Killer Queen: Half Joust, half StarCraft and one giant snail | Hacker News Reader

Killer Queen: Half Joust, half StarCraft and one giant snail

polygon.com

78 pointscpeterso28 comments

I had a chance to play this game at California Extreme last year. There were about 16 controllers hooked up, and most were full at any given time. Very fun, and extremely chaotic. It's probably one of the most interesting of the couch multiplayer games coming out right now - Samurai Gunn, Divekick, Sportsfriends and the like. There's a bigger difference between 2v2 and 8v8 multiplayer than you would think, and that dynamic is really multiplied when you're all in one physical location. That said I worry about the viability of these games because it's so hard to get a group of that size together in the absence of arcades. I bet they could get really big at college dorms, though. I know the Wii still does very well in dorms because of Smash Bros. and Mario Kart, which have similar optimal player configurations.

Oh man, these sorts of things are my favourite kinds of games. I love any sort of esport level multiplayer, but I also love the amount of fun that local multiplayer games can bring (Bomberman, Nidhogg, Smash Bros. etc).

I'd be interested to know the rules in detail. A quick google hasn't turned up anything though...

Bomberman is god tier game.

Absolutely amazing.

I am surprised at just how terribly wrong they got it in later iterations - weird 3D and horrible styling.

Has anyone done an analysis of franchises that stopped being great? Bomberman, MicroMachines, etc etc.

When my youngest son played bomberman for the first time with the rest of the family, I went and got the camera and took some photos of him playing because of the joy and surprise so clearly visible on his face. Later I tracked down an email address for the designer of the game and sent the photos. I got a very nice reply from a coworker in English passed back.

This game is awesome.

Here is some footage of my team from the tournament in February: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44O1fWfj2QY

Is the Unity middleware really as good as he says? I'm not a Unity developer but I can't imagine what kind of middleware would help that much.

It is. I've done my fair share of game programming and it is certainly a step ahead for both beginners and experienced game developers. It's a great ecosystem and compiles to lots of targets. Open source frameworks don't even come close in terms of features, support and target platforms.

For 3D games UDK is perhaps a contestant, but I found it quite contrived for most games and a bit hackish for non-FPS genres.

My focus is on game engines, but if you're into game mechanics and just want to make a game and stop worrying about boilerplate, it's pretty much the way to go.

You can see it all here: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/

Hey I'm one of the designers of the game. In Killer Queen the only middleware we used was 2DToolkit for 2D rendering, although this is no longer necessary since Unity has 2D tools built in. However with other projects, especially 3D ones, I use stuff from the asset store all the time. Some of the code we're using from the asset store handles pathfinding, procedural terrain generation, tweening, and GUI rendering. Plus, we get a lot of art assets from there (especially for placeholders.)

A hoot of a game, but there's really only one, I think. And you really want a full compliment of players. It was on display at GDC this year.

I really want to go to GDC/IGF (I love games, especially genre-busting stuff) but always have a conflict. Damnit.

There's two cabinets right now: one in NYC and one in SF. We're making more but it's a slow process. If you're in NYC you can play it at Spring Fighter in June: http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/event/spring-fighter/

Vaguely relatedly, do you know what happened with the Sticky Icky Pollen field game?

No, what is that?

I think it was during the 2008 festival, and it involved 4 people in bee costumes carrying laundry hampers picking up various colors of Chuck-E-Cheese ball pit balls spread randomly throughout a large circle in the park.

The players were outside the circle, and took turns giving instruction to the bees, acting as cellular automata. The goal was to hit a target mix of different colored "pollen" at the end of the round. Each team had a different target mix, but the instructions available were limited.

Somehow it was going to be a video game, too.

edit: maybe 2007? whichever one Saucony helped sponsor.

PICKY sticky pollen. I've been living in Colorado's marketing bubble for too long: http://comeoutandplay.org/2009_pickystickypollen.php

And I'd stumbled on Phoenix Perry's (excellent) twitter bio yesterday, but didn't connect the dots until moments ago.

edit: there's been a picture of me on the internet for half a decade http://phoenixperry.com/main/2009/05/16/picky-sticky-pollen/

How powerful is the computer driving your Killer Queen game?

The article says your first cabinet cost $3,500. How much of that was just materials? If you built more cabinets (perhaps less fancy and with lower-end computer hardware), how much cheaper could they be?

Also, I'm curious what kind of game play tweaks you've made based on player feedback after your unveiling at NYU's No Quarter exhibition?

Hey cpeterso the first cab was somewhere between 3500 and 4K to build but we did all the labor. If you calculate that into the equation, it's more like 20K. Our current cabinets are more expensive, they retail at 12K, so it's not the kind of thing you will buy for your room. They are built in Wisconsin, are of higher quality and also feature better TVs. We'll ship wherever. They include a coin door and are really made for public spaces like arcades, bars, student unions etc. We're figuring out how much money can be made on them and it's looking very good that you can recoup the money in less than a year if it's in a well trafficked area. Our goal is to get them closer to 10K or less. Believe it or not the computer is only about 400 of those dollars, the bulk of the money is the cabinet, joysticks and TVs. We are looking at ways to make them cheaper but we'd have to build quite a few of them to get economies of scale working for us.

As far as game play tweaks, it's not really any one big thing, it's more about little tiny changes that we keep doing in response to tournament performance. We did change the way the soldiers look and made variants on the workers so they are easier to distinguish from each other. The big changes have been in making it Arcade ready, adding an attract screen, music, code for taking money, UI elements to let people know that the game is about competing with the other cabinet, instructions etc.

Thanks for the details. I missed Killer Queen at California Extreme 2013. Are you going to California Extreme 2014? :)

The bi-coastal Come Out & Play festivals are probably the best place to learn the importance of field testing.

It's already a pull quote, but this really deserves emphasis:

"""

"The way that we really playtest [the video game] is by playing the field game, because the iterations are just easier to implement," says Mikros. "We just change it, no coding involved."

"""

Get out into the world, fellow hackers!

Halfway through I thought this was going to be a hybrid video/physical game in the vein of Natural Selection 2, where two teams each had a "commander" using a computer interface to give them high-level real-time strategic direction, while the other players engaged in physical melée to determine the outcome of individual battles. That would be even cooler.

Is it guaranteed to blow your mind?

of course.

This was the best game I played at GDC this year.

Recently there's been a great groundswell of local multiplayer games, and this is one of the top ones out there.

Are there any videos that showcase the game?

There is one on the right of the second section, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zorgpC93Aq4

Reminds me a lot of Warcraft 3 custom games (minus the in person setting and arcade game input)

Thanks!

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