Let’s Talk About Red Dwarf XI: The Game

[Ian Symes]

The game is now out! Well, it’s out on the App Store at any rate – the Play Store will presumably follow soon. It’s going to be pretty tricky to discuss this on the front page, as the game contains spoilers for Twentica, and people are watching at different paces. Also, some people might want to play through without having any surprises spoiled.

So, for now at least, let’s confine any specific discussion of the game’s contents to this thread. ONLY READ AHEAD IF YOU’RE OK WITH GAME SPOILERS!

My very early impressions were as follows:

Ooh, Robert Llewellyn voiceover!
Haha, they spelled “welcome” wrong.
This is pretty good.
This is tricky.
Ooh, it’s a prequel! That’s clever.
ZOMG, I’m playing as Rimmer.
FUCKING SHOOT THE BAZOOKOID PROPERLY
HOW CAN I DIE, I’M A HARD LIGHT HOLOGRAM.

[Jonsmad]

I new my iphone 4 would be just below the tech level required to get on the same operating system. I might as well be a broken toaster in the 1920’s/50’s. I can down load a tension sheet app apparently!

[Jonsmad]

Exclusive content written by Doug Naylor. Play as your favourite characters. It says on the screenshots.

[Jonsmad]

Frequent “Free” updates will be released as the series progresses mirroring the storylines featured in the episodes.

[si]

I’m shit at playing games. I played for about 45 minutes earlier, and have got no further than the third part of the scanning bit. My brother had managed to get on to Rimmer’s bit when I left him, but he told me that it had got stuck and the target wouldn’t moven or something.
Liked the beginning, though. Looking forward to exploring a bit more later.

[locusceruleus]

I’m waiting for it to pop up on the Google Play store. Think releases are generally midnight on there, so fingers crossed for an hour or so.

[curtis]

Finished the first set of levels. Pretty hard. Quite nice though. Kind of massacres the Twentica script.

[pendo86]

Enjoyed it for what it is. I like that some of the levels explored things not seen onscreen, such as collecting the Casket of Cronos and what Rimmer did when he was taken.

The controllability of the characters is awful, and don’t get me started on those car levels. I’m looking forward to seeing what Samsara brings to the game.

[locusceruleus]

Bah, No sign.

[typeforty]

The controls for Rimmer are absolutely abysmal. If, as is suggested above, that’s the case for future sections, that may be a game breaker.

That said, I enjoyed the first and third sections (and that’s as far as I’ve got so far). They’re tough but enjoyably so.

I could have done without the twentica script being presented like that. Cover the plot point in a couple of dialogue boxes and move on – let people watch the episode in its own form.

So yes, I’ve got gripes, and the control thing is a big one, but the main thing for me is that it’s not another bloody match-3 game, and even if the rest of the game turns out to be a massive turd I’m happy to pay money for developers to show a bit of ambition and try something different.

[Bezzy]

I’m quite enjoying it. It’s a bit fiddly and the controls on some of the parts are strange, but theres a lot of variety.

[Pete Part Three]

Well, the first level is a bit cack. I played for about 3 mins on the tube earlier and got very quickly bored of simply mashing the screen with my thumb. Pretty hard to aim with something that obscures the view of what you’re aiming at.

[John Milhous Nixon]

My thoughts so far:

– Fun little game, nothing mind-blowing but certainly worth the asking price of half-a-pint.

– That difficulty level. Hmmm. I’m geeky enough to have completed Halo games on ‘Legendary’ difficulty, so I like to think I’m reasonably good at games – but some parts of this are TOUGH. That could alienate a lot of potential players (hell, I even ragequit a few times) which is a shame. Can’t have been that hard to add Easy/Normal/Hard options, can it?

– Episode-themed content. When this was announced, I expected it would just be tiny additional stuff added to a base game, like extra lines of dialogue or new items in the cockpit. But no – it seems like each episode is going to have a multi-level story devoted to it (I assume). That’s a lot of content being added for free each week.

– Controls aren’t great, but they very rarely are on ios games.

– Ship scan level had me worried at first – is this what the whole game is going to be like??? But, no, there’s a lot of variety. Rimmer hostage level is fun, Time Surf reminded me of the bonus stages in Sonic 2 (yes, I’m old), the piloting Starbug bit is a nice reaction-time minigame, and the Kryten nipple level is … well, a Kryten nipple level.

– Overall I’m really impressed. It shows that a lot can be done with the license. It would be amazing if Doug teamed up with someone like Telltale Games to make an episodic, console-quality experience.

[(deleted)]

I can see Red Dwarf fitting the Telltale engine very well. Like Doctor Who it’s something which is surprisingly difficult to reimagine as a game so I can only visualise it as a reskin of something already existing.

The Lego engine would suit it. Not completely impossible, though my tolerance for “Red Dwarf” and “Lego” in the same breath has worn down to a nerve. #votesmeng

[peepingsignal]

I just get a black screen when I open it. Anyone else get this?

[peepingsignal]

Wait nevermind just had to turn the phone off and on again.

[(deleted)]

Spoilers.

[peepingsignal]

At first I liked it, didn’t love it. The controls on the Rimmer level were quite wonky. But any game that lets me recharge Kryten’s Nipple Nuts gets an automatic 9.5/10 from me.

At first I only thought there was a few levels per episode but no, the whole fucking episode is playable. I thought it was just until the time jump. I’ve yet to go beyond just after the crash but so far so good.

[si]

Downloaded on iOS last night, managed to get no further than Scan Ship part three. I’m shit. Plus my frenetic tapping of the screen meant my mum kept thinking I was sitting having a fit over in the corner.
Although, having said that, my brother’s managed to get further than me and has suggested that I might want to let him take over when I reach the Time Surf section as it might not be great for my health.
Downloaded Android version this morning (i have two phones at the mo due to me smashing my brand new Android phone after my Council Tax went up), and have managed to get as far as the same point, and failing in exactly the same way.

[JEZZMUND]

Anyone else seeing typos and cringing like fuck?

[Bezzy]

The car levels controls are horrid :( also feels like the level is never ending

[JamesTC]

An octopus has three hearts.

[JEZZMUND]

Ugh… the car levels were fucking awful. If you slow to a stop it’ll often bug and stop moving no matter what you do.

The sneaky levels are a bitch though…

[Pete Part Three]

I think I’m done. The Starbug Controls level is just too dull, and every stage lasts for an eternity testing your patience with the awful controls rather than any skill. I’d have deleted this straight away if it wasn’t Red Dwarf.

[typeforty]

It does get a bit repetitive. “That level was diverting, wasn’t it? Almost fun, even. Now please repeat it three more times but slightly quicker.”

[Ridley]

It does get a bit repetitive. “That level was diverting, wasn’t it? Almost fun, even. Now please repeat it three more times but slightly quicker.”

I hope that’s a line from the game.

[Pete Part Three]

I got a Lex Luthor in Superman 64 vibe in the first stage, frankly.

[GlenTokyo]

Controls are pretty bad but it’s the camera more than anything. The controls are pretty standard for a non specific genre mobile game.

What they really need are health pickups, put those in and you’re golden because there are some levels where as far as I can tell, you can’t not get injured. Like the Rimmer escape, even if you nail the expenoids within the first swing, they fire a shot at you.

[Bezzy]

The car level needs health pickups

[JEZZMUND]

I wonder if, as your ship levels up and the new episodic content comes in, you get to spend that ‘XP’ on more weapon damage / bigger health pool etc

[GlenTokyo]

Are there leaderboards somewhere?

[Bezzy]

I like that the game starts before the episode. Where you find the attack ship. There’s a few additional writing parts there. Dunno if those parts are written by Doug or not.

[Jonsmad]

[Jonsmad]

https://youtu.be/CccfDMW2TN8

Nah I dont buy this being in universe. Rimmer would run away!

[Jonsmad]

https://youtu.be/LAPC_mB5kJ8 Ah there is the ad on the official channel.

[Jonathan Capps]

We’ve done published a first impressions video over on the YouTube channel. This is me playing blind, and covering most of the first three missions:

I’ve since completed the Twentica comment and… well, yeah it went a bit downhill for me. There are problems, but they’re interesting ones, so there’ll likely be a short review coming in the next few days to wrap up my thoughts.

[Jayenkai]

I haven’t gotten very far. I stopped midway through the Rimmer level where bazookoids suddenly fire lasers that no longer fizz when hitting the scenery.
Honestly, I was bored.
I’m not a fan of “now do the same thing three more times” gameplay extensions.
At the very least, give us a “I CBA” one-round-per-game mode.

I’m also not a fan of static “show photo of person, add text.” gubbins, either.
Remember the Mobisodes?
Imagine a 3D cockpit/scene, with mobisodes style characters, and little speech bubbles with the dialogue.
.. infinitely more interesting than “here is a picture with some text”
You have an engine, use it!

Speaking of which, why is that a static photo on the titlescreen? Why is that not a full featured 3D model that we can pan and scan around? Seriously, why??! With options to switch the titlescreen for other unlockable models along the way.
That would be nice.
That would be more interesting.
Bah..

I’m very disappointed by this.

.. and that’s pretty much without complaining about the actual games themselves.
As the creator of many many (many!) games, I know what bad gameplay is. When it’s boring, repetitive, uncontrollable and dull, that’s not a good game.

[Ian Symes]

I’ve just got to the driving level and ARGH GOD NO STAB STAB KILL

[Bezzy]

The driving levels are terrible. I like that it’s a variety of minigames and looking forward to what the others bring but the controls are horrid. I liked the look of the Starbug cockpit controls though.

[pendo86]

GameDigits got in touch with me after my comments about the controls on Twitter and asked me for some feedback. They seem really keen to make the best game possible and want it to be good for the fans. I told them about the controls on some levels and they have gotten back to me about it:

Thank you so much for this write up of the game, it’s very much appreciated and very useful indeed. We didn’t want to make just a cash cow game for this, like a match-three game or similar so we went to a variated comprehensive game that mirrors the series.

Given the time constraints on the project this was always going to be a bit of a risky strategy, but far better than creating something throwaway.

Now that the game has been released and we can get player feedback, this write up is perfect. We aim to go through and rebalance the game, and we agree with points on here – the controls need work, the car especially (incidentally, that was a game suggested by Doug Naylor himself). The car level itself is a real killer to complete, the most damage is dealt when hitting characters, but I feel we balanced was way too harsh on initial release. Kudos for finishing it though!

We purposefully made the game hard on first release because we believe the first wave of players would be die-hard Red Dwarf fans and likely to be gamers too – we may have gone a little too far in that respects!

We’ve already put an update into submission and waiting for Apple to review it, it doesn’t address all the issues we we felt it was necessary to get it out to fix the majority of them anyway. We’ve made it easier (still, not too easy) and we plan on added health pickups and helpers along the way too.

I cannot fault the guys at GameDigits one bit, and the game, despite it’s control issues, still is fun and entertaining and I really enjoy it.

(Ian from GameDigits also told me I was the first person to complete it. How smug does that make me haha!)

[Jonathan Capps]

Solid community management, there. That’s really good.

[Pete Part Three]

The updated version is available on iOS.

[Bezzy]

That’s great! I love their apology for the ‘wellcome’ lol

[locusceruleus]

Anyone else having trouble getting it to install on Android? I’ve got nearly 1gb free but it fails every time. Downloads all the way then ‘can’t install’.

[Bezzy]

The update hasn’t changed much , other than in the car episode there are more Expanoids and less wondering civilians , bumping into barrels doesn’t hurt health as much as it did.

[Jonsmad]

Really enjoyed that video first look. Thanks. Mainly as I’m interested in the games design and links to the episodes, and not fussed about actually playing it. Watching it was a bit like a dwarf cast version of Marooned. Instead of the whole team commenting on an episode we get just cappsy in peril being hits with rocks!!!

I’m trying to remember if that first line from cat about dungarees was cut from early in the starbug scenes, I think it might have been from memory of the recording night. Not sure though.

Confirmation there from game digits that doug wrote in the car into the episode with at least the game partly in mind in the process.

I look forward to the review finishing up video. Would love a walk through video of the entire game to be honest . Though I might try that emulator you speak of.

[GameDigits]

Hi Guys, I’m Ian MD/Developer from GameDigits who made the Red Dwarf XI game.

We’ve been following this thread for a while now and thank you for all the comments and feedback on the game so far. Especially to Dan for his feedback, and Jonathan for putting together the first look video. It is a very fair summation of the first parts of the game, great work (by the way, top tip: you can shoot and scan at the same time on the Ship Scan).

Although there’s a very mixed response on here, there’s certainly a lot we can take from here to improve the game and we plan to keep updating the game responding to feedback as much as possible as well as adding new content for the upcoming episodes too.

Admittedly, the game was created within a tight time frame (a lot of mobile games are due to the risky nature of the business) and we could have easily played it safe and made a match-three game, or some short throwaway experience. However, we didn’t do that, we wanted to make something much more ambitious than that for you guys and given the time & budget on this, what has been produced has been truly phenomenal. We also didn’t pander to the free to play mechanisms that spoil a lot of mobile game experiences.

That said, the game isn’t perfect, we understand that. However, we want to make the best game for Red Dwarf imaginable, we’re huge fans, why wouldn’t we? Now we have the feedback from initial release, we will act on it and keep improving the game.

Please bear in mind that this process isn’t an instant, the first update you have seen was literally a days work. This is because Apple’s review process takes 2-3 days to complete in order to get the game on to the App Store, therefore we made a first pass of fixing the major issues within the first day of release! We are currently working on another update right now, with health pick ups, better camera/controls on the characters, easier game balancing and much more given the feedback from threads like this.

Ultimately, if we have your support on this, there’s a likely chance that we would make an other game for Series XII – but we would have much more time and budget and really go to town on it, how cool would that be! Unfortunately, this isn’t likely to happen if people are giving 1 star reviews because not everything is fixed in the first update given one day of development time. Therefore, it’ll be great if you could keep supporting us on this, we’re on the same side, give us the constructive feedback we need and we will continue improving it, making it the best Red Dwarf game ever made!

[Ian Symes]

Ian, you are a top man. Thanks for signing up.

[Bezzy]

Thank you for joining up Ian. From the reviews I’ve seen on the App Store people have just played maybe the first part, assumed it’s all like that and left it. I’ve given a good review and I’m still playing it (trying to get better scores and upping my space miles) . Looking forward to all the added extras and improvements.

[Jonathan Capps]

Thanks very much, Ian, this is superb support. I think in the opening Starbug section I was a bit screwed by using a mouse on an emulator, hence why I wanted it to be clear I was playing on an entirely unsupported platform, with an unsupported control system. I’m difficult like that.

I’m putting together a brief review of the rest of the episode today, so I’ll highlight your post here and keep directing discussion to this thread so we have a single place for discussion. I’m very excited to see the future updates and content, especially now we know a lot more about the development circumstances and your intentions.

[Author]

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