA7
23/02/2012 at 15:51 Sfitz says:
I misread “unubered” as “unlubed”.
28/02/2012 at 23:14 juani says:
Actually they just have cloned this github:
https://github.com/Maescool/Catacomb-Snatch/
changed some icons and removed some things
We checked some of the class files and they were equal to some of the mods implemented in our community open source project.
Heck they still copied our bugs :)
For more info: http://catacombsnatch.info
The worst thing is they’re trying to monetize opensource work without even republishing back their code!