Development

Not a Clone Update: Tutorial

| Taro Omiya

Apologize for the lack of update last week. Our regular poster here, Taro Omiya, was sick last weekend. But now he’s doing a lot better!

Our latest Not a Clone updates are general User Interface (UI) polishes, in preparation for the looming release. As those who played our free demo will recognize, we have a rather unusual loading screen that provides messages to the player. We’ve polished this to look more like a text message application it was intended to look like. Both our artist, Astra Wijaya, and writer, Robert Denner (a past collaborator on Letters From Secret Santa, and the person who came up with the text messaging idea), are hard at work putting finishing touches to this unique story-telling medium.

newLoadingScreen

Also debuted with the free demo are the music! The ever-so-talented composer, Spencer Bambrick, has put together some great music for this game, including the calming menu theme below. Check it out!

Finally, Taro Omiya has been putting together some extra polishes to the game over screen, including a short tutorial on how to navigate the shop menu.

tutorial2

We’ll be continuing our weekly Twitch live-stream next Tuesday, 3:00 PM EDT at twitch.tv/japtar10101. Our plan is to add new purchasable upgrades to the game! If you missed the last one, where we constructed the new text message loading screen, you can check it out in the Youtube video below.

Not a Clone Free Demo released!

| Taro Omiya

After a ton of updates and teasing, we’re proud to announce that the demo version for Not a Clone is out right now! You can find our free demo (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) in these web portals below:

  1. Itch.io
  2. GameJolt
  3. Newgrounds
  4. SlideDB
  5. Kongregate

What is Not a Clone, you ask? Here’s the full game description:

What if you were given a backdoor pass to a site filled with the hottest mobile games currently climbing the charts? What if just by playing the games well enough, you were able to earn money to buy even more games? Would you jump at the chance or just let it pass?
Not A Clone is a frantic exercise in quick-thinking and even quicker responding. Featuring over two dozen original and parody mini-games, you must play through them one after another, chaining your successes into the highest score possible for possible fame and prizes. Beat your friends to the top of the leaderboards! Earn Zeni to purchase more games!

You have five seconds to get through each mini-game that is thrown at you by following the instructions that appear on the screen. The further you go, the harder it gets. How long will you last before your device runs out of power? Will you earn enough to unlock your next challenge? Will you know which games are being parodies and which games are not a clone?

We’re still hard at work putting together the final release for the game, but we’re confident in the game’s current state to present to you a good taste at what is coming up. Let us know what you think!

Not a Clone Update: Ridiculous Piñatas

| Taro Omiya

While we had to skip the update last week due to some life-related reasons, we’re back with some new information about Not a Clone! First, the great news: we’ll be uploading a demo version of the game very soon. This will provide a sneak-peek at what’s in store for the full version. The full version of the game, meanwhile, still needs a few more polishes (mainly bug fixes) and an occasional feature or two.

For this week, we’ve successfully integrated Astra Wijaya’s artwork to Ridiculous Piñatas. Those who watched our stream might recall the large number of problems we had with this microgame, but rest assured it’s been fixed as proven by the clip below:

RidiculousPinatas2

Also new to a game is a new unlockable: the lucky coin. Every once-in-a-while, a coin will appear in the menu that transitions from one minigame to the other. Tapping on it provides more money to spend in the shop later.

Coin3

We will NOT be streaming next week, as we’ll be busy putting together finishing polishes to the demo build. Still, stay tuned!

Not a Clone Update: Ridiculous Rockets

| Taro Omiya

We have a short Not a Clone update this week. We finished integrating Astra Wijaya’s artwork for Ridiculous Rockets last Tuesday (May 10th, 3:00 PM EDT) in our weekly live-stream:

Ridiculous Rockets 1

As always, our stream’s highlight is available here: twitch.tv/japtar10101/v/65721074.

Next Tuesday’s 3:00 PM EDT stream (at twitch.tv/japtar10101) will cover the last microgame that needs art integration before release! The rest of the stream will focus on adding the last few left-over features in the game.

Not a Clone Update: Make Me Happy

| Taro Omiya

After some technical difficulties with our weekly live-stream last Tuesday (May 3rd, 3:00 PM EDT), we’ve successfully integrated Astra Wijaya’s artwork to the comical animal caring simulator, Make Me Happy. Or is it a complimenting-a-classmate simulator? You decide!

Make Me Happy success

Such a romantic micro-game wouldn’t be complete without any heartbreaks! Fortunately, we deliver on that front, too:

Make Me Happy fail 2

As always, our stream’s highlight is available here: twitch.tv/japtar10101/v/64383068. Next Tuesday’s 3:00 PM EDT stream (at twitch.tv/japtar10101) will cover one of the last two sketches we’ve posted so stay tuned!

The Not a Clone Update to Unlock All Secrets

| Taro Omiya

Our weekly live-stream continued last Tuesday (April 26th, 3:00 PM EDT) with a completion of Unlock, the handy puzzle micro-game about moving a key out of its keyhole. The end result? We’ve successfully integrated Astra Wijaya’s artwork to a thrilling tale of thievery:

unlock

For those interested, our stream’s highlight is available here: twitch.tv/japtar10101/v/63164094. This still leaves one more sketch from last week’s Not a Clone post, which will be the highlight of this Tuesday’s 3:00 PM EDT stream (twitch.tv/japtar10101). That said, we still have more new sketches!

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More mysterious microgame sketches approaches!

| Taro Omiya

Last post, we’ve mentioned we would stream last Tuesday at 3:00 PM EST. Unfortunately, due to a schedule conflict, were we not able to stream that day (we did stream ourselves playing Ludum Dare 35 games, though). On the plus side, we did release a new game during the game jam!

We will be busy handling Ludum Dare-related business for the next two weeks, but we do have a few updates on Not a Clone. As usual, Astra Wijaya put together a few sketches for the next set of microgames we’ll be working on:

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What will these microgames be? Tune in next week to find out!

Edit: Oh, whoops, we forgot to mention that Pushing Buttons is now done:

pushingButtons