itch.io

Those are such nice things to say about it! Thank you.

We’ve just started our first update. We won’t spend any longer than a month maximum on this one hopefully. We’ll keep the brutal difficulty but we’ll be fairer in terms of giving the information to the player about what they’re able to do in the game and the tools that they have available. Will help them to remember and remind them as well.

Thanks so much again for including the variety content on your channel. You say you’re not the most patient. If you say so. We’d say you did well getting that far, especially beyond the first level. The first level is definitely designed the weed out those who don’t have the tolerance for the long term.

Note to players: alt-tab to see if another KMM window’s open if you get the same sound issues.

As said above, devs know what they’re getting into when they make a game and most often don’t expect revenue from it. But yeah, we’d be happy with people playing and sharing them. Good to rate, give reviews and spread the word.

But actually, if you do want to put a little more in, perhaps according to cynical metrics, post on Reddit about games you like. Badger YouTubers, commenting on games they should play. Sometimes it’s taken by them in a different way than a developer asking a YouTuber if they’re interested in playing their game. YouTubers may often be doing it for the views and won’t play a game unless there is demand for it. And smaller devs get more exposure if those YouTuber’s audience grows as well, so supporting them is supporting devs slightly.(YouTuber/streamer letsplays, video essayists, top ten lists.) like and reply to comments you see praising games you like and amplify them. It’s derisory but it all contributes to a little wind in the sails on the digital profile etc.

Hey, thanks.

Yeah it was totally my conjecture there. In discussions above on this post, it could be more likely that the overall messiness and abrasiveness of the layout may be more to do with the correlation of change in DL rates.

XD

Hey, cheers again.

We’ve got some better directions to go in now. Most of them subtle as you suggest. There’s still a selfish part of me that wants to convey the huge cast of characters and elaborate lore(though obviously, we expect the smallest minority of people would often gaf) and I could switch to more actual game imagary to do that. But the problem would still remain that in order to showcase that wide variety and amount, images would still be quite small and overloading. How to convey a large volume of diverse components without being affrontive?

As posted elsewhere on here, I’ll try something out with that. And if things don’t work well like that, we’ll slowly retract backwards to simplicity.

tyvm🙏

Hey, thank you so much for taking the time to go through all of that. That’s really appreciated.

I think I’ll take your static(from the website) suggestion to heart and if not that, can always revert to the block coloured background from before. Same with the change to title text. I won’t make changes immediately. Plus, I think I need to ensure gifs are working on the page. So far they seem to be inconsistent for me. Will look through that properly when I have some more time.

Selfishly, I still do want to try to get the feature of a labyrinthine story that is told through a huge cast of characters over to the viewer of the page through the imagary on it. And I may give that a quick attempt too. But Through that, I suppose I should choose images specifically from gameplay as you say.

Funny you say about things being hidden at the bottom of the page. Unless it’s a genre that I know that I won’t try, I usually scroll down to the bottom of pages to see comments around that area. Ah we’re all so different XD

There’s another hypothetical way, which I won’t do. We probably wouldn’t be doing much with this game at all anymore if Cruelty Squad hadn’t set precedent that something so traditionally unnappealing in so many areas could have so much traction. I wonder how they got out there from the start. Is part of it because the abrasiveness of their game was unmistakable from the outside? All of that is to say, go completely the other way in terms of subtlety for our page and make it as obnoxiously overloading, abstract and confusing as possible so it’s unmistakable what’s inside. But nah lol. Would probably require a lot of gifs too lol

ey cheers

😂😂😂

Hey thanks for the feedback Huges Ross!

Yes it was the Cello person. Come to think of it, the person blowing a kiss kind of pose is also in that territory in a different way.

Ahh I see. So you’re saying I should draw her with LESS clothes and more revealed attributes. K nice. gotcha. : P K, maybe I’m making that joke that’s too reliant on inside information again there as you say.. Yeah I suppose one would only know after they played the game I suppose. But that brings up an interesting follow up question. Were you so confused as to why it was there that it prompted you to download and find out? I guess not. Has that ever happened to you? where you’ve been like wtf is this I’ve got to dive in more to see…

I mean, you can go to Itch’s browse tab and search top rated / top sellers if that’s your success metric.

Happily, I’d say there’s a diversity of genres and areas of focus there.

Cynically, if I were to appeal to the lowest common denominator, we’ve got a range of choices there:

Romantic sims, something friendily/charmingly horny, hot/cute anime guys/gals, short-form easy-to-play easy-to-understand simple-control browser shooters with fast restart rates, cute cartoon/animal/undead characters/settings, first person short horror (liminal space or monster jumpscares), emotional non-voice acted(so streamers can read the text with their own flavour) pixel art short adventure games that seem emotionally profound but aren’t that really, naratives that focus on depression and break ups in the rain, something that seems politically and philosophically profound but isn’t really, deckbuilding roguelikes, a short game that’s based around a funny easy to understand concept like a king on a throne that has to stop shitting himself or something. LOL I mean I sound like I’m bitterly judging these but I’ve played/watched all of them and they’re all great! lol Off for some more : D

I mean obviously ‘should’ and ‘must’ only apply when talking about the best way to make as widely appealing a product as you can. Beyond that, you can do anything.

But yeah, either or. For example, we made Robotron, which pretty much has no story because it doesn’t really need it. While Killing Machine Movement is hugely about story - to the point where we’re parodying how important story is.

Personally, I’ll skim or even skip most notes or journals on a first playthrough. If I like the game enough to play it again. Perhaps the third time, I’ll actually read the notes with conviction. This was the case for me with Deus ex. When I did get around to reading everything in Deus ex, I did enjoy it. Extra character and lore and aha moments and those Chesterton exerpts were great. So dramatic. Funnily enough we also take the piss with this in KMM by putting in 400 page books for the player to find and giant 50 page lore dumps/fan fictions.

Dialgoue on the other hand is a different thing. I love dialogue. If there’s no voice acting though I may get impatient with it if it isn’t great.

If story is part of the game, I always have time for it.

I think environmental storytelling is brilliant and generally preferable to texts for sure. But I’m not one to shun dialogue or cutscenes. I don’t always necessarily agree with less is more or show don’t tell. Stylistically, the opposite can have its place and be pretty refreshing. But environmental storytelling is indeed admirable and something that should be pursued whenever attainable. Look for opportunities to do it. But don’t take for granted, this indoctrination to saying more with less is a result of industries trying to get their products to as wide an audience as possible. And if the largest audience possible must accommodate people with low patience and low tolerance, then you must tailor your product accordingly. That’s not to mention products are sold wider internationally. If you can connect with people’s emotions without words and thus circumvent the barrier of language, that’s more accessible and cheaper.

Are there games where the narrative really elevated the experience for you? Yes.

(btw multiple people use this account. I’m just one of them. Kador isn’t just one wanker)

Niiiice

Hey, thanks for the feedback.

Not that it’s a story you signed up to care about, but what do you think of the thought method behind it and the choices going forward?

So, multiple people use this account, so I’ll be speaking for myself only here. And I - the person typing - also take responsibility for this background change since I wanted to try out this direction.

We’ve had players play the game, but for some, the game did not turn out to be what the players were expecting from first glance; that the game would be a relaxing flow state simple uncomplicated flash shooter (that’s more our other game Robotron). So some were disappointed. We never intended our game to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. We were always aiming to connect with the niches who would - and so far have - connected with some of the game’s more anarchic aspects. So having had some player interaction under our belt, we wanted to break from attracting players who wouldn’t really like the game to its fullest extent and try to attract the players who would. Part of that was trying to represent aspects of what the game would be like at its essence. Part of that is showing that much of the game will be ugly, busy, noisy, rough and at other times elegent. But positively, also rich, punk, anarchic, layered, deep, a DC universe worth of characters and character, etc. Again, we’re under no illusion that the majority of people will be into that, but based on the precedents we’ve seen set by kindred games elsewhere - as well as the feedback we’ve already received from those who did enjoy our game - we can see that those niches are out there and do connect with the game. Getting out to them is the hardest problem.

In your opinion, do you think we should continue to be honest and showcase the sincerity of the messiness of the game at the risk of losing those won’t like it and those who might potentially like it if they unknowingly tried it, or should we not take for granted the privilege of having anyone play our game - regardless of whether they like it or not - and remove the background and go back to getting the trojan horse past the gates as it were?

Thanks again. Cheers for reading even if you’re not up for answering.

Hey,

I recently changed the background of our itch page ( https://kadormazing.itch.io/movement ) to include some of the concept art we made during early production.

I thought, ‘hmmm should I include the early character design for Keliss that I had drawn when I was 18?’ I thought I’d cynically throw it in to kind of jokingly reference how; though the sensible among us clearly can compartmentalise that real people are not sexual objects and should not be treated as such, sexual objects are engaging to many and will hilariously draw attention from eyeballs. I did this at the risk of offending those who either will not get the cheeky wink or those who would get it but react strongly in their stance that jokingly being objectifying is still being damagingly objectifying.

Maybe it’s just the Christmas timing with all the new anticipated releases and busy life schedules. But since uploading the new background, the views have remained at a similar level but the downloads have decreased compared to the previous average. I wonder if this particular concept art picture has had anything to do with it.

But regardless, what’s your opinion on it?

Hey, thank you do much. The RBT controls should be easy enough, will probably go and do that next. WASD - move, arrow keys - shoot XD

Yeah, just got into using collapsing text on the last KMM page edit. Yeah, why not do that all places we can actually?

But whoah, that’s a good idea I didn’t consider; controls and diagrams in GIFs. Was thinking of embedded short format YouTube videos before, but then realised was unable to do that on Itch pages as far as I could find. Tbh, tried a gif too and for some reason, the one on there already doesn’t work. So, gotta figure out what I’m doing wrong on that. But in general, GIF demonstrations is a really good idea.

I’ve really got to have a think about it. We’ve seen so many over the course of the time on here but I KNOW for sure they’ve been some I’ve been like ‘ahhhh’.

Actually tried getting feedback on ours a while ago. https://itch.io/t/5535009/feedback-on-game-homepages Ended up changing the Movement one anyway. Let us know on the page if you do have suggestions. : )

Effects, transitions, attitude all incredibly good!

Whoah! Just realised you’ve broken into the 20s! That’s so impressive. Welcome to the big leagues. B ) We need to think of a prize to give you for your next milestone. Aside from the skills that got you here, you’ve probably guessed that the next milestone will also be dependent on a lot of RNG lol. Wonder how you’ve done on the other modes…

Thanks so much for letting us know! Tbh, we’re so surprised that it ran effectively at all on those OS. For the next game in production and onwards, we’ll definitely consider more universalisable compatibility with other OS. One of us is wondering how much of that input lag was down to the intended effect of a certain leaf enemy catching you in their smoke. :p

https://kadormazing.itch.io/robotron

Robotron. Free arcade style punishing wave shooter

https://kadormazing.itch.io/movement

Killing Machine Movement. Long parody game.

Both are free, so will go for the free options

Nice. Someone likes Killer7 eh..

Thank you! Argh those tough tutorials! And yes, players! The most important key you need to remember is 1 or [ for health!

Thanks for taking part in the Movement experience! : D

Hugely appreciated. You had me laughing too lol. Yeah the confusion is part of the experience. Little bits come together slowly. Thanks for showcasing all the way up to 5. I've said it before, that Grenade Tutorial is our least favourite level in the game. We'll change that sooner than later. Yeah, man if you did have fun with it, the action does pick up. Though watch out. Canyon is a 2 part level. And the second part is one of us developers' 2nd least favourite level lol. Thanks so much again for all that time you put into it and for giving it a proper look. Now onto Robotron! lol : p

I'll be back when I've run properly but love the screenshots. lol even the windows desktop background plus gate one XD

so good! Soooo GOOD! TBH, so impressive how far you were able to go without tutorials (kinda glad you skipped them since they're very imperfect). No idea how you stumbled upon [ for health refill and ] for mana. Your feelings on the playthrough would've probably felt a lot different if you couldn't do that. Was hoping you'd stumble upon shift for menu and then you can rebind most of the keys (hover over an icon and hit the key you want) and do most stuff really. Also nice you chose which dialogue option you wanted with Karnage Man with the mouse. Some people don't know that you can do that. But that's our fault.

Thanks for making it to village. It's really helpful to see where we need to make things clearer for the player. Honestly did not anticipate that the optional computer would mislead people from the main objective. We've already solutions in mind for so much of this if demand ever grows enough for a patch fix update.

You got it though and the tone. "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!" So good! We've got some explanation from one of the devs about the ott amount to take in, but warning, it's reeeeaaaaaalllly wanky and pretentious.

Thanks so much again for playing! Really enjoyed it. And you did seriously well despite encountering its flaws. MORE! MORE! MORE! Level 5! Level 5! Level 5!

Ooh and for this thread, we made ROBOTRON too.

https://kadormazing.itch.io/robotron

FREE easy to understand top down shooter wave survivor with an alternate story mode as well.

Yaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwn. Oh no, look at that, I spilled breakfast and a link all over my post by accident. : (

I'm trying to find the ones I played when I was searching for free games for the first time. Have only found this. https://writingmysoul.itch.io/fragments-of-the-past

You notice what works and what doesn't as you play. I was thinking as I was playing how certain soundtracks and even just still location images could enchance mood etc. 

There was this other game I played (that I couldn't find) where I remember that it felt palpably frustrating not knowing whether the options you picked really had any effect at all. It really felt that you were just replying at every occasional prompt to fulfil the requirements of an interactive game but the story was going along on its preordained path regardless. Reminds me of that choice at the start of  Wolf Among Uswhere every option you pick leads to you tackling someone out the window. Like that Prozd sketch too.

Yeah exactly, I mean technologically, they're no longer at the height of performance capacity. You've got zoomy wooshy flash cound now wow! And text is probably one of the oldest technologies. But what should we infer that you want to go forward with after getting answers to this question? Will it appeal to a mass audience? IMO likely not, but there are 8 Billion people on the earth. Chances are somebody will like it if it can get to them. Depends on what your definition of success is to you. Will you be happy with your piece just connecting with the niche who would appreciate it?

Funny, as far as text goes, it still has some superiorities over other mediums despite its age.

Wish it would go on longer : (

Nah it probably is the right length. Especially due to how many times you give it a go.

Video game sounds tracks are so great these days. I hear Kavinsky influences obviously (grrr what Drive did to games XD) but also Peaking Lights and Washed Out : )

Clicking on the analytics page, apparently we get a lot of traffic from this post, so I'll bump it one last time.

In all seriousness though, am interested to see how far players got in the game. : D

Hey, just posted about your channel too! https://itch.io/t/5560170/subscribe-and-submit-your-itch-games-to-arlucgames-you...

That's really cool you put it that way. Kind of the niche demographic we'd welcome actually lol, those willing to endure past the modern standard first impression to get to the depth. And those who'd want a 2D Deus Ex XD. And those who wanna cheap laugh : p. Yeah, I'm really interested to hear what the furthest level people get to is.

I'll keep up to date with the channel. I really like the commentary/interview concept. It was really fun to be on the episode, I had a great time. Thanks again 🙏🙏🙏. Here's to a top 50 compilation video eventually.

You still going? Your last post was four years ago..

So,  ArlucGames recently streamed one of our games on his channel. He has a series where he makes an RPG where you can be an NPC.

But more interestingly, in my opinion, he has a series where he streams an average of half an hour of gameplay of underrated Itch games. And I think he may aim to stream exclusively Itch games - as in games that are on Itch but not on Steam, though I could be wrong there.

A cool thing that he does for the episodes though is that you can join his discord and arrange a voice call for the stream so that you can co-commentate on your game. It's a really good social feature. If you don't want to speak, you can type and lurk in the Twitch chat to add your details.

He's always looking for good Itch games, but as he says, it's hard to find them often. So, submit your best games to him and see in real time how well someone plays them.

Here are some episodes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOA_JbdT9v0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TackbG0Cys

More fancy things! More fancy 3D things! Am hype. Works really nice as it is for now. Was a nice surprise to get there and see it out of nowhere. Only one of us has any - and minor - experience with 3D and it's not immediately on the cards for potential next projects. Wonder what direction you'll go in playing around with it.

no worries Re Robotron. Just mentioning it case ya didn't know ; ) Saw some boss fights from Nighreign the other night actually.

So, we're going to paste the whole saving location thing from the troubleshooting FAQ on the official Movement website onto the Movement Itch page next. Totally took that for granted, was an oversight. Tbh, regardless of having a player base/audience or not, am getting more and more inclined to do a fix version later on. Solutions keep accumulating. Thanks for bringing that issue up. It's a huge one.

This is nuts! How does it feel? That is legitmately realllly good. It actually took me quite a while to move beyond 18 and 19 into the 20s. But once I was able to, I was then more or less able to get to the 20s consistently. And then at that point, you are pro. That's crazy.

Ayup, are thinking of putting up some hotkey tutorial shorts in the near future and while at it, were thinking of perhaps rewriting some of the game home description pages on Itch. I was leaning towards describing less of the gameplay mechanics and more of the 'experience' of the game, which is probably as pretentious as it sounds.

However, was just wondering what some people's impressions of the pages are/what their preferences of what they like to see on a page in general are. What impressions does it leave about the games etc.?

Am aware that I'll be getting the opionins of mostly devs here, so not sure how much insight it will be into the preferences of a player or streamer. But ey,

https://kadormazing.itch.io/robotron

https://kadormazing.itch.io/movement (Just requesting feedback on the description page, not the game itself)

You're asking questions all over the shop innit.

lol Funny how the answers to this question are the opposite to a a similar post made less than two weeks ago.

!!!🙏<3🙏<3🙏

The later part of your playing there was on point! Thanks for the video. I think you could get to stage 14 and beat Jim Zark.

I'm a sucker for tower defense games. Every year or so, I get the hunger to play one when I want to feel kind of brain dead. Usually on my phone though. But yeah, I've recently grown kind of addicted to this one. One of the reasons is that every death in the game is a lesson. So when you die, you're like 'OhhhI died because I made this mistake. So next time I must XYZ.' So, by your fifth playthrough you've acquired all these lessons under your belt.

Also the recent addition of the pause button between waves makes the game significantly easier.

BlueEagle421 is really good. I also recommend 'Level 9 access' also made by them. It's like Killing Machine Movement if it were condensed into a browser game with a splash of Hotline Miami.