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Yes! I feel it is well worth the money and will be in the top Steam sales

11 (36.7%)

No, I have not heard enough about it to make a valued judgment

8 (26.7%)

No, I feel it is too expensive.

4 (13.3%)

Yes

7 (23.3%)

Total Members Voted: 30

Voting closed: August 19, 2011, 09:26:16 am

[Blorfy]

Hi Everyone,

This is Blorfy from MinMax Games (one half of the team that made SPAZ.)

It is great to see the activity on this thread.  We are busily working to have SPAZ ready for a final release by mid august.  Currently we are spending a lot of time on tuning, optimizing, and adding three new features.  Specialists (randomly generated characters that improve ship performance, think diablo items), Arenas (places to battle through a ladder of challenges for large rewards (usually epic level specialists), Bounty hunters (they track you down if you are in one place for too long and also have overpowered experimental ships), and we are also adding side quests to flesh out the main storyline.  It is a pretty tall order for august 15th, but we plan to patch in new features for months after release anyhow so the game will just keep evolving.

By mid august we should be on every major digital distributor.  So wherever you want to get SPAZ it should be there.  In the mean time, here is a link to our demo. 
http://spacepiratesandzombies.com/spazdemo/SpazDemoInstaller_0.9.007.exe If you like it, you can get in on the beta, and your key will continue to work for the final version.

We are also adding skill levels to help with the grind.  Currently SPAZ can ramp quite heavily and would probably skew to a higher difficulty level. 

We are also toying with the idea of taking over stations early on.  More like collecting protection money, but in this case the resource on the station. 

Thanks,

Blorfy

[freeformschooler]

Blorfy, thumbs up on coming to the thread about your game. I have a feeling I would love SPAZ if it ran anything better than awful on my graphics card. It's good to see you're adding the things you are to improve variety and re-playability. Keep it up!

[Anvilfolk]

Those features sound really, really nice! Exactly the type of thing the game needs! Can you explain or link to a place that explains the skills a bit more? I'd love to hear more about it

I'm actually super surprised the game didn't get more attention here. I thoroughly enjoyed, and was going on my second playthrough when I formatted the computer. I suppose it'll be impossible to activate it on Steam if we bought it through Impulse?

[Blorfy]

Hi Anvilfolk,

Glad that you enjoyed SPAZ.   Getting exposure has been really tough actually.  So please tell your friends about us.  We are mostly living on word of mouth. 

I have confirmed with Steam that we will be able to move existing keys over, assuming the contracts go thru.

Specialist skill wise, I will paste what I have in my implementation notes right now

These are just notes off the top of my head, but you can see where we are going.

-- Prerequisites:
   - is prereq is met, +50% effectivness
   - prereqs more common on higher end specialists.
   - // only ever 1 prereq

   - hates/likes men/women/any (based on hated type socketed)
   - fraidy cat, - in infected systems
   - xenophile + in infected systems
   - civ Friend, + if friendly to CIVS
   - uta Friend, + if friendly to UTA
   - war monger, hate hate = +50%
   - civ hate
   - uta hate
   - science, colony, miner, (connections)  + if in those systems
   - suicidal +% if in a system 10 levels higher.
   - bully +% in lower level systems
   - honorable -% in lower level systems
   

- SHIP BOOSTS (maybe should boost all research stats per category?)
   - NOTE: we should probably also boost individual weapons in some cases
   
   - Cannoneer +% to cannon damage
   - cannon range
   - cannon firing speed
   - Beam Guy +% to beam damage
   - beam range
   - beam firing range
   - Missile guy +% to missile damage
   - Hull strength
   - shield strength
   - engine speed
   - reactor power
   - capacitor size
   - cloak strength
   - bonus first strike cloak damage
   - crew battle strength
   - mass bombs strength
   - mine damage
   - drone specialist damage et all.
   - Armor strength
   - Hull cargo
   - Hull Max crew
   - engineer (increase booster power)
   - mechanic (repair rate)
   - boost based on ship size
   - boost based on weapon size
   - NOTE: some stats should have imbedded negatives like _ 50% reactor power, -50% capacitor size, pos + related neg
   - +% cannons -%missiles

- Gameplay boosts
   - researcher data acquired bonus
   - interogator (crew conversion chance)
   - miner (rez drops increased)
   - innocent (harder to make enemy ships angry)
   - guilty look (easier to make enemy ships angry)
   - builder, build speed increase
   - miner, science, colony ambasador (cheaper goon exchange rates with that type of base)
   - diplomat (uber ambasador) rare   
   - bargain hunter - cheaper components
   - cloning expert (goons on mothership increase on levelup)
   - Trader cheaper conversion of goons/rez/data
   - lower build costs

- Sector 4 Stuff
   - Security base engineer (cheaper sec stations)
   - Science base engineer
   - Colony base engineer
   - Mining base engineer
   - Recruiting expert (faster global recruiting)
   - Research expert (faster data generation)
   - Mining Expert (faster rez generation)
   - Militia leader (better system defense)
   - stealthy jumper +1 jumps before zombie interception
   - bonus ally ship
   - slow zombie egg laying rate
   - watchman (auto vent when down to 2 crewmembers and invaded)
   - fleet tech (higher tech fleet ships)
   - scrounger (bigger fleet ships)
   - extra ally ship
   - unscented (zombies critters cant see you long range)
   - stinky (opposite of unscented)
   - failsafe, chance to self destruct ship before it is converted by zombies
   

[Levi]

I don't know what any of that means, but I do look forward to adding your game to my queue ones its out on steam. 

[Fanofgaming]

Oh, man. This is a great game. I've been making an LP of it on Youtube [/shamelessselfpromotion]. I've logged around 6 hours in it and I'm nowhere near completion. I love the variety of ships and how you actually have to use tactics in order to survive some of the harder battles, and I love even more how you have to be careful who you piss off. Though I'm perfectly happy with the my currently outdated version (you can't update in the middle of an LP!), I just can't wait to get my hands on what Blorfy would consider to be the final product.

[SeaBee]

I tried the demo awhile back and really enjoyed it. Once the grindy bits are reduced a little, I'll probably give it a shot. The list of upcoming enhancements looks good!

[alexpoysky]

NICE! Can't wait for it to be a top seller on steam! Here's to your (hopeful) success!

[hemmingjay]

I've said it before and I'll say it again(at least once more), this game is worth buying. It's a pick up and play game but has a bit more depth than the usual suspects. What is best is that the dev is committed to excellence. I can only hope that they continue to support it in the long run. Kudos Blorfy!

[Audioworm333]

"Combat in SPAZ is all physics based.  This means that if you can avoid a shot, it will not hit you."
And then I downloaded the demo.

[Anvilfolk]

I'm really hoping this will stay in the Top Sellers section of Steam for awhile - I really don't see why not, especially if it remains at this $15 price point.

Thanks for the extra info! All that sounds super interesting, giving more details and something more to work for during the game.

I think the main thing that is missing in the game - for me - is the fact that systems are disjoint. You can harass the UTA in one sector, jump once, and they'll love you. I really want to feel like I'm having an impact on the game world. I remember playing Starscape to completion and feeling bad, because I was just doing the same thing over and over again in order to progress. Why was I wasting my time doing that? No new gameplay, no new ships, nothing! I feel that while SPAZ has moved away from that quite a bit, by having progression with levelling up and getting new ships, it still has a bit of that feeling where you're repeating the same gameplay over and over to get further - lucky for SPAZ, the gameplay is amazing and much more varied. I don't know, suppose you attacked the UTA in a system almost to a point where their presence is nil. Then maybe a joint civilian fleet from nearby systems could attack the UTA and drive it out of the system for good. Meanwhile, the UTA would counter attack one of those systems which was now less defended, etc etc, and you could be part of these battles. That would make a changing, more dynamic gameworld. But that's just the kind of thing I like

I also have a "fetish" for big ships, for the idea of scale. One day, I'm going to make a game where you start as a lowly fighter pilot. You launch from a battleship so massive that it takes you, say, 30s to go from end to the other in your fighter ship. Then one day, you can command that battleship. I got a bit of this, as I progressed through the ships. I love the feeling of the capital ships... slow, ponderous, lots of tactics to get to the right place at the right time. I just wished I could have a massive space fleet

[SeaBee]

I also have a "fetish" for big ships, for the idea of scale. One day, I'm going to make a game where you start as a lowly fighter pilot. You launch from a battleship so massive that it takes you, say, 30s to go from end to the other in your fighter ship. Then one day, you can command that battleship. I got a bit of this, as I progressed through the ships. I love the feeling of the capital ships... slow, ponderous, lots of tactics to get to the right place at the right time. I just wished I could have a massive space fleet

I want this game.

[Mini]

I think the main thing that is missing in the game - for me - is the fact that systems are disjoint. You can harass the UTA in one sector, jump once, and they'll love you. I really want to feel like I'm having an impact on the game world. I remember playing Starscape to completion and feeling bad, because I was just doing the same thing over and over again in order to progress. Why was I wasting my time doing that? No new gameplay, no new ships, nothing! I feel that while SPAZ has moved away from that quite a bit, by having progression with levelling up and getting new ships, it still has a bit of that feeling where you're repeating the same gameplay over and over to get further - lucky for SPAZ, the gameplay is amazing and much more varied. I don't know, suppose you attacked the UTA in a system almost to a point where their presence is nil. Then maybe a joint civilian fleet from nearby systems could attack the UTA and drive it out of the system for good. Meanwhile, the UTA would counter attack one of those systems which was now less defended, etc etc, and you could be part of these battles. That would make a changing, more dynamic gameworld. But that's just the kind of thing I like

I recall that actually being a thing in the backstory. If I recall correctly it was originally the UTA being big and organised, but then it split up for some reason and each system stopped talking to the other ones.

[alexpoysky]

SPAZ is going to dominate steam, any bets on how long?

[hemmingjay]

I think SPAZ will do very well on steam and other venues, but don't agree with the idea of it dominating. I think it will stay consistently on top sellers for 2 weeks at this price-point. I suspect that a sale at 9.99 would push it back up for a few more weeks. Great games and it deserves success.