Ludometrics, the Glasgow-based studio behind titles including Bips, Pet Store Panic and Matching Set, has released its latest title – Gridlock – for the controversial OUYA console.
Gridlock is an arena-based shoot-em-up in which the player takes charge of four (4) turrets. The goal of the game is to vaporise and pulverise a series of abstract geometric shapes. Why, we are not sure. We assume they are evil abstract geometric shapes. Perhaps they are too pointy, or hate kittens, or freedom.
Whatever the reason, you as the player must pump round-upon-round of glowing plasma ammunition into their abstract, geometric, freedom-hating, kitten spurning polygonal bodies, to stop them touching – and destroying – your pro-kitten, pro-freedom, svelte, rounded turrets.
Once all of your turrets are destroyed, it’s game over, Man. GAME OVER!
You also get to insult the revolting polygonal invaders, in what we’re reliably told is ‘Scottish’. Which ticks a very large cultural box.
Ludometrics has taken advantage of the Ouya’s free-to-play attitude to allow players to enjoy the game for up to 60 freedom-defending, kitten-nurturing seconds at a time. Given the game’s difficulty curve, this may not be as simple as it initially appears.
Feline/liberty/shooting enthusiasts (or opponents of lethally spikey polygonal foe) can then at that point, purchase the entire game, making it free for ever more, for the indecently reasonable price of $1.99.
Ludometric’s Chief Person, David Thomson, has gone on the record, explaining why the company has created a game which is exclusive to the Ouya for the time being…
We made Gridlock for three main reasons:
- It’s an idea that had been bouncing around in my head for a long time, and I wanted to play it.
- We wanted to try out Unity as a tool.
- We wanted to practice making a game that needed a controller (or at least one that felt better with a controller).
Given OUYA and Unity seemed to play well together, it felt like a good combo to try out. The scope of the game is deliberately constrained – job one was to ship something, after all – so we threw out discrete waves pretty early on and made the game continuous. There’s no power up system and no online leaderboards. The waves of abstract shapes intent on smashing your turrets are always the same. Making a single player game felt like a good complement to games like TowerFall and the newly-released Gentlemen!, which are designed as multiplayer experiences – something for people to do in between sessions of those games (which are both awesome, in case you haven’t tried them out).
The game actually came together really well quite quickly (well, relatively – if we’d been familiar with Unity beforehand the development time might have been halved). Integration with OUYA’s system for purchasing went smoothly (testing IAP on the system doesn’t involve sandboxing like on iOS, it’s kept very simple which I like).
You can read the whole post on the Ludometrics site.
In the meantime, if you’re an Ouya owner, then go and buy Gridlock. If you’re not an Ouya owner, clearly there’s something wrong with you, since you get amazing games like Gridlock on the console.
Gridlock is OUT NOW and can be found on the Ouya Games Store.
