Author: Fisher

Hailing from Vermont, Fisher writes music, programs video games, keeps a blog, and maintains a day job as an IT technician aside from all that other stuff.

What’s in a Name?

Turns out it’s a lot.

I was discussing my game with Rami Ismail of Vlambeer on his Twitch show Call Me Ismail (as I regularly do when I can) and his advice was great and I ended up using it in the game! When I hung up on Skype however, I looked into the chat and people were very confused as to why I had chosen the name TETRARKHOUT.  I explained the origination of the title, and many other streamers were opposed to it on the fact that it was simply too long or too difficult to remember. I will admit, this upset me some. I have come to love the name TETRARKHOUT, I’ve been working on the game for almost a year now (on and off, definitely not constant) and while it had occurred to me that the game name was cumbersome, I always thought that was part of the charm. Alas, no charm to be found.

And so I entered denial. I was making this game for me, it’s my choice in the end, etc…. But that’s only half the truth. I am not making this game for myself, I already know everything about it. The game is for the player, and while every element in the game relies on my choices it is up to the player to say if these choices make a good game. All I want is to make a good game, however I am going to try to make that game on my terms.

I conducted a poll with the outstanding suggestions. Here are the results:

Capture Capture2

After a few days of polling I had a fair response. There were also several “other” suggestions that didn’t strike me as very symbolic of the game. The game is meant to be a ripoff, and though it has mashup qualities I do not consider it a mashup/remix.

Now you may look at the chart and see that TETRANOID has an overwhelmingly positive score. That seems to be the logical choice, right? Well, you’re right. It is. It’s just that I fucking hate it. It negates the theme in favor of being fun to say, which is pointless in a game attempting to tell a complicated story with limited elements. I couldn’t bear to work on a game with a title that I hated so much. So yeah, emotions and “artistic integrity” won that battle.

In my mind, BRKÖUT was the clear winner of this. Why? BRKÖUT had the most middling response. I did not want to choose a title that would polarize the audience like so many of the others had. People either loved or hated most of the options, BRKÖUT received adequate positive and negative responses from many sides, favoring slightly to the positive.  That’s the kind of response I want for a title, everyone has an opinion that may be complicated.

TETRARKHOUT will be renamed BRKÖUT for the next update. I have a new plan for a sweet logo design as well, but we’ll see what’s ready by then. I intend to have it out by Thursday August 25th.

For those who dare, BRKÖUT is pronounced Brrek-eut officially, but it’s fine to call it whatever.

I’m getting an office! Kind of! And so can you!

An incredible opportunity has presented itself to me where I will get to work with some of Burlington’s finest indie game developers in a cooperative working space. We are currently looking into locations in the downtown area of Burlington and have a time frame of about a month before we are up and running. Unlike other co-op spaces, ours will be primarily for game development and have a fairly low monthly price to boot. When we open up we will be hosting a jam for anyone to join! It’ll be a good time. Again, we’re looking to set up in about a months time, so if you are interested please let me know at fisher@smugames.com and I can get you in contact with the right people.

What’s Happening Right Now?

Right now I am settling into a new job and travelling through Africa for a couple weeks. Once I return from that I will be getting back into the swing of TETRARKHOUT development and releasing the latest update.

Things on the fire: possibly getting an office in a local co-op space. Mostly depends on whether I can afford it and whether it actually happens. Sirmooge has been designing a new game that looks pretty cool, I may or may not be involved with it. No details to speak of yet.

Until then, stay safe! The news says the outdoors is a scary place right now.

The History of The Vic-30

I wrote an article here about the Vic-30. It tells you a bit about the system BRKÖUT was originally developed for and the circumstances leading up to it’s development. It’s a pretty interesting story, worth the read if you’ve never heard of the Vic-30 before.

A Cool Thing Happened

Just as I had finished posting my game on itch.io, Rami Ismail of Vlambeer posts in his Twitter that he is doing a call-in show on his Twitch channel and he was gonna do it for maybe another hour. This was my chance, I log in and scramble to set up my macbook to dial in thru Skype.

I waited through a few calls before Rami picked me. I think the first thing out of my mouth was “holy shit, I made it?” or something. I continued to blubber on about my new game and since it was about 4:45 or so in the morning I really had no idea what I wanted to say so I asked him if he thought my game was a good idea. He bought it on the air! And a bunch of people in the Twitch chat bought it too! It was kind of magical.

I would link it, but it’s a five hour long video and Twitch doesn’t have timestamp links yet. But it was cool and worth writing about.

So yeah. Rami likes TETRARKHOUT. Maybe you’ll like it too?

Music Videogame Jam and Hangout Jam

I did some jam stuff recently. You can play the products here:

Bravo.Zulu: http://gamejolt.com/games/bravo-zulu/126101

Incomprehensible Leisure Suit Panic: http://gamejolt.com/games/incomprehensible-leisure-suit-panic/123183

Bravo.Zulu is about the future of war, purely remote and senseless. It has illegal music. I imagine I will receive a takedown notice. It’s worth playing, just for the senseless slaughter. There aren’t any ratings for this jam I don’t think.

Incomprehensible Leisure Suit Panic is about bullshit. This game is straight stupid. I received my first piece of hatemail from this game and it was great. I’m actually a little proud about how awful this game is. I cam in 5th out of 6. Deserving, yet I still feel cheated. Meh.

Cheers I guess. Can Americans say that?000

From ILSP

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From Bravo.Zulu