Happy Bit-of-versary!

It's been a big week for the God of War series!  Hopefully everyone is playing and enjoying the living snot out of God of War: Ascension which was released earlier this week - if so, perhaps we've already faced off in battle online!

Now to add our little 'bit' (pun intended) into the celebrations..

It sure doesn't seem like it's been a year, but today marks the first anniversary of the release of Bit of War!  If you haven't yet played Bit of War, this is the perfect excuse to pick it up for free!  In addition, we've recently released a major update that adds a Boss Rush mode to the game!  

Kratos is excited!

Over the past year, we have gotten a ton of great feedback and praise from literally all parts of the world.  From mentions on sites like Kotaku and G4tv, to an interview with Sony Santa Monica themselves, to some from overseas which we can't even read without the aid of Google Translate!  It's been much more than we ever expected, and suffice it to say we are happy campers over here at Holmade.

We've been keeping track of all of the various articles, tweets, reviews and videos of our little 8-bit Kratos and we wanted to share just a couple of our favorites with you here.

Tweets from the big guys themselves!

Sites with reviews and articles:

• Interview with Sony Santa Monica on the official God of War blog!
• Indie Games
• Clockerz
• Egotastic
• Ripten
• Kotaku
• G4tv
• Nintendo Life / Push Square
• Bit of War on the God of War wiki

Video playthroughs and reviews:

• Gentleman's Gaming Corner
• The Gamer's Cave
• Our own video playlist compiling all sorts of Bit of War playthroughs and video reviews

..and there's just pages and pages of this stuff! We wish we could share it all here, but it would just make this post far too long. Like we said, more than we ever expected.
So thank you from the bottom of our hearts to everyone who's shown us such great support, both before and after the release of Bit of War.  It's the love from our fans that really fuels our efforts and drives us to give up on sleep in the name of fun and entertainment.

And stay tuned, there's plenty more news (Hurdle Turtle 2 anyone?) coming soon!

Happy birthday, Bit of War!

Cupcakes courtesy of Geek Sweets

 Holmfry

Bit of War v1.10 Adds Gauntlet Mode!

Bit of War has been updated to version 1.10, bringing with it various small bug fixes and, more importantly, Gauntlet Mode!  Gauntlet Mode is a boss rush endurance round that sees you facing all boss fights and some other enemies in the game one after the other.  You will be given only one life, and whatever weapons you've earned in the main game to beat all bosses, and to try and beat your own best time!

Since Gauntlet mode reveals later bosses and enemies in the main game, we highly recommend you play through the main game first to avoid spoilers.  It will also be easier to set a best time once you have more weapons - but it's up to you!

Download the game here: http://bitofwar.holmadegames.com
If you've visited the site before, you may need to refresh your browser to see the latest version.

PLEASE NOTE: this version uses a different save file than version 1.00. Saves will not carry over.

 Holmfry

Interviewed by Santa Monica Studio!

Recently, we had the honor of being interviewed by the super friendly folks over at Santa Monica Studio, the creators of the God of War series. It was a lot of fun!

Apparently the development team at Santa Monica discovered and LOVES Bit of War - which, as a team who has created a fan-game, is the absolute highest praise you could ever hope for!

Check out the interview (which contains some interesting development tid-bits as well as a solid helping of malarky) on the official God of War site right here!

 Holmfry

Bit of War (8-Bit God of War Demake) Released!

It's been a long while since we've posted!

That's because we've been hard at work completing what has been for us a 5 year journey. During development of Hurdle Turtle and Pixel Whirled and their various incarnations, Bit of War (our 8-bit demake of the God of War universe) has been an ongoing side project - a labor of love - that we are so excited to now finally share with the world!  

As a free fan game we couldn't always afford to give it as much attention as we wanted to and so development has been (very) part time.  It has taken many forms over the years and the project has been started, stopped and restarted numerous times as other projects took the forefront, and as we found the right look and feel for the game.. as this very blog can attest to!

It's taken us far too long to get here.  But this year we made a New Year's resolution to put everything else aside and give it the love it deserved and complete it.. and here it is!  It was ultimately our fans' support of our other games that allowed us to take this liberty, and for that we are eternally grateful.

http://bitofwar.holmadegames.com

This page contains a link to the download page (temporarily hosted on filedropper while the game awaits authorization on  indiedb.com) and will soon contain a lot more than that - an online instruction manual in the style of old school NES manuals, as well as an explanation of the story of the game and its inspirations.

Please enjoy the game - it's free for your Windows PC! - and feel free to leave us feedback and questions right here!

Thank you all!

 Holmfry
CEO & Founder
Holmade Games

Bit of War - Release Date!!

As you can see, Bit of War will be heading free to PCs everywhere around the world very soon!  The game is almost finished, with just a couple of boss fights and some final polishing left.  Likely, it will be complete before Christmas. However, we do want to make sure there's ample time for testing and as that would have pushed release just into next year anyway, we've settled on March 16, 2012 (a date of some significance).

Enjoy the poster above, feel free to print it out and post it up everywhere, and to go ahead and get good and excited for the game! :)  To help you with the home stretch of your wait here are some brand new, mint-in-the-box, never-before-seen screenshots to enjoy!

 Holmfry

Bit of War Dev Entry

We've been chugging away and this weekend, we've just about finished off implementing all of the different enemies for each level. Previously we'd been using mostly level 1 and 2 enemies as stand-ins for testing during development. Now that we've got the proper enemies, screenshots won't be far off!

There's only a bit (excuse the pun) left to do before we go to beta - code the boss fights with the graphics we've already created, polish off the levels and insert the cinemas. A healthy round of testing and bug hunting later and we'll be ready to think about actually releasing!

It's been a crazy ride, full of unexpected delays and complications (but also tons of fun!), and we're almost there!

Keep watching this blog for those screenshots!

Holmfry

Bit of War Dev Entry

For the last couple of days, I've been busy drawing and animating the boss sprites.  We're not going to get into any details about who these bosses may be; we'll let you discover this on your own.. but I did want to mention how much bloody (pun intended) fun I'm having animating the death scenes for these sprites.


God of War has a very unique style to it when killing off bosses - that is, over the top gory deaths.  Translating this into 8-bit animations has been challenging, entertaining, absolutely hilarious and strangely satisfying.  I've honestly never seen so much blood in an 8-bit game.  ;)


For inspiration for the death scenes, I've been going to God of War character art, the boss fights of the original games, the internet for additional art, and good old Mortal Kombat.  For help designing the structure of the boss battles themselves, we've been referring to many, many NES and Master System games (as well as other systems) for ideas for enemy patterns and the like.


It's a lot of fun trying to merge two such different styles of game into one.  We'll post up some level/art samples very soon, some stuff that nobody has seen yet - so stay tuned!


Oh, and - a free copy of Pixel Whirled for Xbox 360 to the person who can guess who this used to be pre-Kratos:

 Holmfry

Bit of War Dev Entry

Howdy all!

We've been hard at work getting back on track with the Bit of War project following our move.  We've been going through the old to do list and taking care of bugs here and there - but to really get the project back on the road to completion, The Timm (our story writer) and I had a two hour video conference last night to discuss the specific style and content of the final story cinemas.. and guess who showed up to give his opinion?

So it went pretty quickly after that - he had some good ideas, we didn't feel inclined to argue.  We decided to revisit our original concept for the cinemas - using existing God of War art remastered as 8-bit - to instead go with in-game assets.  This allows more freedom to create the scenes we want to, as we don't have to go hunting for God of War art that matches the scenes we're looking to create.  It will also result in a lot more seamless transition from gameplay to cinema.

What also came out of this meeting was that there is a lot of spriting and background art yet to create for these scenes, which means I'll be cooling off my left brain and relying more heavily on my right brain for some artwork over the next few weeks.   The Timm will be focused on the final story edits and building the actual cinema screens with his story and the assets I create.

During this time, we'll throw some samples up here for all to enjoy, so stay tuned! :)  In the meantime, you can actually check out some more of The Timm's writing in a Live Writing experiment he's doing - so click here to go read his new novel day-by-day as it's being written!

.. and raise your hand if you didn't know Kratos was near-sighted!  Yah, me neither.

 Holmfry

Bit of War Delayed

Well, unless you're a pudgy plumber who just found a beanstalk in a block in level 4-2 and climbed up above the clouds, it can't all be blue skies and sunshine.

With that in mind we have a spot of bad news, which is that unfortunately we have had to delay the release of Bit of War.  I know all of our loyal followers have been anxiously (but patiently) waiting for this game to drop, and we thank you all tons for that!  However, our recent move and renovations (much of which I did solo.. and it was glorious, you should've seen me go!) took longer than expected and it was only in the past couple of weeks that we had the time and office resources back to a state where we could get anything done.

It's been a crazy summer for us but the silver lining is that all of that is behind us and we're now more well equipped and organized than ever!  All systems are go once again on Bit of War - as well as Pixel Whirled iOS and one other soon-to-be-named project that we've been keeping up our collective sleeves ;)  So there's plenty for you all to look forward to in the near future!

For now we'll be putting a "late fall/early winter" timestamp on the release of Bit of War.  When we have a more specific date, we'll post it right here in this blog.  And hey - it wouldn't really be a God of War game without massive delays, would it? ;)  It just means it will be that much more awesome when it sees the light of day.

Thanks to everyone for your patience, understanding and continued support!

 Holmfry

Bit of War - Music Contest!

Hi everyone!


If you've been following us, you know that we've been working like fiends on an 8-bit God of War demake, currently titled Bit of War. Well, it's getting fairly close to completion and we're starting our hunt for the perfect soundtrack. Already set to feature a track by the incomparable Aaron Walz of Walz Music, we thought we'd make it interesting and host a little contest to find the other perfect tunes!


- To enter, create an 8-bit version of the following music from God of War III:

- Your 8-bit version could be the full piece, or a smaller loop of the important bits - it's up to you. However, it should be awesome.
- Send the finished .mp3 file to contests@holmadegames.com anytime between now and 11:59pm EST June 30th, 2011. That's 10 days, for those counting!

Winning!* (the important bit): If you are chosen as the winner, the winning .mp3 will be featured in the menu of the final game. Full credit will be given to the winner as the game circulates like a virus across the internet. Women will likely throw themselves at you**. More importantly, you will gain the opportunity to create more music to be featured in the game!


For more information on Bit of War, please click the appropriate link under "What We Got Goin' On!" on the right.


 Holmfry


*Despite the fact that you are winning, tiger blood will not be provided.
**Holmade Games makes no guarantee that women will throw themselves at you.

Bit of War Dev Entry

Top o' the mornin' to ya!

So, despite the fact that some of us have been entrenched in a massive renovation/move project, we've still managed to churn out a lot of effort on the Bit of War front.

Primarily, the level design for the entire game is now 100% complete, and the levels are on their way to being built - progress on that sits at about 75% at time of writing!  This is where I find that Game Maker really shines.  Perfecting the engine was fun, but the interface they have for taking all of our tiles and other art assets and putting them all together is just awesome to work with; we can really turn off the developer for a bit and just do some pure game design.  I highly recommend it to everyone - not just beginners, but also coding veterans who want to have a bit of fun with their next project, or even just quickly prototype some ideas.

Our writer, The Timm, has also been working hard on the final story and putting together some sweet looking 8-bit cut scenes.. we're hoping to have a couple of examples to post up here - we'll try our best not to include any story spoilers ;)

The closer we get to the end of this project, the more excited we get!  We can't wait to share it with all of you!

More soon..

 Holmfry

Bit of War Dev Entry

Hi everyone!

If you're wondering why it's been so quiet about this game's progress recently, it's because we've been really busy pumping it out!  As of a few days ago, the engine is at last complete, and we have started moving on to the other levels!  It's a lot of fun finally polishing off some new tiles and getting to playtest with different backgrounds - it almost feels like a new game!  We don't want to get into details on what the other locations are, as we don't want to spoil the story at this point, but I think we've managed to represent a nice degree of variety throughout the game.

Of course, the engine being complete also means that development from this point on should speed up significantly.  Look for the final game sometime this summer, and probably a video teaser or two soon so you don't have to wait until release to catch a glimpse of the new levels and attacks that we've put in!

Until then.. back to work for us!

 Holmfry

Bit of War - January-March Gameplay Footage!

Here's a video summary of what we've been up to from late January to early March 2011 on Bit of War. You may have thought we had forgotten about the project as it was awful quiet, but the truth is we've been on somewhat of an accelerated development schedule and just too busy to blog! :)  As a result, our God of War demake is coming along nicely - the engine/first level is just shy of complete, and we have the other levels planned and script ready to go.


On a personal note, I'll admit it took me a while to figure out a good development schedule since the arrival of my third child, and the return to my day job. However, I think I've finally found something that works for me, and things are finally getting done.  My message to developers out there who are going through similar scheduling humps: don't be afraid to experiment and try grossly different techniques with the way you do things.. you'll find a routine that works and when you do, it's so worth it.


But I digress. "Quit yer' gibberin' and get on with the video, Holmfry!"  Ok, ok!

This will likely be the last "monthly" gameplay we post before the game is released later this year, as anything we would be able to show you after this point would just be bug fixes (hard to demonstrate in this format) or new levels (spoilers!).

So from here on out it will likely be back to our good old fashioned blog, located right here.. stay tuned!


 Holmfry

Bit of War - December Gameplay Footage??

Hi everyone!

Unfortunately, I have no gameplay footage to show this month for Bit of War.  Although we did get some minor engine tweaks etc in this month, there has been no significant progress to show off due to me readjusting to my return to my day job, Christmas and all that good stuff.

But fear not, life is settling back into a comfortable routine and we're back on the rails.  Stay tuned for the January gameplay footage, coming to a browser window near you!

 Holmfry

Bit of War - November Gameplay Footage!

Our second monthly gameplay footage, showcasing our progress in the development of the 8-bit demake of God of War we're currently working on.

This month, we worked a lot on optimizations, and had some fun creating new enemies and environments.

Enjoy this little teaser!

Music composed by: Deniz Akbulut (Intero) http://intero.newgrounds.com/
And remixed by: LEAF XCEED Music Division (rtnario) http://rtnario.newgrounds.com/

 Holmfry

Bit of War - Monthly Gameplay Footage!

Hey everyone!

As a special treat to those of you paying attention, we've decided to post up monthly footage of Bit of War in action.  This will let you see the evolution of the game as it gets closer to completion, and will give me the chance to highlight some of the new goodies and tweaks I've added in the previous month.

So, without further ado, here's what the game looks like as of October 2010! Keep in mind that it's still in development, and as such the levels will likely change from their current incarnation by the time we release the full version. In addition, at this point we only have one type of enemy active in the game. The music for this section is also temporary, as we have yet to acquire the proper permission to use it for the full game. Most of the music for the game (but not this track) is being provided by Aaron Walz of Walz Music, and you'll hear some of his amazing work in our gameplay video next month!

Note the shiny new lifebar, the collisions, the new map and tiles.. and the 8-bit blood in all its pixelated glory!

Enjoy!

 Holmfry

Bit of War Dev Entry

Alright, peeps, it's been awhile since we've talked about this one!

But trust me, between all the hurdling turtles and whirling pixels (not to mention diaper changes), we've been busy.  I won't get into too many details right now, - because my hands are cramped from the programming! - but I've basically been going cross-eyed completely overhauling the graphics and perfecting how the game plays, adding menus and lifebars and ladders and.. well, now I'm getting into details, aren't I?  More on the specifics later.

I'll probably be posting up a new gameplay video soon, I would imagine. It's looking good, though - or at least I think so!

What do you think?

Ain't she a beaut?

..and now, I'm off to bed.

 Holmfry

Bit of War Dev Entry

I'm now at the point where I'm just tightening up and finalizing how gameplay is going to be, with just the first level built.  Once I have that, I will be working on the first boss fight and then moving on to the other levels.

However - my 3rd child is going to be born imminently, so I don't suppose I'll be having much time for development over the next few months.  I'll post something as soon as I'm back on sort of a regular schedule.  And don't worry - the game's official release date of "sometime before Duke Nukem Forever" will still be met!

BUT STAY TUNED - There's a big Pixel Whirled announcement coming in late March!

 Holmfry

Bit of War Dev Entry

Enemies are almost there, not all frames are done and it needs some cleaning up, but I'm in a sharing mood today, so here are some screenshots! :)

More later!

 Holmfry

Bit of War Dev Entry

I drew the enemies and put them in, it's looking pretty good but I'm
not satisfied with it enough to show you screenshots quite yet.

In addition to that, I've been designing some new tiles and using them
to create new areas for level one! The first level should be done
soon, then I'm going to start perfecting the play mechanics. :)

 Holmfry