I'm pleased to announce that Martial Arts Brutality is out now on iOS & Android!

So go kick some ass... Good luck out there!

I'm very excited to announce that Martial Arts Brutality has an official release date of Thursday 24th of August!

It will be out on the iOS Apple app store and Android Google Play.

And to celebrate, here's a new face cracking trailer...

Firstly, a huge thank you to all the beta testers out there. Your feedback has been very useful and encouraging! Thank you!

The game has been in beta for a number of weeks now and it's clear that the gameplay needs some tweaking. With this update I've tried to re-balance a number of things to improve the fight experience.

The biggest problem that has come to light is constant attack skipping in favor of counterattacking. I initially suspected this might happen, but with a game such as this it's hard to predict unless a lot of people play.

So, here's a list of changes and why:

New Adrenaline System
Adrenaline is no longer linked to turn number alone, instead it increases based on number of attacks and number of turns. If a player constantly skips attack turns they will start to lag behind on Adrenaline and will suffer because they won't have access to more powerful cards.

The new system awards Adrenaline in the following way:
                                  Start          Per Attack Card       Per Turn
Shaolin Kung Fu       1.5              0.1                            0.5
Shotokan                  1.0              0.1                            0.6
Taekwondo               1.0              0.1                            0.7
Wing Chun                3.0             0.1                            0.3

For example, with Shaolin Kung Fu you will start off with 1.5 Adrenaline. You gain 0.1 for each attack cards used (even if it's a fail) and a further 0.5 at the end of your attack turn.

As you attack you Adrenaline now increases, if your Adrenaline goes to the next value (e.g. form 1.9 to 2.0) all the cards with that value will become available to use that turn.

Hopefully this change should tip the balance back towards attacking. Skipping turns will still be a valid and useful tactic, but excessive use will start to put you at a disadvantage.

Counter Attack Power Bug Fix
I found a bug that meant the fight style power modifier wasn't being applied to the counterattack  cards. This meant that less powerful styles like Wing Chun were counterattacking with maximum power when they should have been a lot lower. This bug shows why so many top players using Wing Chun found it more efficient to counterattack rather than attack.

Fixing this will mean counterattacks alone might not be enough to overpower an aggressively attacking opponent.

Matchmaking
Matchmaking is now split into two groups, black belts and above, and brown belts and below. This gives new players fairer fights when playing online PvP.

Body Zone Strengths
The Abdominals were by far the weakest body zone to attack. I've increased the HP on these organs and also made it so you need to disable all four for a KO instead of only two.

Pelvis HP has been dropped as this was too high.

Chi Card Tweaks
I've also made changed to the Chi cards. Most useful is that Power Boosts are higher and Speed, Block Fog, Chi Shake etc all last longer.

So there we have it. A lot of game play changes this time. Feel free to send me feedback on these. It still might not be quite right yet.

Cheers,
Steve

Martial Arts Brutality is now available on Google Play Early Access!
You can download it here

Have a bash and let me know what you think. I'm really interested in any feedback.

Lets rumble!

Hi there,

I'm looking for some players to help beta test the iOS version of Martial Arts Brutality. So if you have an iOS device that runs iOS 8 or higher then contact me here.

Let's FIGHT!

I'm Still Here!

First off I'd like to say I'm sorry for the lack of updates for the last few years. I'm still here, and I'm working very hard on a new game.

So here's an update as to what I'm up to, and what I'll be doing in the coming years.

Where Have I Been?
After finishing Beat Hazard, making DLC, and porting it to various platforms, I wanted to take time to make something different before embarking on the development of Beat Hazard 2. I initially thought this would only take a year or so, but as is apparent, it's taken a lot longer than I expected.

There are a few reasons for this. One is that family commitments have reduced my overall work time. My new game has needed more love and attention than I thought it would. I think it's going to be a great game, but I can't release it until it's up to the quality needed in today's competitive market.

A Quest for Better Tech
Another factor is my efforts to create some cross-platform reusable tech. Converting Beat Hazard from C# on the Xbox to C++ on PC, then PS3, iOS, Android, Mac and Linux was a bit of a nightmare. The game wasn't very portable and each version became standalone, which is a real pain in terms of support. It also makes it incredibly hard to fix bugs and add new features and keep all the versions in sync.

So I decided that while I make a new game I'd also take care and time to create a better engine. Even though it's taken some time, it's going really well. I can now make a change to my game and have the PC, iOS, Android, Mac and Linux versions running within a few minutes.  I also have tech that means my games have cross-platform play and asynchronous challenges. You can play on a phone and then swap to PC. You can challenge a friend from your Android phone and play whether they're on a PC, iPhone or anything else.

So tech and game are going great. I feel it's a worthy investment of my time as this new tech will mean future games will be far far quicker to put together. As a side note, I'm a big fan of middleware and not re-inventing the wheel, so where possible I've used per-existing libraries to help me on my way. For example, I use SDL2 as my base engine library.

Martial Arts!
Right, so what am I working on now that's taking so long? I'm not ready to fully announce yet, but it's a F2P turn based martial arts tactical fighting game. It supports up to 10 people all going at each other, trying in inflict the most horrendous injures. It's brutal. It's fun! 

Here's a sneaky look: A vicious side kick to the face, resulting in a shattered jaw and the loss of a few teeth!

It's in Alpha at the moment. Once finished I intended to release on iOS, Android and PC on Steam (If they'll have me).

Beat Hazard 2
Once my new game is done and dusted I will start on Beat Hazard 2. I've got a good idea about the design and with my new tech it should be quicker to develop and far easier to add cool features like cross-platform challenges etc.

So, I hope that was useful. I'm happy to answer any questions, just leave a reply here.

And it's back to work...

A few weeks ago I did a  video interview with Nick from The Thinking Mans Gamer. We talked about a whole bunch of stuff from my first games, to working in the industry and of course the development of Beat Hazard.

We talked for about 3 hours, but here's a cut down version of 46 mins:

At the end we also had a chat about the possible design of Beat Hazard 2. Here's a link to that if you want to skip the rest:

I really enjoyed chatting to Nick, I tried to be as open and frank as possible so I hope there's something of interest in there.
Subscribe to Nicks channel as I'm sure he'll do some more in-depth interviews with other developers in the future.

There are now 917 user generated ship in the Beat Hazard workshop on Steam!
You can get access to the ships, and gain the ability to create your own, by purchasing the Shadow Operations DLC here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/272680/

It's great to see such a wild variety of ships, I've really enjoyed downloading and playing them.
We got everything from classic Beat Hazard style ships, your typical Sci-Fi craft from Star Wars and Star Trek. There are ships and characters from other games, and completely new original designs. Then we have the weird bunch, such as 'The Cage' and Gage Newells' head!

Check out a random selection below:

Here's a collection of 'Classic' ships made using the same images used in the game.
If you fancy a go, you can download the art pack here: Download

And here's a selection of the many Star Wars ships in the hanger.

The new Shadow Operations DLC has been released.
You can buy it here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/272680/

- 9 Brand new ships, each with different handling, firing patterns and abilities
- Steam Workshop support with easy to use in-game editor
- Earn mission stars by completing 'Shadow Missions' assigned to each ship
- Prove your worth, rank up to 'Shadow Force Elite'
- Each ship has a separate leader board; Show your skill and compete for the top spot

Read the full manual and feature list here.