Vlambeer: Bringing back arcade since 1741
March 13, 2013 8:52 AM   Subscribe

GUN GODZ is a fast-paced, lo-fi FPS that serves as a reminder of the difference between modern duck-and-cover and DOOM-era FPSs. Its quality is unexpected for a game that was created as an extra treat for supporters of a Kickstarter, and a testament to its iterative design. It is the brainchild of Vlambeer, a 2-person studio that releases games with old-school sensibilities.

Their design chops are evident in Serious Sam: the Random Encounter (alt), a reimagining of Serious Sam as a jrpg with an interesting battle mechanic.

Vlambeer have also created various free games: Luftrauser (video) is an arcade-y dogfight simulator. Super Crate Box (Win/OS X) (video) is a jump 'n gun game, and Yeti Hunter is one bizarre little game.

Due to the limited availability of GUN GODZ, there is not much about it on the internet, but here's someone speedrunning the stage where Josh Mattingly gets stuck in the first link.

Bonus content: Vlambeer interview.
posted by ersatz (18 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
If you'd like to play Gun Godz, you can get it by subscribing to Venus Patrol, a website about indie stuff and things.

Also relevant to Vlambeer: tomorrow, its new iOS game Ridiculous Fishing will be released! I'll refrain from the self-links on the subject I really want to put in here, so here's the official site instead. Ridiculous Fishing is based on Vlambeer's browser game Radical Fishing, which you can play right here.
posted by jcfletcher at 9:33 AM on March 13, 2013 [4 favorites]


Ah ... the old days of pure FPS, before Call Of Dudebro and similar progressions between set-pieces took over ...
posted by GallonOfAlan at 9:33 AM on March 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


Man, I love Vlambeer. Super Crate Box and Luftrauser have helped while away many an unoccupied hour. I expect Luftrausers, too, to lure me from my word processor.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:49 AM on March 13, 2013


I'll refrain from the self-links on the subject I really want to put in here.

Feel free! Self-links are fine in comments.
posted by ersatz at 10:00 AM on March 13, 2013


These guys also created Wasteland Kings (video here) from scratch in three days. It's a great little game. I wish it was available to download outside of the Humble Bundle Mojam thing, which has already ended.
posted by whitecedar at 10:02 AM on March 13, 2013


The weird thing about Super Crate Box: Its difficulty doesn't increase in a conventional way. The monsters spawn at the same rate until you die. They move at the same speed throughout the game. The difficulty instead soars and plummets depending on which weapon you have and where the next crate appears. If you have a minigun and the next crate is at the bottom of the screen, you're fine. If you have the twin pistols and the next crate is at the top of the screen, though ...
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:08 AM on March 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


Ah ... the old days of pure FPS, before Call Of Dudebro and similar progressions between set-pieces took over ...

I still hold that the original COD multiplayer is one of the best fps mp experiences I've ever had. It had a good mod community and excellent map makers. The united offensive expansion added vehicles and tanks which only made it better.

But yeah I gave up on the COD franchise after COD II.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 10:45 AM on March 13, 2013


Pavlov's House 4 lyfe
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:05 AM on March 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


These guys are also behind Byrdr which is a hilarious visionary bit of viral marketing share-enabling.
posted by arsey at 11:42 AM on March 13, 2013


Okay, here are those self-links I'm now about to SHAMELESSLY SELF-LINK (self-link warning). First, an hourlong podcast conversation between me and Vlambeer. I ended up doing this instead of cutting it up into an interview article because it was 100% interesting.

And here's a story about Ridiculous Fishing's cloning "thing," with quotes from both Vlambeer and Gamenauts.
posted by jcfletcher at 12:24 PM on March 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


This looks like a lot of fun. Our group's go-to for LAN FPS play is Nexuiz Classic. Feels like just the right balance between HLDM and UT2K3.
posted by xedrik at 12:33 PM on March 13, 2013


Super Crate Box is brutal, but oh so fun. I need to give it another go, especially since there's an iOS version.
I've been playing Borderlands and finished RAGE, where cover is optional, and I like the idea of more old school FPSes. Cover was great in Gears of War because the game was designed around the cover system, but not every game needs it.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 2:22 PM on March 13, 2013


I should also mention: if you have a PS Vita or an Android phone with buttons, the PlayStation Mobile version of Super Crate Box is wonderful.
posted by jcfletcher at 2:29 PM on March 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


Oh you cruel cruel bastard. In the middle of midterm week!
posted by azarbayejani at 4:44 PM on March 13, 2013


The first video link is strange, since he kept talking about DOOM and other "retro games" without explicitly mentioning Wolfenstein 3D. I mean... this is basically a Wolf3d tribute, right?
posted by spiderskull at 5:56 PM on March 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


Apparently Ridiculous Fishing is amazing. I might pick it up.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 10:46 PM on March 13, 2013


Totally a Wolfenstein 3D tribute, with the 90 degree angles and fixed-height ceilings. Of course Wolf 3D's roots lie in Catacomb 3-D but I didn't play that until long after firing up Wolfstein on my 286/12.

Then there was Ken's Labyrinth. You can still download Q/QuickBASIC source code for a simple Wolfenstein-style ray tracing system from his page.
posted by lordaych at 12:23 AM on March 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


If I recall, that first-generation wave of FPS games used the fixed-ceiling-height and simple 90 degree angles to essentially optimize their algorithms as much as possible to run on the hardware of the era. That sounds cooler than "they had to make it all cheesy so it would run" but it's important to know that they were really ahead of their time and had to make cutbacks to actually produce a game.

I mentioned my 286/12, but if I recall correctly, the next-generation FPS (Doom) sucked on anything less than a 486/25, which was 2 generations removed from my 286. I'm pretty sure I couldn't play Doom on my hand-me-down 386/16, possibly due to the fact that it was an "SX" which in the 386 generation meant "no math co-processor."
posted by lordaych at 12:26 AM on March 14, 2013


« Older Not imminent, but likely   |   When NASCAR takes over the Olympics Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments