2015-04-26 21:44:18 (edited by philip_bennefall 2015-04-27 17:32:06)

VGStorm.com and Blastbay Studios are happy to announce the availability of our new game, Psycho Strike!

Psycho Strike is a mix between an RPG, a side scroller and an adventure game. It captures the best parts of each genre in order to create a truly unique and groundbreaking gaming experience.

In Psycho Strike, you take the roll of a gangster leader. Throughout your adventure you will have the opportunity to collect weapons, recruit new criminals for your team of violent outlaws, collect more and more powerful items to fortify your base, and just terrorize the city in general.

The game is available for download and purchase from www.vgstorm.com. The demo has no time limit, but restricts some areas and ends when any of the people in your team reach experience level 8. The game can be purchased for 24.95 USD.

A word of warning: The game features violence, drugs, and other themes not suitable for younger players. We advise that no children under the age of 16 play the game without parental approval.

We hope you enjoy this title and look forward to hearing your thoughts! Please direct any questions, bug reports or other comments to vgstorm.com, or respond directly here. Thanks for reading!

2015-04-26 21:59:53

hi
god this game is wunderfull

2015-04-26 22:06:54

Fantastic on the new game release!

A little word of notice:

The "Demo Limitations' section is featuring info from the wrong game.

Just wanted to point that out...

2015-04-26 22:08:12

Hi.

This game sounds awesome! Unfortunately, i cannot run it. I'm using a Windows XP virtual machine and when I run the program, it says it is not a valid win32 application. Any help?

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.

2015-04-26 22:40:38

This is sounding very awsome indeed!

Just one question. Does it involve mouse control? I have no problem if it does, indeed mouse control is cool, however if so I'll need to wait until tuesday before playing because currently I'm on my laptop at my parents which doesn't have a mouse (it has a touch pad but some rather bad swamp experiments prove I am no good with this for gaming).

I will say gangsters aren't a favourite theme of mine, but on the other hand I love exploring, rpgs, stratogy and action games, so I'm certainly looking forward to giving this one a try, indeed I very much suspect I'll end up buying it as I did paladin of the skies.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2015-04-26 22:42:18

Hi Dark,

No, the game uses keyboard input only. There are quite a few keystrokes, but they are fairly easy to memorize. Good luck and have fun!

Kind regards,

Philip Bennefall

2015-04-26 22:55:03

Hi,

Just a clarification, so far, the readme, nor the game, have shown first person shooter elements. None of the game is actually played in first person, rather in a top-down scroller perspective.
The agme is still awesome though! Just thought I'd point this out, since many people seem to mistake the term first person game. I consider a first person game to be a game where you hear everything from the direct perspective of the player. In this game, your perspective does not change and is relative to the board, not the player. If you get my drift.
Still, nice work!

--
Talon
Wanna play my Games? Listen to my Music? Follow me on Twitter, and say hi~
Code is poetry.

2015-04-26 23:08:47

Awsome, I'm glad I don't have to wait to try this one, it is downloading now, although saying "I won't have to wait" is relative given my parents have a far slower net connection than I do at my flat and it'll take half an hour to download the installer, so I hope the game is worth it big_smile.

Btw, Gorthalen is correct on the fps. If you cannot turn in 360 degrees hearing the sounds change around you, it's not first person, sinse first person by deffinition means that it's from the perspective of a person in real space, ie, you hear stuff in front of you the way your facing. Games like operation black square, the walking portion of entombed or paladin of the skies I tend to think of as third person top down, sinse you effectively hear what is around the character, not from the character's perspective. I'm not sure if the game genres info page is working on the db yet or not, but  I've written a hopefully reasonable   deffinition of irst person on there.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2015-04-26 23:12:03

Fill, oh my god. Why don't you just call this GTa for the blind... its pretty much that! But awesomer! I haven't actually played it but it just soudns what i have asked for! I will pay 3000 dollars if i could!

I am the blind jedi, I use the force to see. I am the only blind jedi.

2015-04-26 23:54:02

Okay, when running the game I got this error:

---------------------------
C:\fun program files\VGStorm.com\Psycho Strike\strike.exe
---------------------------
C:\fun program files\VGStorm.com\Psycho Strike\strike.exe is not a valid Win32 application.


C:\fun program files\VGStorm.com\Psycho Strike\strike.exe
C:\fun program files\VGStorm.com\Psycho Strike\strike.exe is not a valid Win32 application.
OK


If the game will not work on xp I will be disappointed, particularly sinse all of vgstorms other games have, as have other applications made with bgt.

I definitely hope this error can be fixed.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2015-04-27 00:00:45

Because calling it that way could be pretty riskyin regards to copyright laws. But I get what you mean. :-D
Although the game is not as complex as GTA can be, it's certainly on the right track.

I have evaluated it only briefly so far as my only remaining earphones are currently broken in the annoying way that only the right one plays audio, so I'll need to get new and better ones in the next few days. I'm not yet sure if I'm going to buy it or not but nevertheless I have to say it's pretty interesting and fascinating in a way as I dare to say it's the first of its kind among audiogames.

As for RPG, there seem to be more or less only the party management and character buildup factors rather than exploration and stuff, but still it's an interesting combination of an action game/shooter, strategy game and adventure. Even the non-realtime part where you manage your gang and do not engage in direct real-time battles does feature the concept of virtual game time, so that's also pretty cool.
I also appreciated the NPC AI features that I could experience so far. Reminds me of the way it has been done in Perilous Hearts, and as far as I can tell, no other audiogame has done anything this complex or even more so before. I like how the enemies sometimes decide to get out of your weapon's range quickly, wait for a while so that you lose track of their current exact position and then attack you quickly and stealthily, or how some of them decide to try to get as far away from you as possible, begging you not to hurt them any more. :-D
I haven't unfortunately been able to get any other characters to join me yet as I was killed during my first attempt to rescue someone from the prison. :-D
I loved the various character voice clips. I think I didn't get even a single one to repeat for the same situation yet. wonder if the game tries to keep track of what has been said in what situation during the current session and only allows for clips to be repeated if all the available ones for the given circumstances have already been used, or if I've just simply played it for such a short period of time and there are so many of them that such a coincidence couldn't occur yet.
I also wonder how epic the more difficult stages, with higher-leveled gang members, and the more dangerous and cool weapons sound. :-)
And who knows, its also perfectly possible that I haven't yet been able to encounter some of the game's elements that can only occur in the full version or only when a certain combination of circumstances is met.

Keep up the great work! I'll be looking forward to any possible collaborative endeavours that you might decide to accomplish in the future. :-)

Lukas

I won't be using this account any more or participating in the forum activity through other childish means like creating an alternate account. I've asked for the account to be removed but I'm not sure if that's actually technically possible here. Just writing this for people to know that I won't be replying, posting new topics or checking private messages until the account is potentially removed.

2015-04-27 00:01:48

Any advice on how to get someone to join you?

Kingdom of Loathing name JB77

2015-04-27 00:03:03

hi
sorry but I don't stand
I m buy pistol
but where is it?

2015-04-27 00:18:32

I pass the opening stage and then have no idea how to continue. Most things are able to beat me up rather easily and I see no way of gaining better weapons or anything.

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

2015-04-27 00:21:39

Hello,
Nice job Phillip and Aaron, honestly. Having played all of your guys'
titles that you made separately, I do not have a hard time believing that you guys made this together. The elements from both your guys' games seem to be combined here, creating one awesome hunk of code. I also sense a very strong resemblance to perrillous hearts, and I suspect this is where some the old core code from that went. I do have one suggestion that, although small, would be extremely helpful. Could it be at all possible to mass distribute stuff among your gang? For example, type in a number of food to hand out and divide it among them so I don't have to do it individually?Keep up the good work though!

2015-04-27 00:24:12 (edited by Chris 2015-04-27 00:26:49)

Hi.

Yeah, this appears to be an XP issue. I had to use a WIndows 7 VM instead of an XP VM to play this.

This is interesting. I find that I am beat up and killed rather quickly and have to end the mission. I can't figure out how to get more weapons though. I need better weapons, because thek nife is nearly useless. Also, the level 8 demo restriction is annoying, particularly when I level up every time I leave a mission. Still, this is an interesting game and I'll keep playing with it.

I can say that I like the concept though. Oh, another question. Is there and end to the game? I noticed it asked for an objective, so maybe there is once reaching the objective?

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.

2015-04-27 00:33:25

I  tried redownloading and reinstalling, but no luck. Well I hope  the xp error can be fixed, sinse it's a pest, and not something that occurred with any of vgstorm's or Blastbay's other games and I'd be sorry to miss out on this one.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2015-04-27 01:17:13

Hi guys,

I'll try to address all the things that were brought up so far. Aaron, chip in if I missed anything.

@Ghorthalon: Regarding the point of view in gameplay, you do follow a certain character all the time. In short, it is the same type of perspective as in Q9 etc, where the other people are heard based on your own position. If you bring other gang members with you, they will sound just like all the other characters in the stage which is to say further away in the stereo field based on distance. So the perspective is first person, but the person you control can vary from mission to mission.

@Chris: The game does not have a definite ending. After completing your objective you can continue to play indefinitely if you like, but the number of levels that you can reach is limited.

@dark: The game is supposed to work on XP, though neither of us have an XP machine at hand for easy testing. I will investigate in the next couple of days. XP compatibility is possible in Visual Studio 2013 which is what BGT is built with, but it is not on by default so you have to tweak a little.


Regarding what to do after the first stage, it's really up to you. I would suggest getting some food, though, and then perhaps to go to the bank or the weapon shop. To get more gang members, you visit the prison.

@alec: I think this is a good suggestion. We'll consider it for the next release!

Kind regards,

Philip Bennefall

2015-04-27 01:23:58

After feeding you or your gang food, does that make your stats matter more? My guy was only hungry by three percent, which isn't all that bad. Even so, I wish weapons and such in the weapon shop had a slower disappearing time because I haven't been able to grab any. I guess you really can't break doors open with your fists, and in the weapon shop, all that's spawned for me is pistol cartrages and not pistols themselves...

2015-04-27 01:25:33

The reason I can think of the crashes happening is that either the game or the elias dll which is the only external library used were compiled in some way that XP doesn't much care for. Could be incompatibilities with visual c redistributables, or something else. This forced me to use my bootcamp partition  to play. Not that I mind because I ended up buying the game 20 minutes after playing with the demo.

As far as genre, I wouldn't classify this as an FPS, but calling it a beatemup wouldn't be all that inaccurate considering you get to throw bottles at people. I really like how you can take various aproaches to playing, for example you could just rob the bank by killing everyone and grabbing all the cash they drop, or grab a few bombs and just do horrible things to the vault, it's very much up to you. Generally, I think the AI is quite nice as well, but I'd really love to see some very basic voice commands like follow me, wait here, return to base, go ahead/behind and, well, that's it really. Having your gangmates is quite helpful, but sometimes they will go doing very counterintuitive things, like when trying to rob the bank, I can usually have them help me with the first vault, but usually at the second they will find attacking random people or cops more interesting, which would be OK but they walk off towards the exit, get bogged down because they made so much noise and get captured.

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2015-04-27 01:46:21

What great news! Surely it is an excellent game as all that make by Philip and VGStorm.com
Thanks. Downloading it!

Cristian.

2015-04-27 02:05:22

How exactly do you get captured by the police? Is it when enough of the AI surround your character? I had that happen to me. Also, how do you break open the bank vaults or prison doors? I noticed it kept playing a breaking sound when I attacked it with the knife, but I always got overrun by cops. Where can I find better weapons? Keep in mind I'm still playing the demo. THislooks good though so I may be purchasing it.

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.

2015-04-27 02:08:13

You do not see out of the eyes of your character, or hear out of the ears of your character. Thusly, it's not first person. Right is in front of the character, left is behind the character, or it usually is in these scrollers. This means if it was first person, if you did turn around, the stuf that was to your left would now be to your right.
In every game, usually, the camera or main listening point follows the player. However, in this case, it still is seperated.
The only reason why this matters so much to me is because people will get utterly confused. And I was, actually, hoping for a more first person type of action when downloading it. LOL
I do love the idea though and am considering buying it. Especially since it will most likely do a very good PG13 stream!

--
Talon
Wanna play my Games? Listen to my Music? Follow me on Twitter, and say hi~
Code is poetry.

2015-04-27 03:08:15

This is great! I always wanted to play a game like this. I haven't tried it yet, but I assume it doesn't have cars. If it did, that would be even better! That way it could be similar to GTA. Maybe that could be released in a next update? Anyway, I'm about to try it, and if it's as great as I think it is I'll definitely consider purchasing it!
smile

2015-04-27 03:18:06

Hello!
I'd just like to clear up some of the common questions people are having.
1: To get new weapons to spawn in the weapon shop, you have to increase your level. The higher your level, the better weapons will spawn. The shop owner sometimes has a weapon that is unobtainable in any other way but killing them, as well.
2: Weapons and items never disappear, but the other players can pick them up. You still might be able to get it back though by killing them.
3: Prison doors and bank vaults take a very long time to break, you just have to keep at it.

I've also seen a few great suggestions so far, and, like Philip said, we'll certainly keep them in mind!
Regards,
Aaron