A quick update for those who don’t follow my discord or devstreams.

If the public alpha has taught me anything, Little Hellions needs online play. Like ~ good online play. From it’s necessity during the height of the pandemic, to simply bringing players together, it couldn’t be clearer.

But such a change is a massive undertaking, and why I have been noncommittal up until now. In order to make it happen, a complete overhaul of architecture will have to occur ~ and until recently that simply wasn’t possible for a solo developer like myself. But possibilities are opening up. Currently, I’m exploring Platform Fighter Engine; a framework built for Game Maker, the engine Little Hellions already uses. PFE has built-in rollback netcode and a litany of quality of life features. It’s a promising avenue since I wouldn’t have to switch engines!

I am currently pursuing external funding in order to support this change, be it finding a publisher, applying for grants and so on. Normally devs don’t share this sort of information, there’s a lot of inside baseball to it, but I think transparency is important in this case as ~for the time being~ updates for the current version of Little Hellions will slow down as I pursue these avenues.

I apologize that Little Hellions continues to be a slow production, but I truly believe it in the best interest of the game in the long term. Couch multiplayer ~as much as I don’t want it to be~ isn’t really a thing anymore. Of course, all versions of the game going forward will still support it, but I want to make the game accessible to anyone who is willing to give a try, even if they don’t have friends close by to play it with.

Nonetheless, thank you for supporting Little Hellions and drop a comment if you have any questions!

Until next time, Bomb Pig loves you! ❤️

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STABBY STABBY STABBY!

Professor Onion here, from Torment Labs ~reporting division~ part of the Schadenfreude network.

Today we are proud to announce the reopening of Stabbyland, which was closed for a time after rides were found passing inspection. Although it’s rollout will be a step-by-step process ~as many things are in the Underworld~ we hope you enjoy the available attractions for the time being. Attraction. One attraction. You’ll love it.

I’m looking for a publisher! Namely to help implement highly requested features, ie online multiplayer. I’m not making any promises but that’s the intention. It’s a laborious and time consuming process however, so information will become available as things develop! Please bare in mind I must remain relatively straight lipped about it for ~ya know~ legal reasons and stuff.

As for the rest of the update, my primary focus was to make gameplay more readable with various visual cues to help convey what’s going. Please provide feedback if there are elements of the game that remain difficult to parse visually!

📝Patch notes

Content

– Stabbyland added!
– New stage, “Clowning Around”.
– Swinging iron maiden trap type added. Jump-on or throw to make it swing around.

Visuals

– Shape language! Object types share simple shape silhouettes. Players are circles, shielding players are diamonds, and eventually candies will also have a shape (once I settle on one). What’s going on should be more interpretable at a glance.
– Dreadnoodle environment overhaul! Tileset completely revised. Background animations and visual effects added. (This is very close to the final version, the only thing to be added is the rest of the band.)

UI

– Offscreen players are indicated.
– Opponent throw direction is indicated upon charging a throw.
– Visual error addressed where the wrong charge bar color would be displayed occasionally.

Alright, back to the lab again, Bombpig loves you! ~ ❤

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Professor Onion here! Reporting from Torment Labs ~ a division of the Schadenfreude network.

First update with new content for a bit (rather than quality of life fixes) I’m looking forward to making that the case going forward. The new stage, ‘Just Pull For it’, is all about grabbing grapple points to move the trap around the level. I think it turned out pretty good! Lemme know what you think.

📝Patch notes

Onboarding

– I’m in the game! I give a quick primer for new players after character selection.
– Starting the Hellevator requires using it’s grapple-point. No more jumping in by mistake.

Stages

– New stage, Just Pull For It!
– Get To The Chopper removed (it was retooled into Edge Lords in the previous update).
– Pressing Affairs renamed to Locomotion. Narrow & Marrow renamed to Pressing Affairs.
– Geometry adjusted in Pressing Affairs.
– Platforms added to Hot & Bothered.
– Bone Yard stages sorted by difficulty.

Items

– The Wrecking Ball is now the Iron Maiden, look at this goober.
– Iron maidens rebound off the edge of the screen rather than wrapping.
– Item drop chances adjusted.

Visuals

– Trick-hooks are shown as long as they’re active. You’ll be able to turn this off in the options in a future update.

That’s it this time, Bomb Pig loves you! ~ ❤

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Professor Onion here. Gonna be brief with this one, I gotta eat BABY.

Your quality of life is going up! Check the patch notes below to see how. Additionally, there is an updated version of the demo, give it a try if you wanna give the game a spin (dunno why you’re reading this if that’s the case but hey I see you).

📝Patch notes

Input

– Keyboard + mouse support added!
– Pretty much all controller types supported.
– Completely revised control remapper.

Quality of life

– Players may drop out during character select.

Stages

– Removed ‘The Pit’ cuz it sucked, added ‘Edge Lords’.
– Schadenfreude stages reordered.

Visuals

– Players numbers are always displayed for increased readability.
– Adding post processing effects for lava & water. Not all of it is in there yet.
– Flippers are a little juicier to interact with.

Bugs

– Removed some crashes, don’t worry about it.

That’s it this time, Bomb Pig loves you! ~ ❤

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Patch notes

Features

– Added an in-game version of the LAB REPORT. Viewable on the hellevator.
– Improved PS4 & PS5 controller support. Please report any issues you find with older controllers.
– Improved usability of controller remapper.

Interface

– Simplified main menu tooltips.
– Updated hellevator interface elements.

Bugs

– Removed a crash triggered by power throwing a grapple point.

That’s it this time, Bomb Pig loves you! ~ ❤

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Hi everyone, Professor Onion reporting.

Little Hellions has finally launched in Early Access, ain’t that a thing. While it’s been a long road since development started in 2015, there’s still much to do before the game reaches 1.0. Bombpig and I will certainly be busy over the coming months so I’d like to outline what you may expect going forward.

Content & update schedule

Little Hellions will receive updates early each month up to 1.0. Patch notes or “Lab Reports” will publish here with content highlights, as well as gestures toward what may be in the next patch. Hotfixes may push early for particularly egregious bugs, but for the most part bug fixes will be rolled into the monthly updates.

Coming up

In-game Lab Reports

Lab Reports will be accessible in-game so you don’t even need to leave the Hellevator to hear what’s new. They’ll also include cute little anecdotes among other things.

More levels

Currently the level list for the Bone Yard (world 2) and Dread Noodle (world 4) are incomplete. I’d like to finish these up before tackling Stabbyland (world 3), which is currently not in the game. Were world 2 and 4 completed, the game would have 18 arenas as of the next update

That’s all for now everyone, Bombpig loves you! ~ ❤

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A new trailer has been released as part of 2022’s Gamedevs of Color Expo Direct.

The post Little Hellions coming to Steam early access October 31st, 2022 appeared first on DIEMART.

I’ve been hard at work for the past 7 years (!) trying to bring the Underworld to life in your curious realm via a video game for video game machines called Little Hellions. Frankly, I’m kinda done with it 😅. That’s why I’ve made it my business to start streaming my work every Monday and Friday (4:00 – 8:00 MST) until the game is finished, so I can finally move on to the next thing. I hope you’ll join Bomb Pig and I on this adventure of torment scientific self discovery!

For post stream watchers out there, VODs will be archived on Schadenfreude’s YouYube channel.

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The Six-66 received an ember award from Digital Alberta, a not-for-profit promoting digital talent across the province. The category was “Emerging Sector”, which is basically for things that ~uh~ don’t fit into other categories. So I guess that’s on brand right?

We’re honored to be recognized alongside such big projects. Thanks DA!

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If you’ve seen the trailer for Little Hellions or have caught us demoing the game at various events, you may have seen this cute little box.

It’s called the Six-66, it’s our custom DIY fantasy console. It’s fully functional and runs our games. It supports advanced technologies like cartridges and wired controllers. It’s one of a kind (and not available for sale). It’s basically Schadenfreude’s mascot.

But … why though? It’s kind of confusing. I can’t buy this thing but the game runs on it?

What?

It’s ok, you’re fine. It’s really not a big deal. You’ll be able to play Little Hellions in the places where games go. But we did this for fun and to see if we could!

Early in development, before we had nailed down our release platform (more on that when it comes), we had difficulty demoing the game in a convenient way. You have to haul around a lot of equipment in order to show a game. It’s a lot. We also didn’t want to give the impression that we were making a PC game. After all, we’d like the game to be available on PC eventually, but it’s not our target for release. So Devon from Violet Games (Little Hellion’s publisher) came up with the idea. “If we can’t say what platform we’re on, why not make one ourselves?”

The shell

I’m not particularly savvy with hardware, so I largely focused on the design myself. I wanted something cute and tangentially demonic, kind of encapsulating Schadenfreude were it a real world object ~ with retro sensibilities considering the couch friendly design of our first title. So I began by looking for inspiration – and I found it in the Famicube by Android Arts. It’s a concept for a fantasy console in itself, one exhaustively designed and documented by Arne Niklas Jansson, the person behind Android Arts.

(Their work is exceptional ~ give it a look!)

But I quickly found my concepts much too derivative of Niklas’ work, so I decided to get in contact with him.  After briefly running the idea by him, he was kind enough to give me some feedback and an ‘ok’ on the concept.

I hadn’t really been exposed to the Famicom before seeing Niklas’ work, so I was quite taken by the toy like profile of the cartridges. Knowing all the games I’d like to make after Little Hellions, I decided to include a cartridge slot to sort of future proof the design for showing new games when the time comes.

It was around then that I began discussing production options with a buddy of mine, Arthur Hobden, who is a 3D printing specialist. Over a couple months, we went back and forth as he modeled the console’s shell for us, specifically designing it in printer friendly component pieces. Through this process we unintentionally arrived at several design motifs that would loop back into Schadenfreude as a brand, including the “sawtooth” motif and the use of primarily black and white.

PolyJet printing and painting was done through proto3000. There was a limit to the print quality we could achieve with our budget, but overall, 3D printing was the best solution for our purposes. In retrospect, we probably went a little overboard with just how many parts compose the console ~ it will for sure explode if we’re ever unfortunate enough to drop it.

Internals

While I worked on the design with Arthur, Devon figured out what it’s guts would look like. Fitting everything within the shell’s silhouette proved to be a challenge, so we settled on using a board not too dissimilar to a Raspberry Pi. The exact internals are as follows:

⬥ Lattepanda Alpha 860 w/ Windows Pro (newer models available)
⬥ Aukey 4-port USB3.0 Hub
⬥ USB 90° right-angle (low profile)
⬥ Tactile Button
⬥ LED’s

For the complete list of materials, check out Violet Games’ take on the project.

Construction

As for putting the whole thing together, it took the better part of a day. I’d explain how it went, but you can just watch the whole process below!

And that’s it! The Six-66 is an ongoing project that will evolve alongside Schadenfreude. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that we learned a lot while building this first version. We hope that, through gestures like this, we can show that indies shouldn’t feel creatively constrained by their limited resources.

Till next time, keep make’n stuff and eat some pizza or something.

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Congratulations to all the devs who participated ~ making games is hard ~ and thanks to everyone who came out to support us!

The post Design & game showcase appeared first on DIEMART.

Little Hellions is a competitive four player arena battler with a twist ~ players can’t attack. Instead players can “hex” one another, that is, trade places instantly. With enough spatial awareness and sharp timing, players can evade deadly traps while swapping opponents to their doom. The last one alive is the victor!

Trailer below.

Little Hellions is our first commercial project and has been in development since 2015. It’ll be available ~ when it’s ready. If you want to keep up, you’re already in the right place. Stay tuned for further development news as it comes. 🖤

For our presskit, look no further.

The post Hello Underworld appeared first on DIEMART.

I have a creeping suspicion that being a person on planet Earth will always feel like the end of days?🙃

It’s easy to imagine the simplified, abridged version of the past as somewhere easier to be. Without the compromises, the dirty details, the moment to moment struggles – “then” can seem a lot more appealing than it really should be. But the fact of it is being a person has and will always be hard. There will always be struggles, regrets – things left unresolved. People determined to hurt others whether it’s because of hate, ignorance, or more than likely ~ both. History never “ends” and we don’t “know better” just because we’re on the present’s precarious edge. We’ll continue to make mistakes and hurt each other.

In short, video games can seem kinda irrelevant in 2019?

While, again, I won’t gesture towards saying we know better ~ I think it’s safe to say at this point that games certainly won’t save us. Yes, games can say and do so much. They can truly touch another person’s heart and be there for them in difficult times. As Matt Lees put it much better than I “Games are places where disenfranchised people live”.

But even so (as he also pointed out), at least for now the reach of games is limited by who games are made for. Who has access to technology, or the novelty to even afford it? Who is “intended” to be holding a controller, or can even comfortably use one? Regardless of the highs many of us have experienced with games, the uniqueness of the medium is also what bars it from reaching the people who can truly benefit from it.

All of this makes dedicating oneself to developing games ~ difficult to navigate ~ to say the least. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a room full of indies, I was the most pessimistic about games as a whole, or at least the culture surrounding it.

And yeah ~ I get it, a game studio certainly doesn’t make a great first impression with the words “video games might not be all that great”.

But nothing can grow without a little self reflection, and games’ capacity for good can only be broadened when both the people playing and making them become willing to examine their limitations and blunders. Games criticism is by no means a new thing. But a generation who’s grown up with it and games, navigating tumultuous times full of existential threats? That’s new. And maybe good? Probably?

~ Maybe? ¯\(ツ)/¯

While I don’t have any illusions that Schadenfreude will further carve the path towards gaming as a vehicle for social good, it’s easy to compel oneself to find the virtue in one’s work, especially in a creative endeavor. As much as I would like to turn this around and say “but games are good! Schadenfreude will do good!”, those aren’t really my words to say are they? What I can say is that I want to try to make cool things about loving yourself and others. Fun and silly things that, hopefully, help people feel proud of who they are. But the success of that is not mine to judge. I must be pragmatic ~ my games and art may very well not change much of anything. I could even make things worse if I’m not careful. But I wanna try. I wanna help. I want to put smiles on people’s faces and help others find acceptance and self validation. And I, myself, want to learn.

So yeah, this is a video game company. Yes, it needs to make money in order to exist. Capitalism is still here. But we’re also a platform by the nature of our existence and by the fact that we have a developing audience. We don’t want to take that for granted. If people can make room for another indie game company, then the least we can do is make it some sort of force for good and self reflection, despite the limitations.

So ye humble gamer, if you’d have us, we’re Schadenfreude and we wanna be good to you. Maybe make a joke or two while we’re at it. It’s up to you to decide if we succeed in the end.

~ Jace

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