tiistai 25. elokuuta 2015

early access time!

Hello and welcome to the obviously bi-annual blog post from the world of Hoodownr!

The good news is that we finally have an early access program to test the game on Android devices. And the program is live and you can get your early access account by paying a few euros here.

In case this is the first time you heard about Hoodownr, here's a brief recap:

Hoodownr is a very simple game to get you out of the door, alone or with friends. After installing the app (google play store link here 4.9.2015) you log in with your early access account, see a screen with map of the locality and press the play button. After that you walk somewhere, taking your time, chilling out, and then head back where you started using a different route.

The area you walked around becomes your hood in the game. You need to walk over one kilometer, thats the minimum size of the hood. This will take about 10 minutes if you walk non stop.
Upon returning to start, a magical window with a claim button appears. Tapping this button will send your run to the server. Walking alone results in a run that has the takeover power of 1. Walking with friends will result in stronger takeover power. This means that to take over a piece of land that belongs to another clan and that has been taken over by 3 people would take you three runs so ask a friend or two to join.

Hoodownr players always belong to a clan. When you get your first run, you are shown a list of clans available on the area. Join one. You can join another clan later on by making a run together with a member of that clan. On the final version of the game you can create your own clan and invite people into it.

There are all kinds of statistics on the user profile screen, kilometres walked, your adventurer status and so on. By going to places you haven't been to before, you have more fun and a better adventurer status.

That is the basic gameplay of Hoodownr. We've been working on the game for quite a long time now and have plenty of ideas of things to do in the world of Hoodownr. As an early access adopter you will be able to see new stuff coming in gradually and can take part in testing various ideas and giving feedback. We really like to play our game and we'd love to make Hoodownr into something you would enjoy.

Hoodownr does not need mobile data while you are on your run. We advise turning your phone to airplane mode while playing. We had a serious bug a while back that forced us to do just that on our test runs and it was very revealing to see various levels of panic when we had to be completely unaware about what Jeff Minter had tweeted about his sheep or some other crucial information people feed to twitter all the time. The message is to tune out at least for a while and lose your stress by doing so.

The game was designed to be unobtrusive, un-compulsive and free of spammy ads and malware. Protecting our players privacy is very important to us as we're dealing with your location data. If you so wish, you are completely anonymous to the other players around the area and your location won't be revealed to anybody unless you explicitly want that to happen. There is no opt-out scammy intelligence stuff built in the game and your personal data wont be sold to anybody ever.

The easiest gig to make Hoodownr viable and getting some kind of funding is to do exactly the opposite. We still feel very strongly about your privacy and want to see how the early access program works. We honestly appreciate you pitching in a few euros to play the game.

The state of our early access version is pretty good with basic gameplay. There will be bugs and unexpected things so as for every early access game, please understand that we are still working on this thing to ensure the best possible experience for everyone. With your early access code you will get access to the support forum to tell if you encountered a bug or have a feature request.

We're still in the process of thinking what features will be on the full version of Hoodownr when that happens. The project will evolve and we will discuss about it more frequently as there will be people actually playing and testing the game. We promise to look after you early access people even after the release.

The early access for single player is 12e, a six player combo pack to buy for you and your friends is 45e. The proceedings of the sales will go towards server bills, cat food and developing the best adventure game we can.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Yours,
Sami
Hoodownr