By John Walker on June 22nd, 2012 at 12:00 pm.
If you’ve got a really decent looking indie arcade flight game, a great way not to promote it would be to, say, have the first have of your trailer feature a cartoon cow pratting around for no damn reason. That would be an especially strange idea when your game is about flying small aircraft between slalom poles in a gorgeous engine, because that’s what you’d want to show up from so people got excited. Not a poorly rendered cow making stupid noises for 40 seconds. That’s a useful tip for any indies out there planning such a thing. Including Gugila, creators of the genuinely impressive looking Altitude0.
Seriously, just skip to 40 seconds. You’ll like the game a lot more.
Gugila are a Slovenian group of indies, whose rural surroundings apparently inspired the video. The game, as the name might suggest, is about flying really close to the ground, which is great, because that’s all I ever try to do in flight sims anyway. (Imagine my disappointment when I played HAWX, and discovered the ground was a lie.) It’s focused on competitive online play, and they promise a demo is coming very soon. And I’m looking forward to that, because since the disappearance of Attack On Pearl Harbor I’ve been craving a new arcadey plane time.
22/06/2012 at 12:03 roryok says:
Cows don’t drink milk. Everything else makes sense though.
22/06/2012 at 12:09 Keymonk says:
Maybe it’s like a sperm bank for cows?
22/06/2012 at 12:23 Benjamin Sherwood says:
Wait… what?!
22/06/2012 at 12:10 Heliocentric says:
There are some calves in the lobby waiting to speak to you about misrepresentation.
22/06/2012 at 12:17 roryok says:
Ahem. Fully grown cows don’t drink milk.
22/06/2012 at 12:29 SiHy_ says:
I’ve never understood why people say cows don’t drink milk. Why do they think cows produce milk in the first place? It isn’t so we have something to put on our breakfast cereal, it’s to feed calves (i.e. baby cows).
22/06/2012 at 12:35 roryok says:
lighten up
22/06/2012 at 13:14 Kapouille says:
You get it wrong. Milk is to put in cereal bowls, and calves are to put in Weiner Schnitzel.
22/06/2012 at 13:47 Zeewolf says:
Wiener, actually.
22/06/2012 at 15:24 Lamb Chop says:
Weiner Schnitzel would just get you drunk.
22/06/2012 at 23:28 RvLeshrac says:
Cows don’t drink milk.
Bulls don’t drink milk.
Calves drink milk.
I mean, honestly, you wouldn’t say that “Men and Women nurse at their mother’s breast,” so why claim Cows and Bulls do the same?
26/06/2012 at 19:43 Phasma Felis says:
…Is that something you hear people say often?
22/06/2012 at 12:11 Mr. Mister says:
Who needs a plane when you can have a flying car?
22/06/2012 at 12:18 Moni says:
That grass and flower rendering is very pretty though.
25/06/2012 at 22:43 innociv says:
My heart literally skipped a few beats.
I played the first Altitude a lot. It was like the Counter Strike of cute side scrolling plane games. Really good competitive play in it. Really good replay value for something so simple.
So, I know the first game these two made. I know that it’s just two guys. Two guys and they make something this beautiful?
But, I still want to shoot things, not just fly through hoops, even though the whole nap-of-the-earth speed looks cool.
I’m also not really into the on-rails race-shooter thing like Mario is.
25/06/2012 at 23:13 LTK says:
I’m pretty sure Altitude and Altitude0 have nothing to do with each other.
25/06/2012 at 23:14 innociv says:
I just looked into it more and realized this too.
Now I’m disappointed.
The plane styles looked really similar.
26/06/2012 at 19:44 Phasma Felis says:
What?
Seriously, what?
22/06/2012 at 12:20 FloorBelow says:
That is the stupidest trailer I’ve ever seen. Looks like a fun game, though.
22/06/2012 at 12:28 caddyB says:
I was expecting dubstep.
I’m happy now. The game also looks fun.
22/06/2012 at 14:07 Truga says:
We don’t have dubstep here in Slovenia.
22/06/2012 at 12:32 DK says:
It seems wierd to call your game about Aircraft Altitude0 when there already is a game about aircraft called Altitude.
22/06/2012 at 13:01 Gnoupi says:
And it’s a great one, btw.
22/06/2012 at 13:19 Memph says:
Plane-to-ball is damn good stuff. And about the only thing my rig would run whilst compiling in Hammer.
22/06/2012 at 13:47 LionsPhil says:
That it be.
22/06/2012 at 16:30 Aardvarkk says:
Yes it is, not that it be.
22/06/2012 at 17:23 Koozer says:
Come on, I’m not a tourist.
23/06/2012 at 02:16 appropriate touching says:
Yep. Proof:
http://altitudegame.com/playnow
(needs Java)
22/06/2012 at 13:43 Dozer says:
Also strange to call the game Altitude0 when it’s about flying really close to the ground. Altitude is height above mean sea level, so unless you’re flying through subterranean tunnels in all those Slovenic mountains your altitude will be very much greater than 0 all the time. Then again, Elevation0 or Height0 is not as good a name.
22/06/2012 at 14:07 Heliocentric says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_on_land_with_elevations_below_sea_level
22/06/2012 at 16:34 LTK says:
Argentina has a place that’s over one hundred meters below sea level? Damn. And I though the Netherlands was low.
23/06/2012 at 11:47 Dozer says:
Yes, but if altitude always is zero, you’re never climbing or descending and you’re actually travelling in 2d. Which is dull.
22/06/2012 at 16:13 Llewyn says:
Slovenia != Slovakia
23/06/2012 at 11:49 Dozer says:
Slovenia is not Slovakia. Slovenia has never been referred to as Slovakia. Dozer is our loyal ally in never referring to Slovenia as Slovakia.
22/06/2012 at 12:41 jkz says:
After years of cow simulators I was hoping that this would be the enjoyable arcade cow game of my dreams, only to be disappointed at another games about planes or something.
22/06/2012 at 13:01 MistyMike says:
Now that’s just Plane Crazy.
22/06/2012 at 13:19 somini says:
Those kind of puns don’t fly here.
22/06/2012 at 13:25 Mana_Garmr says:
I find it best to just wing it.
22/06/2012 at 13:26 syndrome says:
I don’t like your altitude, mister.
22/06/2012 at 16:37 Aardvarkk says:
We need to stabilize this turbulent thread.
22/06/2012 at 17:25 Koozer says:
Don’t worry, aileron out of puns soon.
23/06/2012 at 04:05 tomeoftom says:
All of you, shut yer flaps.
23/06/2012 at 12:46 Dozer says:
Forgive my interruption. My Cessna is augmented.
22/06/2012 at 13:58 Dare_Wreck says:
Can they get away with that name?? I can’t imagine that Nimbly Games, creator of the indie plane game Altitude is happy.
22/06/2012 at 23:30 RvLeshrac says:
This calls for a lawsuit. It isn’t like the “Elder Scrolls” vs “Scrolls” thing, this is like naming your arcade-style racing game “NeedSpeed.”
22/06/2012 at 15:18 subactuality says:
Was that cow humming Goatye?
22/06/2012 at 15:57 BathroomCitizen says:
Yeah.
Am I the only one on this globe who loved the cow part?
22/06/2012 at 22:20 Dreforian says:
yes, yes I think it was.
22/06/2012 at 15:57 TrueBrit says:
This game looks excellent! The music in the trailer worked well too, but maybe the animated cow was a moo-stake!
23/06/2012 at 10:10 Roshin says:
I’m not an expert, but I don’t think that’s how cows walk around. The music was just a seconds-long bit repeated over and over.
22/06/2012 at 18:45 jon_hill987 says:
If that is SkyDrift without the arcade style controls count me in.
22/06/2012 at 22:26 Dreforian says:
That’s the opposite of what I was thinking, although I’m not sure what other type of controls they’d use (from lack of experience). I loved Skydrift like I loved Diddy Kong Racing on my old N64. This looks like Skydrift’s racing without the power-ups, boosting and explosions. Maybe the cow will explode after it gets back to humming Gotye in the next video.
23/06/2012 at 09:24 jon_hill987 says:
Don’t get me wrong, SkyDrift is brilliant fun, I just think it would be improved if it had the option for traditional aircraft controls.
22/06/2012 at 18:46 Deimoss says:
Speaking of “arcadey plane time”, it would be wise to check out SkyDrift:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1EGHHJUTf8
24/06/2012 at 03:51 cassus says:
When I see games like this I start wondering why we still buy AAA titles at 50€ a pop. the GiantBomb guys keep talking about how the best games consistently turn out to be downloadable titles, and by that they mostly refer to indie titles. Bastion, Fez, Journey and so forth. Just amazing fricken games made by tiny teams in an apartment somewhere. I’ve been saying this for a while, but only recently have I actually truly believed it: Big publishers would do well to innovate rather than iterate lest they become obsolete, like the record industry.
If indie games got the exposure that AAA titles get, it would be sleepytimes for a lot of publishers. They are already struggling, just look at THQ (a publisher I personally adore ever since they published Viper Racing.)