Interview: Diro-Diro on Cluster Lander

We're launching Cluster Lander in just a few short weeks, and getting pumped up about it with videos and now an interview with developers Mariano Larronde and Santiago Puente (they're starting a company called Diro-Diro). Check out details about Cluster Lander's development, inspiration and what's next for the guys.

So how was Cluster Lander born?
Cluster Lander is the first step of a very large project we've been planning for a few years. We've been studying and slowly building a game engine that will be the base for our next games.

Mariano and I got together about two years ago with the idea of making a spaceship combat game. At that time we were planning to use the little ships to create a website-game that let the users fly around the site and that way promote our advergames.

I remember that it took us about 8 hours just to get a missile-like spaceship moving around the screen. We didn't know anything about physics or vectors math so we soon realised that if we wanted to create the game that we were aiming for we had to study VERY hard (I didn't even know any programming language).

Six months later we had a very basic physics engine and many prototypes for ships. Of the many ships we tried, we decided to go with a Lander since it was the easier one to implement (our physics engine was too basic).

The first version can be seen at http://www.lebox.com.ar/. The game was much more fun than we expected so we decided to make it a full game. That's how Cluster Lander was born.

What kind of games influenced Cluster Lander's development?
Any 2D game that has a spaceship in it had some kind of inspiration on us. Gravitation - a net-yaroze game for PSOne - was awesome, Lunar lander and asteroid's type of ship movement of course, but also classic flash games like Monkey Lander and UFO-Joe.

One of the coolest features of Cluster Lander is the ability to save/share ghost runs - where did that come from?
The idea of the Ghosts comes from the need of giving the player more incentive to keep improving their flying skills. This game is all about ship control and there's not a better way to improve than to compare against previous runs. Many games use Ghost Replays for this kind of training but what's great about Flash is that players can share their replays extremely easily with just a few clicks.

Combat with intense bullet dodging also helps!

So what's next? 
We have lots of plans to improve the engine, especially the graphics and physics... and audio (yeah, we know, that's almost everything...). We are going to build this big project in parts. Each part is a game, and the first one is Cluster Lander.

What are Diro-Diro's recommended games?
We've been playing lots of indie games. Gratuitous Space Battles looks awesome. Fantastic Contraptions is one of the best for us.

All time best: Metal Gear Solid, Tenchu (the first one), StarFox, Poy Poy 2 (!!!), Mario 64, the first Gran Turismos, Forsaken.

Vector TD on PSP: It's Coming!

This is the PSP Mini game we've been hyping for the last few weeks -- popular Candystand tower defense game Vector TD is coming to the PSP! We currently have a build of the game running on a devkit PlayStation Portable in the office, and it's looking really sweet. We'll post more screens and video in the coming weeks before the game releases as a PSP Mini on the PlayStation Network (we're hoping to have it done by the holidays) -- stay tuned!

Preview: Clockwords Prelude on Candystand.com

Clear your schedules next week - Monday's new game release is going to be a gigantic timesink (we should know - less work got done at Candystand this week precisely because of this game). Clockwords: Prelude is coming to the site, and it's seriously addictive.

Clockwords is part typing game, part tower defense -- you'll need to type as many words as possible to defeat enemy spiders coming to steal your secrets (the story's a little bizarre, but we went with it). Using letters in the chamber will increase the damage you deal. After each level, you'll also have the chance to 'transmute' letters so they are worth more damage each time you use them. 

And like all new Candystand games, you'll be able to earn and show off a brand new gold/silver/bronzeTrophy for doing well. 

"I can just type any random word? This sounds easy."

That's what we thought too, until we realized that coming up with long words on the fly is far more difficult than it initially looks. At one point, six of us were gathered around a computer yelling words/themes out ("Types of Diseases!" "Dinosaurs!" "Members of the Village People!") -- quite a sight to behold. 

Check out the video below for a quick peek at the game before it launches on our site on Monday. 

Preview: Picma on Candystand

Our new game launching tomorrow: Picma! It's a classic puzzle game known by many other names (Picross, Paint by Numbers, Japanese Crosswords, etc) with a simple premise: complete the image in each grid by filling in the correct squares. The number of squares in each row/column is indicated on the side of the grid (it's like the answer to the puzzle is already there... except it's not actually that easy!). Check out the screens below to get a taste of the game.

   

We'll be launching Picma live on the site tomorrow morning, so make sure you check back and play! Like all of our new games, you'll be able to win tickets and a gold/silver/bronze trophy for playing, too. Here's what they new trophies look like: 

Video: Tennis Stars Cup - "Tennis Invaders" Challenge Mode

Tennis Stars Cup has launched! Check out the awesome 3D tennis game and try to win the new trophy!

Here's one last sneak peek at Tennis Stars Cup before the game launches on Candystand.com tomorrow! This is the "Tennis Invaders" Challenge mode, where your goal is to hit all of the targets before they reach the net -- by far the office's favorite mode in the game. Watch the video below to see the action, and make sure you check back to Candystand.com tomorrow to play the game!



Did you miss our Tennis Stars Cup preview yesterday?