We were invited by Atari to port SAMA to their new console, the Atari VCS.

The VCS runs a Linux OS, so since we already supported Linux all we had to do was a few small adjustments and enable support for the Atari controller.

If you own one of the new Atari units then SAMA should appear in the Store front on the machine and be available for you to buy directly from them.

You can read about SAMA and more about the VCS over on their site

https://atarivcs.medium.com/something-ate-my-alien-invites-you-to-flex-all-of-your-gaming-skills-9e307fbc1793

We hope you are all enjoying our game and hope that bringing it to a console like the Atari VCS will be a great addition to our supported platforms.

It’s been about 8 weeks since we released “Something Ate My Alien” and we have had a positive reception to our game. People playing it have a fun experience and for those who like mining and finding lots of loot, this game has been a dream which is nice to hear.

We have also listened to all feedback, to try and pinpoint things we could enhance or make more engaging for all our players and a few things have got our attention. We’ve been ongoing with updating bug fixes and smaller enhancements and adjustments to the game as players found things that they commented on. For example, we added twin-stick controller set-up, tweaked enemies to stop falling on the player, planet storm rates decreased, removed fall damage in puzzle rooms etc etc. However, two of the bigger issues required a bit more thought and work to pull off.

One of our biggest requests was to be able to change difficulty level mid-game. This was mostly due to players who started on a specific level, then played on for a good hour or 2,3 or even 4, only to realise that they struggled to finish a level or had to fight too much for them to enjoy playing further. With that amount of time invested, these players also felt that starting over from the beginning on a lower difficulty was too much of a chore, and they would choose to not continue playing instead.

We listened and agreed, and we decided to enable players to swap to any other difficulty level at any time during game play. If a certain battle is too hard or too easy, or if you struggle with general gameplay, you can now swap difficulty level from the main menu when loading up your saved game. Since our game is single-player and all achievements are based on gameplay and not difficulty, it was not too much that could get lost making this feature available.

The second biggest issue a group of players had was the overall difficulty of the game, despite playing on the easiest mode. These players really just wanted a chilled game with basically no enemies at all and very little fighting at any time during the gameplay. They would enjoy the game much more being able to just dig, explore, solve puzzles and collect things without having to worry about battles and fighting.

For this group of players, we are now happy to introduce Zen-mode! Again, this feature is added based on feedback and are for those who wants to play without hardly any shooting. Gameplay is focused on as little battle as possible and more on collecting, exploring and solving puzzles. Enemies are few and extremely easy to kill with one shot only, so weapon upgrades play a small role in this mode. Bosses are still here but are quite easy to take out. Code-wise we couldn’t remove them completely from the gameplay since we got achievements and the main-story itself connected to them.

We hope that with these latest features we’ve added something that would entice both new and existing players who might have been a bit hesitant to play on the previous difficulty-levels in SAMA. Now you can choose a whole new level with Zen-mode if you wish, or change any current game save you have to a different difficulty…and change it back over and over as many times as you like.

To celebrate this improvement release we have a 25% discount for 2 weeks starting today 20^th Aug 2020. If you like mining and puzzle games with the additional bonus of chilled music, beautiful graphics and a fun little Alien to look after, then give SAMA a try!

Introduction

Our game “Something Ate My Alien” has a pretty unique mix of several genres combined. It is foremost a platforming style game where you dig your way through the levels in a search for a wide variety of minerals, gems, gases, fossils and artefacts to satisfy the ransom demand and to be able to upgrade the equipment for the Alien you control.

Then we have the puzzle rooms, which are small chambers with locked doors that you need to open to access the inside. Inside these rooms time stands still in effect; Enemies don’t spawn here, oxygen does not deplete and injury from falling too far does not exist. It’s all about taking your time without any stress to think through and try to solve the puzzle at hand.

The last one of the major genres of SAMA is the combat with enemies, but this part is greatly simplified by them being pesky things that tries to trip you up while you explore each world. If you upgrade to better weapons along the way, you should be able to take them out quite easily.

Puzzle mechanics

For this blog post, let’s focus on the puzzles in SAMA.

The structure of the puzzles is based on differently coloured blocks that need to be placed into slots with their corresponding colours matching. The basic idea is simple and is like that used in the classic “Sokoban” puzzle games.

The blocks can be pushed or pulled. There is a mix of diggable blocks, undiggable blocks and empty areas in each puzzle room, leaving the player to figure out which blocks needs to be dug out or left as is to be able to slide the coloured stone blocks to where they need to be.

In the beginning the puzzle set-up is kept simple and with few steps needed to complete it. As the game moves forward the complexity of the puzzles are stepped up, so each puzzle room will require different tactics to fulfill.

If a player gets stuck in a puzzle, or moves a block incorrectly and wants to redo it, we’ve implemented a “Reset” action ( R on keyboard ) which allows the player to try again.

We wanted all the puzzles to feel a bit unique and fun and at the same time get more and more complex as the game went along to challenge the player. The design was based on:

1. Each planet from 1-4 (Metis, Tartarus, Lelantos and Aura) would have different puzzle types starting simplified in the first world to the most complex style in the last world.
2. Each puzzle room on each planet would escalate in complexity/difficulty from 1-10 with room number 1 being very simple to room number 10 being quite complex.

Planet differences

So let’s take a look how this works for each planet and the resulting puzzle designs.

Metis is the first planet and it has the simplest puzzle design. All puzzles here are based on single, coloured blocks that need to be pushed into specific openings with corresponding colours matching.

At one point you start getting uncoloured blocks obscuring or blocking the path of the coloured blocks you need to get to, and the player now has to try to move these blocks out of the way so that the puzzle blocks can get into place.

Moving onto the next planet Tartarus the puzzles have now shifted to blocks that can be more than 1×1 in size, and they need to fit into slots with several colours needing to match together. Here the puzzles need to be considered in 2 ways before trying to move any block into place. First the player needs to figure out how the blocks in each room would fit together with the other blocks in there to make the final shape needed to fit into the allocated spots. Then the player needs to figure out in what order to move the blocks to get them all in place.

Lelantos is the third world and here magnets are introduced to the puzzle mechanics. The two types of magnets introduced will either attract or repel the coloured blocks, but they have no effect on the uncoloured ones.

Each magnet will show beams that stretches out the same number of blocks that it’s force affects and in the direction/s that force will interact with the coloured block that crosses it’s path. Magnet forces that goes out horizontally are weaker than the force going vertically, meaning that a block that is being pulled or pushed by the magnets along a flat plane will fall downwards if there is a gap in that plane.

The complexity of the puzzle design across this level starts with simple magnet placements and single blocks placements to more difficult ones where you need to try to get around the magnets or use them to move the coloured blocks around and fit several blocks together to create complex shapes.

In the last world Aura the puzzles all come together in a mixed form where the player now needs to use all the skills learnt up to this point to solve these. All things are implemented here in different combinations, single blocks, different shaped blocks, uncoloured blocks and magnets.

Here the difficulty increases by having more and more complex solutions for each puzzle where multiple uncoloured blocks is in the way for getting the coloured ones into their slots. Several magnets are placed to interfere or help with the path of the coloured blocks and blocks themselves being in weird positions needing to get around other blocks in a correct order.

Conclusion

Most people finding the puzzles tricky but fun and it seems the majority can solve them all even if it takes some time once they get more complex. We seem to have hit on point when it comes to a design that is giving people just the right amount of challenge without being exceedingly hard or too easy.

If you are a person who enjoys puzzles, then definitely give SAMA a try. If you happen to be one of those players who just want a very chilled puzzle game, then chose “easy” mode where the enemies are few and easy to kill and the focus lies more on the exploring and finding loot and solving the puzzles.

After 3.5 years of intense development from our 2-person team, the day where our game “Something Ate My Alien” finally launches is here!!

Get it on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1047870

This 2D digging and puzzle adventure game, started off being a smallish, fun, indie game. Easy enough for 2 people to pull off and with a somewhat simple concept of digging and solving puzzles.

Today, 18th June 2020 it hits the store fronts at Steam, Humble and Green Man Gaming and will be available for the world to purchase and play.

Looking back to when it all started almost 4 years ago we could never have imagined just how large the game would become, how many hours of hard work we would put in, how many changes and tweaks would be done, and how many people would be involved with testing and feedback. Neither did we understand just how absolutely thrilling it would be to see your built from scratch project finally take on it’s final form after all that hard work.

Working together for all this time, and managing to create a whole game together, gives a sense of accomplishment that is huge. And despite not knowing just how successful or not the game will be, it is still something we are feeling immensely proud over.

So with this we hope that you will play and enjoy our game, and if nothing else, we hope that we can inspire someone who is thinking of developing their own game to give it a go. As long as you love sitting down and working on your project, and you have the passion for it, anything is possible!

Get it on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1047870

We are extremely excited to announce that our 2D puzzle and digging adventure game “Something Ate My Alien” is finally in a complete state and will be released 18th June 2020 on Steam, GMG and other store fronts!

If you have not yet added SAMA to your wishlist on Steam, now is the time to do it so you get notified when it launches.

After 3,5 years development and basically working around the clock, we have almost achieved our goal of finishing SAMA. Another month of polishing and bug fixing before the big day, and we are more than ready to make this happen.

We promise a chill game with a slight strategy tone where you will explore big levels full of things to collect, puzzles to solve and a fair amount of shooting action occuring, while listening to a lovely mix of music tracks suited for this type of game. The most used word testers seem to use describing SAMA is the words “chilled explorer game”.

SAMA will be available on Windows, Linux and Mac and it also has controller support if you prefer to play with that rather than the keyboard. We also offer visual aid for the puzzle rooms for those who struggle seeing different colours which can be toggled on/off in the settings menu.

If you can’t wait till June 18th, or if you just have to give our game a try before committing to buying yourself a copy, you can try out the DEMO on GameJolt right now!

As a 2 person dev team we have learnt a lot during this time, and feedback from testers has been invaluable to us. Reflecting on the time that has gone by since the first story line of SAMA was written down, and seeing where we are now is quite a satisfying feeling. Not only have we proven that if you really love what you’re doing and put your mind to it, you can make it happen, but we have also proven to ourselves that we make a good team which bodes well for future endeavours.

We hope you are as excited for SAMA as we are, and that you will enjoy playing it once it is out. Go check it out and if you can see all the hard work and love we have put into this game, please consider adding us to your wish-list on Steam to help us out!

DEMO

Looking for something fun to play to take your mind of things? We’re very excited to give you a free demo of our 2D digging and puzzle platformer game “Something Ate My Alien” to try out right now!

Whether you are on Windows, Linux or Mac we got you covered, so if you like a chill game with some action, some puzzles and lots of exploring then give it a try today.

We’ve uploaded the demo to various sites, and you can get it from GameJolt today, with the link below.

Download & Play

We’ve modified the menu screen in the demo so you got easy link access to the Steam store and our Discord server. We’d really appreciate a Wish List add on Steam if you enjoy this demo and would like to play the full game when it is released.

In the demo, you will get to explore a small area of Metis, the first of four planets, and solve 3 of the many puzzle rooms that the full game will contain.

After completing the 3 puzzles you are rewarded with the next level automatic weapon called the ‘Netgun’, so you can go on a blasting spree and hunt more enemies while exploring the rest of the area.

Discord Server

If you fancy chatting with us or talking about the game, then you can also join us on our Discord server with the following link.
https://discord.gg/JuCYqYe

To entice you even further to try out our game, have a look at our latest trailer of the full game below to see what the full version will offer once out in June.

Steam Wish List

We hope you enjoy the demo and find it fun, and we hope it will get you keen on playing the full version of SAMA when it hits the stores in June.

To keep up to date with the full release add it to your Steam wish list today.

General

Well the good news is we’re very near the end of our development. We’ve implemented everything we wanted to, and the game is quite stable. There has been lots of help from our testers and we believe we have a good and solid game.

But the bad news is, we are going to have to delay a bit more. We would have liked to release towards the end of April, but we’ve had a few issues, above the obvious one. Some of the finishing touches took longer than we expected, and also our Steam Wish List numbers aren’t quite as good as we had hoped for, as we haven’t spent as much time on marketing.

With that being said, we’ve re-planned it all, and we are now going to aim for June 2020.

During the time between now and then, we will be concentrating on more polish and bug hunting.

Demo

We are also going to soon release a free ‘demo’ of the game. This will allow anyone to download and play a ‘restricted’ version of the game. The game will be limited to the first 3 puzzles and about 1/4 of the area on the first planet ‘Metis’. Other than that, it will play like the full game, to give you a taster.

Updates & Changes

We entered ‘Beta’ testing a few weeks ago with our testers, and the main difference is that now we will not be adding any major features or changes. Along with bug fixing we will also be balancing play, enemies and other small changes. So far, it’s proving to be stable and have little problems.

Speech

The AI and Pirate now ‘talk’ to you! We thought just the text messages were a bit lifeless, so we gave them voices. Just electronically generated gibberish, but it lifts the experience and makes it feel more personal. This is optional in the settings menu.

World Map

Previously, you automatically teleported down to the last place you were at on a planet. Now, before teleporting, you are presented with a map of the area you have seen so far, teleporters you’ve previously used, and you can select where you teleport to. This makes it easier to move around the planets and find the goodies you’re looking for. It’s basically an expanded version of the Mini Map.

Relics

There are now 4 different relics to find, dotted around the planets. Each having a unique little message to read. Some are not so easy to access as they are sealed behind blocks. A new Achievement is available for collecting all 4.

Controller Support

This was on the list for so long, and we kept putting it off. You can now use a controller to play the game. Fully configurable from the setting screen. There are a few unique features when the controller is plugged in, to help with movement and make it easier to control.

Platforms

We’re currently building Beta version on Windows, Linux and MacOS, so no matter what system you are on we have a version for you! Luckily with Unity it’s very easy to build for different platforms, and we are now using Unity Collaborate and Cloud build which makes it even easier.

Beta Testing

We should be getting the Demo version out soon, but if you just have to try the game, why not sign up to our Beta Testing program and help us find bugs and problems? All you need is a Steam account and click the link below to join in.
http://www.somethingatemyalien.com/forums/Thread-Sign-up-for-Beta-Testing

Steam Wish List

We’re also still busy trying to grow our community and Steam Wishlist. Click the link below to go and add our game to your Wishlist or see some more screen shots and our trailer video.

It’s official, we are nearing the end of development of our game “Something Ate My Alien” and we will be releasing it on the Steam platform in April 2020!

Reaching this milestone and being able to set a date for release is extremely exciting and a bit scary for us. When we started developing this game all the way back in 2016, we had no idea just how much work we signed up for and just how long it takes to develop a game when you are only 2 people doing it. Reflecting on that makes this day feel even sweeter, to finally start seeing the result of all that hard work.

So, in this blog we’d like to give you all a quick breakdown to let you know how SAMA developed since our last dev blog back in August 2019.

1. Level design

Changing the level design to be more linear in the beginning of the game has been a good move with our Alpha testers. We continued following this path and doing some more tweaking on the remaining levels and trying to add certain design aspects to each level making each one more unique.

The puzzle rooms are now sorted in difficulty order from 1 to 10 in each level. If a player finds one tricky they will now know which ones should be good to start with and which ones are better to leave to the end.

2. Enemy enhancements

2-block enemies now stay in specific areas specifically designed for them rather than being spawned randomly across the levels. We kept getting a lot of weird behaviour and bugs with the bigger ones moving across areas where they’d get stuck on 1 block ledges. This way they not only work as intended; they are now a bigger part of the level design in acting like smaller mini bosses with specific traits that will make it harder to get through certain areas.

Several enemies have got an upgrade in looks, how they act and what they can do to add more diversity in enemy encounters and battles.

The Oyse bulbous plant creature starts pulsating and will blow up and multiply if you approach too close to it. The Phantus can now both fly and walk moving up and down to ledges it previously could not reach, making it hard for you to avoid it or even hide. Oh yes, it also shoots projectiles through it’s tail, making it a very dangerous enemy.

The Draker lay eggs that explodes and expels a powerful missile seed that can go through blocks to find you. The Guld leaves trails of little bombs that are deadly and the Murderia shoots out single projectiles in all directions like an automatic weapon. The Bagice can now grow its sharp crystal tendrils from the ceiling as well as the floor and the Kator does a roll at high speed to try and hit you like a bowling ball.

We have added a new Enemy to Aura called Jaxer. It hides in blocks and shoots out as some speed when the player gets near. Around the floor and ceiling near the Jaxer nests we added icy spikes that will warn of this enemy hiding nearby but also to add some difficulty in trying to pass these nests without taking damage.

The Bosses have all been given an overhaul in movement tracks and the speed and variation within those tracks. Some extra things were added to make them feel more unique such as projectile impacts spawning enemies. The final boss scene has an environmental mechanic to help with the fighting. The bosses now also drops higher ratio of health and oxygen boosts so the player has a fairer chance of fighting without running out of oxygen before fight is over for example.

3. GUI changes

We changed the name “Inventory” to “Cargo Bay” in the menu to make it clearer this is the content you have collected and have stored in the ship, not what you are carrying on you.

We have done some major work on the GUI part of the game, with the Customization screen getting the bulk of these changes. We have moved around the different upgrade areas and put the weapon selection in a way so the player can view and decide on the weapons independently of setting the Primary and Secondary choices. This solves the issue with players having to manually reset the equipped weapon choice to the one they want after viewing other weapons which was quite frustrating.

The way the numbers are displayed in the materials needed section has now changed to show how many you got and how many are needed so you can compare and choose where to use your items in a more calculated manner.

Overall, we have added lots of more sounds both to the levels and animals there, but also to the GUI end cut scenes. We have tweaked and added a bunch more messages popping up from the pirate and Antalasia when the player is teleported back to the ship with (or without) loot to make the player feel more engaged with the protagonists of the story.

4. Steam connection

We have moved over our game to the Steam platform so new testers now access the game from there. We chose this quite recently to see how that would work for the actual release further on, making us familiar with all those procedures before the live release.

Being on Steam we’ve also been able to add achievements to our game. Not only are achievements good for little rewards as you play the game, but it also creates a competitive part for those players enjoying getting all achievements and seeing their progress both within the game and from the Steam library.

So with a few more months left until “Something Ate My Alien” hits the store front on Steam, we will continue tweaking and testing so the game will be the best it can be.

If you haven’t already, consider adding SAMA to your wish-list on Steam so you don’t miss out once it is released in April: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1047870/

Alpha Changes

We’ve been busy the last month implementing changes suggested from our Alpha testers.

Inventory

Changes have mostly been around inventory and the pirate list. We realized that the way the pirate ransom list worked was a bit hard to follow and generally was looked at as being a ‘grind’ rather than fun. So we have changed it so that there are no groups and it’s just individual items that are now on the list. This meant we could remove the ransom list screen (no one really went to that screen), and everything is now on the inventory screen. The pirate automatically takes any ransom the player owes him as they teleport back up to the ship.

Upgrades

We’ve also changed how upgrades are acquired. Previously each item had a sell value, and were sold to accrue ‘Units’. Upgrades were obtained with Units. Again, this didn’t seem rewarding, and people just click-click-clicked to sell everything all the time. So, we’ve changed it to be a more ‘crafting’ like process. Items aren’t sold any more, instead they are now used to build upgrades. Each upgrade now has a requirement of items (For example, one of the laser upgrades requires: 5 Grittium, 2 Gumom & 1 Hingle Bingle) that the player needs to find before they can build them. Units have been removed, and now each item has an ‘Energy’ cost along with the item requirements. Energy is found in the worlds in the puzzle chests, and also randomly dropped when enemies are killed.

Tutorial

After watching some of the Alpha players uploaded playthrough videos, we saw that they were not understanding some parts of the game or mechanics. We had little message popups to explain things, but they were either just ignored or closed quickly. So we have introduced a ‘Tutorial’ section (Can be skipped) at the beginning of the game. When a new game is started, the computer AI will talk through the mechanics of the game. The player now gets the chance to actually do the things, in a controlled setting. This way they can directly learn about how to play, what keys do what and how to use items etc. There are 3 main sections to the tutorial, where the player is guided through an easy section at the beginning of the first level.

Metis layout

We have also made the game a little bit more ‘linear’. We have noticed from watching the play throughs, and also comments back to us, that people were feeling ‘lost’. They didn’t really have any direction in where to go, especially at the beginning in Metis. So for Metis, we have made it more linear and it follows a more defined ‘path’. It’s not fully linear, and the player can still mine in any direction and move about freely. It now guides them through the level with more with walls (blocks that can’t be mined) etc. This should help the player in the beginning and not overwhelm them with such wide open areas. The other levels have not changed too much in this regard. Tartarus and Lelantos were previously more guided than Metis anyway, and Aura is still a lot more ‘open’.
Hopefully this will start the player off on a more direct path and help them understand the game better.

Minimap

The minimap has had a bit of an upgrade. Along with other Upgrades you can build, there is now an ‘Item’ scanner. This upgrade allows the minimap to show up to 3 different items, so they can be found easier. It only shows them in areas that have already been seen, but it should help in finding specific items needed for other upgrades. A new button to stop the map following the player helps with navigation. Regarding upgrades, there is also a new scanner for graves, another suit protection for cold, and an extra level for the Lock Jaw device.

Going Forward

So, that was a lot of work in the last month!

We still have lots to do. We want to enhance the enemies AI, enhance and polish the boss scenes and add Steam Achievements. Some other things we are looking at are full controller support, Linux & Mac support and the possibility of localization in other languages.

We had touted that our release date would be Autumn 2019. That would be possible, but we would have to drop quite a few things to get that done. Also, we have been working close to 100 hrs a week for far too long and that has taken a toll on our productivity and life. So we have made the decision to delay the release a bit. Ideally we would probably only need to extend by 2-3 months, but that puts us near Christmas and the winter sales. Generally this seems to be the time when small Indie developers should avoid releasing their games. So, we have to push it out to early 2020.

We feel this is the most ideal solution for making our game the best it can be for our players. We would like the final part of the game to be finished how we want it to be rather than rushing to complete it and it not being the game we hoped for.

Wishlist

We’re also still busy trying to grow our community and Steam Wishlist. Click the link below to go and add our game to your Wishlist or see some more screen shots and our trailer video.

Hopefully all the above will mean we will release a fun and complete game, and we still have fun finishing it

Rob & Kat.

Alpha Testing

It’s been a busy time with our Alpha testers these last few weeks. Lots of feedback and ideas coming in. We’ve just come out with a new update for the Alpha version. This version is including lots of bug fixes and changes from the testers.

One of the larger items in the recent Alpha release is the sound. We hand picked and replaced all sound effects and added many more, and ended up with over 120 new sound effects added, along with 8 tracks for the background music. We decided to pick most sounds from Pond5, as they had the largest and best database of sounds we found.

In Lelantos and Aura we have introduced a new mechanic. ‘Portals’ are devices that transfer the Alien instantly to another location on the planet. On Lelantos the Alien needs to use them to find different areas that can’t reached by mining. On Aura, they are used for portaling into the Puzzle rooms. Once a portal is found, it will be displayed on the mini-map, and each will have a unique number so you can keep track of where they go.

We’ve been playing through the full game now, to try to find how long the game plays for. For us, it takes about 10+ hours to complete, but looking at the Alpha testing data, people are playing it for between 10 -> 20 hours. So it’s looking like it’s easily going to play for 10+ hours.

We are still looking for testers to help us, so if you fancy helping out, follow this link to see what to do: Alpha Signup

Steam

Our Steam / Wish List is doing well, and we are starting to get a nice following on there. We changed our release text to specify ‘Autumn 2019’ as we are now more confident we can achieve this time. The Steam Summer Sale is starting soon, so we are hoping that will bring some extra traffic and adds.

Not seen our Steam page yet? It’s got all the info about SAMA including screenshots and our feature trailer video. Click the link below and check it out. Even give us an add to your Wish List if SAMA looks like it’s for you!

Social Media

Back in May we did our first interview. Indie Ranger asked us if we wanted to do an interview, and we thought that would be a good idea to get out some info about us and the game. It was a bit nerve wracking, since this was our first interview, but it all went well and they did a nice write up about us. If you haven’t yet, go have a read about us.

Click here for the Rob & Kat Interview

We also got our first YouTube streamer, Fred! He is an Alpha tester and has done a few videos about the game and his views on it. With his comical commentary during the game play, it’s a nice start to our You Tube presence. You can find him here: Fred Impossible

Next things

The next phase of Alpha will be introducing some more ideas from the testers. These include modifications to the ‘Somethings’, new upgrades and some changes to the Aura world. Keep tuned to see them soon.
We will continue to interact with our Alpha testers and get as much feed back from them as we can.

Bonus: We also did a quick little ‘fun’ video of some behind-the-scenes development, and how the game looks in the Unity editor with a ‘3D’ look: