Have you ever wanted to play a game that simulated all of the joy of discovering that your computer needs to reboot itself in 30 seconds to install updates and you haven't saved any of your work? We asked this question to the world a few weeks ago at TOJam 10, one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) game jams in Canada, and much to our surprise the response was a resounding YES! After surviving a far-too-long bus ride from Montreal to Toronto we sat down for the weekend and created the terrifying game that is RadOS (download it here!).
Despite our best efforts to make the most frustrating game imaginable, people seem to really love it. Maybe Clippy would have been more popular if he was a lovingly rendered sandwich? Regardless, some internet people had a lot of very kind and angry things to say about the game:
RadOS presents you with the impossible feat of saving several windows' worth of work in those 30 seconds, and these vary for each playthrough—figuring out how to save, export, submit, et cetera each open project is made ever more enraging by the assistant continually popping in to "help." - Leigh Alexander, Offworld
RadOS offers the nightmare scenario of trying to save your work before your computer restarts to install updates, hindered by the comments and directions of a cartoon character who wants to assist you but is a total bastard and will make you lose hours of work OH MY GOSH YOU ARE THE WORST HELPER. - Alice O'Connor , Rock Paper Shotgun
You'd think it'd be easy enough, but the sandwich, much like Clippy, always makes things more complicated than they have to be. There's always another question to answer and a box to fill. - Emanuel Maiberg, Motherboard
RadOS was inspired by the very real experience of us trying to get some work done on our top-secret new project, and being unable to because one of our laptops insisted that it absolutely had to reboot for updates at that exact moment and offered no option to delay it, causing us to wait around for about a half hour as it cheerily spun a progress wheel to assure us that it was still working.
What's that, a secret project? Why yes, we are indeed hard at work on something new! We're hoping to be able to announce it in a few months time, but it's still very early in development and not yet ready for the public eye. While you wait, tell me how you feel about this desktop wallpaper from RadOS.
Besides TOJam, we were also in Toronto for a few other reasons. One of those was to hang out with a whole bunch of the amazing game developers who call that city home. There was much partying and karaoke to be had! The other reason we were there was that Bit Bazaar was being held the weekend following TOJam. For those who don't know, Bit Bazaar is like an arts-and-crafts fair for indie game developers. All sorts of people set up and sell limited edition posters, pins, cards, and many other things, all inspired by the games that they make. Not only were there cool things to buy, but there was a local-multiplayer gaming tournament and Spacebro Justice Rocket was one of the games that people could compete at!
We'd like to thank all of the teams that participated, and of course congratulate our winning team, Gabby and Robby, who got to take home a sweet trophy as well as a pair of awesome Spacebro posters!
That's all for now! Stay tuned for some really cool announcements from us in the near future!
Cheers!