I know I’ve stated I would be postponing Maze Qore last month, but I didn’t want to just let the entire IP just go silent, so instead, I decided to work on a smaller and simpler game in it’s image – you can call it “a nutshell version of Maze Qore”.
That said, Maze Qore Arena has been released through early access!
Maze Qore Arena is a top-down, bullet hell, arena-arcade shooter bundled with 36 levels of bullet-raining hell, organized into 6 sectors of the entire prison facility. You can not fight this war alone, you need the help of the prisoners to successfully escape from prison.
YOU ARE THE BOSS
You have originally served as a soldier for The Empire, until the Force Commander ordered your division to slaughter an entire village full of unarmed civilians. You disobeyed orders behind their back and tried to help the civilians evacuate the village. Even with the help of the village’s militia, your attempts to defend the village failed. All of the inhabitants – men, women, and children alike – are dead. For disobeying orders, you have been court-martialed and convicted for treason and a false charge of mass murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Maze Qore maximum security prison. 12 years have passed since your sentence and your division’s Force Commander has already become the new Fuhrer. You were forced with no choice but to do nothing and cry deeply as the Maze Qore’s prison staff continues to torture, beat, and rape you. Finally, you and the prisoners had enough and plan to escape the prison complex. Suddenly the alarm triggers and a prison riot occur. One of your fellow prisoners unlocks your cell door provides you a pistol shortly before he is killed by a prison guard. You quickly kill the prison guard and steal his weapon. Now this is the chance to escape this enormous complex packed full of millions of prison staff, security bots, and unsuspecting horrors, sparing them no mercy – only brutality. How long will you survive to reach the end?
EARLY ACCESS
This game is currently in early-access so not all features are completed. We plan to have a fully-functional multiplayer experience that will definitely live up to the game’s title “Arena”, complete with achievements and our own custom level editor. By supporting us, we can make such goal possible in a much faster time-span.
This will be my last article for the remainder of the year, and in Maze Qore’s case, for a long while. I don’t want to risk rambling for too long on this video since I am very prone to getting stuck on tangents or circling conversations, so I will just narrow it down to three major points.
This Year in Review
Maze Qore
New Year’s Resolution
This Year in Review
Those of you who have been tracking my work or my activities may be aware that this year did not end well for me. Matter of fact, it was a complete disaster and a nightmare.
A former client from my job betrays me, lies about my team, exposes my secrets to a former team member, that member in turns betrays me and jeopardizes my project.
Nearly got scammed on Upwork.
My project hits a snag with UDK’s Scaleform UI, and a dead-end with UnrealScript and console support (courtesy of Epic Games), forcing me to switch to UE4.
Laptop recharger port breaks (which means no more livestreaming for QUITE a while).
I attempted suicide.
Miraculously survived, only to serve time in rehab.
Most of my social media suddenly get bombed with flak shells and mortars, and a few of them are taken down permanently in the process.
My DeviantArt fan base betrays me.
List just goes on!
Dear God of all f**k! It’s like God hates me!
It seems I am not among the minority this year either. A lot of others have stumbled on spikes and had bombs blow up in their face (for one of them, quite literally – she’s dead btw, died in August). This includes a few of Néotl Empire’s remaining members whom have also encountered nasty surprises that affected their life performances.
One of them in Germany just lost his desktop computer (which was practically on life-support for 4 years), which means we won’t be able to work on that fan-made project of his we started in 2013 (but at least he finally got accepted into college).
Another member, his camera he uses for his popular YouTube gaming channel has died (and a few other personal things I won’t discuss here on this channel), and a new anti-consumer policy on Patreon has managed to make an enemy out of him. I don’t blame him since I am honestly not too fond of using the site myself, hence why it’s taking me forever to set it up.
I had also very recently discovered that another of our valiant members (whom I met him during college) has also passed away this year. Still trying to find the cause of death from his father.Well, that’s enough of the sob stories… Next on the list…
Maze Qore
This probably won’t matter to most of you, since our latest project barely has a following, but to those who have been tracking it or have seen and/or tried our demo at the local conventions this year in Georgia, or even last year at SIEGE, it is likely evident that you still have not seen a release from the game (besides the expo demo we showcased and released on IndieDB during Halloween). Well, there are three main reasons.
I already gave a hinter from the last subject. It involve two traitors, one of which really disrupted our schedule near the release date. Because it is too long and personal for this article, I will just have to upload a separate video on my personal YouTube channel (I will provide a link to that video n at a later time).
Speaking of time, we need more time. Worse, I have decided to postpone the project for the time being and focus on smaller commercial work. I took a closer look on the progress made in the game and I was honestly disappointed with the end result of the story plot and a few gameplay design aspects. For starters, I’ve spent nearly a full week just overhauling the intro story the game is supposed to have, which meant recreating some of the intro art, and scrapping a few of them. Four days of work wasted because of a poor literary design on my part. Such experience also helped me realize that Maze Qore is not truly ready for a release. I want to ensure the game is at 110% when it releases (even for an early access game), and if it means delaying the project to ensure all game-breaking bugs and glitches are all purged, then so be it.
Finances! You guess it! I’ve never been a better financial state since I started college and it’s only gotten worse since I graduated. I was supposed to cancel my freelance gig if it did not meet the minimum milestone standards I’ve set for myself. In fact, I was counting on failure and continued searching for a new job or money train instead. Despite the odds, I still managed to narrowly exceed the milestone, particularly thanks to a Discord channel known as the Game Dev Network. It featured a LOT of LFM or “looking for members” jobs, granting me far more results than I had with the Unreal Engine Forums or The Game Dev League. It also changed my opinion that the indie dev freelancers are becoming less relevant with the rise of the marketplace sub-industries (to some extent). However, next year, I want to focus more on making money to support myself instead of juggling between that and my hobbies. In order to maintain passion, I must first make a living and Maze Qore has become an obstruction (albeit a temporary one, but one that needs to be put on secure hold so I don’t have to mercy-kill it like I did Army Men III).
New Year’s Resolution
Finally, a resolution for the new year! Knowing me, I never expect any new year to be any better or worse than the last. Usually every year has been rather mediocre for me besides a few glorious and notorious exceptions, (though this year prove me wrong and I almost literally lost my life in the process).
Pessimism aside, I want to ensure the best of it, and to do that, I will put aside all of my hobbies (including taking a break from most of not all game jams) and establish a proper income first and foremost. My mother and I seek to establish a janitorial franchise and she already has a few connections who can help me jump-start it easily and hopefully sooner. If successful, I am very confident I will be able to maintain more than livable income. In addition, I will focus all of my efforts on the game engine marketplaces, especially for newer engines like Xenko (if and when they release a marketplace on their store). Here’s to hoping that goes well.
Conclusion
That is all. For future news, update, and content, please follow our website, or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Feel free to follow our other social media should you prefer those instead.
If you crave some behind-the-scenes content or are just a fan of controversy (moderated controversy that does NOT violate any website policies), follow my personal channel in the description.
There’s been a lot of things that happened in my life, some of which did affect progress of the game and I dare not go into too much details about it, but at long last, I finally have some progress to demonstrate how far Maze Qore is going.
Before I do, let’s just get the bad news out the way first.
You just returned from a battlefield after merely surviving an attack from enemy air-raids. As the only survivor from your unit and no vehicle or radio support, you’ve just walked a long way through the dry and heavy desert, and still need to find your way back to your base. However the base is heavily guarded with mines and you need to carefully make your way through them without tripping on them.
In times like these, there’s only one man to trust. Controls:
During the Gene Wars, your fellow genes were wiped out by a genetic virus created from the result of bio-chemical warfare. You are now the last of the Cyan Genes. Fight your way from the hordes of Red Viruses and reach the exit. Your path to salvation AWAITS!
2D Top Down Shooter is the two-dimensional action-arcade experience template to make shooter development for the iOS and PC flash games much easier. Blueprint code setup and ready on the go for gameplay and instant action. Continue reading →
Last week, I was live-streaming progress on our latest project Maze Qore and it was somewhat successful. Here is to hoping we can do more of this every week. I have discovered that I can focus and work more efficiently when I am streaming progress on my game for the audience than doing so offline. Perhaps it is motivation boost, the support the fans gave me, or just simply a mental psyche trick.
That said, please check out our official Steam group, that is your best chance at getting notified on live-stream updates and other events, not just on Maze Qore, but with any behind-the-scenes work on our future marketplace projects, games, artwork, and much more.
