In honour of ANZAC Day last weekend, we decided to start a series of Warp Pipe columns dedicated to the best games developed in Australia and New Zealand. One column wasn’t enough to look at the best of what our local teams have offered the world, so over the next couple of weeks we’ll continue to look at the best they have to offer, the best collaborations they’ve been involved with, and what’s on the horizon.

This week’s edition looks at another five Australian and New Zealand developed titles including the recent Wii smash-hit de Blob, the classic platformer Halloween Harry, and the post-apocalyptic strategy stylings of Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel.

The Best of Home Grown Development, Part II

For many years, when people thought of game development in Australia, the response was subdued laughter or sighs about being forced to develop sports titles with a local flavour, or licensed titles based on American children’s programming. The reality is that Australians have been involved in some mighty fine video games over the last 30 years – and we’re not just talking about Agrosoar. Last week we took a peak at The Hobbit, Shadowrun, Super International Cricket, Flight of the Amazon Queen and Powerslide. This week, we’ve got a whole new slate of titles to reminisce about.

Paint the Town Red

Gonna paint that wagon, gonna paint it good!

de Blob began as a free game for the PC, designed by a couple of game design students out of Utrecht in the Netherlands, but it took THQ and Melbourne developer Blue Tongue to bring it to the big leagues on the Wii. De Blob takes place in Chroma City, a once peaceful and colourful place which has was overtaken by the INKT Corporation, a group dedicated to the eradication of colour. You play as de Blob, who has joined the Colour Revolutionaries to restore the colour and life to the city.

Restoring the colour to Chroma City involves using de Blob to absorb different colours of paint, and then rolling him around the city into various objects and buildings to colourise them. Paint comes in three colours; red, yellow and blue, but these can be combined to create other colours, like orange, green, purple and brown. De Blob can paint Chroma City freely, but members of the Colour Revolutionaries have specific missions for him, which involve painting particular objects a certain color, for example. In addition to some fantastic stylised visuals, de Blob has a rather interesting music system where extra layers of sound are added to the current track as the city gains more colour.

De Blob has been a very successful outing for THQ and Blue Tongue, gaining high ratings from critics across the board and sweeping up many end of year awards, including the Best Console Title, Best Gameplay, Best Graphics, Best Audio and Best Game of 2008 at the Game Developer’s Association of Australia Awards. The game is among the more successful third party titles on the Wii, having sold over 700,000 units to date. I’d expect to be seeing more of de Blob soon.

Kung-fu Fighting

My fist to your face!

Way of the Exploding Fist is one of the earliest fighting games, arriving on a variety of home computer formats (including the BBC Micro, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC) in 1985. It was inspired by Data East’s Karate Champ, often considered to be the pioneer of the fighting genre.

Fighting in Way of the Exploding Fist is a lot different to modern fighting games. Rather than simply wailing on one another until your life bars are exhausted, the game utilises a scoring system based on shobu nihon kumite which is used in some real world karate contests. A player needs to gain two complete yin-yang symbols to win a match; a half yin-yang is awarded for a committed, but not decisive blow, while a full symbol is awarded for a decisive blow. Sixteen different moves are available through a combination of directional keys and the fire button, including roundhouse kicks, jump kicks, high and low punches , blocks and somersaults.

In addition to challenging a series of increasingly stronger computer controlled opponents (and a hidden fight against a bull in some versions), Way of the Exploding Fist featured a two-player versus mode, considered by many at the time to be its greatest asset. Fantastic visuals, sound and gameplay earned Way of the Exploding Fist a lot of positive press in the enthusiast magazines of the time, and steady sales saw two more games bearing the Exploding Fist name come to market.

Total Carnage

Kentucky Fried Zombie, anyone?

Before Flight of the Amazon Queen, John Passfield and Steve Stamatiadis worked together on Halloween Harry, a side scrolling action-platformer for the PC. Famed shareware publisher Apogee picked the game up for distribution, and suggested changing the title to Alien Carnage for the 1.2 patch to reduce its association with the holiday.

Regardless of what you know the game as, it stars bad-ass monster killer Halloween Harry and his gal pal Diane, who helps him out via video link. Harry is on a quest to save the world from a group of aliens who are attempting to transform the population into green skinned zombies. Harry’s weapon of choice is a flame thrower, which you can use to toast various zombies and aliens. Linked to the flame thrower is a jet pack, which allows for easy navigation around levels, but consumes your ammunition – overuse can leave you in the lurch.

Released as shareware in 1993, Halloween Harry received pretty wide coverage through various magazine cover discs and BBS services. When the decision was made to change the title to Alien Carnage, Apogee also decided to shuffle around the episodes; episode 3 of Halloween Harry became the new episode 1, effectively allowing players access to two-thirds of the game for free. A sequel called Zombie Wars would follow in 1996, with Apogee switched out for Gee Whiz Entertainment. Gee Whiz had big plans for Halloween Harry, including a cartoon series based on Zombie Wars and a third game, Halloween Harry 3D but nothing ever came to fruition. Alien Carnage become freeware in May 2007, and can be downloaded from our File Library.

Plan B

Forget about the people, protect the grog!

Interplay’s post-apocalyptic RPG series Fallout (now Bethesda’s) spawned two spin-off titles which revolved around the Brotherhood of Steel faction. One of these spin-offs is good, one of them is bad. Fortunately, the good spin-off Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel was developed here in Australia by Micro Forte. The game deals with a division of the Brotherhood of Steel which is trying to claim territory around Chicago.

Fallout Tactics abandons the free roaming world and questing systems of the first two games for a more rigid mission based structure. The game retains a variety of the original role-playing elements when it comes to character development and customisation, however, and introduces new gameplay elements like vehicles, multiple stances, buildings with varying levels and three different combat systems that allow you to choose between simultaneous turns, squad-based turns or individual turns. Fallout Tactics is also the only game in the lineage to feature multiplayer, where players get to control a squad of characters, with a number of points assigned to each player for customisation of their squad’s load out before a match.

Released in March of 2001, Fallout Tactics got a positive response from players and critics of the time, though most were still anxiously awaiting word of a then unannounced Fallout 3. In the years following Fallout Tactics, Micro Forte has expanded into MMO design with their custom engine Bigworld Technology. At one stage they were set to develop Citizen Zero, an MMO for the Xbox to be published by Microsoft, but the project was eventually cancelled. Their most recent project, Kwari, was an MMOFPS where players had to pay for ammunition. It was not successful.

Gear Grinding

Not your typical Sunday drive

Game development doesn’t have quite as rich a history on the other side of the Tasman, but our New Zealand friends have still managed to develop a few quality products. Leading the charge is Sidhe Interactive, who rose to fame on the back of NRL Rugby League (which we’ll cover at another time). Their second game was a little PSP racer named GripShift.

At first glance, GripShift seems like a novelty racing game, but under that shell lays a devious mix of genres including racing, puzzle and platforming. GripShift packs in over 100 levels into the UMD, with race modes, party games, a track editor and wireless multiplayer available. Level designs are the game’s main highlight – there’s some absolutely crazy stuff in there, which as mentioned before make it feel as much a platformer as a racing game. Multiple routes, jumps, corkscrews, loops and ramps are par for the course.

GripShift had a successful run on the PSP picking up awards for Best Handheld Game, Best Level Design and Best Game Design from the Game Developers Association of Australia. Sidhe would later team up with Sony to take GripShift to the PlayStation 3 as one of the debut titles on the Australian PlayStation Network, followed by a self-published release on Xbox Live Arcade. These two versions introduced a load of new levels, new music tracks, online leaderboards and an online race mode.