The Humble Voxatron Debut

In a selfish sort of way, I hope this discussion doesn’t end up being completely dominated by the question of whether the “Humble Bundle” offers are going downhill or whether their web page is well enough designed.<p>I’d like to see Voxatron succeed, not only because it’s the most interesting indie game I’ve played for a long time, but also because I’ve admired Lexaloffle for years, since I became dangerously obsessed with his beautiful game Zen Puzzle Garden, and I like to think that quiet inventiveness and careful dedication deserve the occasional reward.<p>I heard on Saturday that a paper I wrote with Lexaloffle’s Joseph White (and Martyn Amos) has been accepted for publication. We prove that Zen Puzzle Garden is NP-complete. It’s based on a post I made years ago to the old ZPG BBS. Joseph immediately understood the proof, and suggested a significant improvement.<p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ipl.2011.10.016" rel="nofollow">http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ipl.2011.10.016</a> <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.2104v1" rel="nofollow">http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.2104v1</a>

I remember there being some discussion around the Humble Bundle brand getting "diluted" by the Frozenbyte bundle last time, and I have to wonder if that's becoming the case.

Voxatron.<p><pre><code> Frantic-ish action. Plays like Robotron. (hold down fire key to strafe) Voxel effects are awesome. Great sound, much less harsh than Robotron. Lots of power-ups. Very fun game. </code></pre> I happily paid $10, as it's supporting both charities ($1.5 each) and the developer ($5.50).

The developer’s blog post <a href="http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=260" rel="nofollow">http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=260</a> has some more details about the game and the planned development process.<p>Here are two bits I found especially interesting:<p>“In general, I don't think it's a good idea to keep a project in a constantly presentable/releasable state. For technical reasons, it encourages short term hacks and a reluctance to take things apart and design them cleanly. And especially from a creative position, once something is observed by other people it often seems to freeze into an unmoveable state, in the expectations of players and the mind of the designer.”<p>“Voxatron is based on a virtual 128x128x64 display. It's a buffer of 3d video memory that is rendered out to the screen at the end of each frame, much as an old-school 2d display is. You can POKE bytes into the virtual memory, and they come out as voxels. I don't compromise on this — even the menus are drawn into the voxel display. Hopefully one day I can get hold of a real physical 128x128x64 display and play Voxatron on it with almost no modification.”

Sorry for the hash tag in the url, it's not necessary but I figured we wanted a separate thread to discuss the new bundle. A mod can strip it off if desired.

Best quote from the humble bundle video: "Facebook share it, tweet it, Do whatever the verb of google plus-ing is."<p>What is the verb for google plus? +1-ing?

For those wondering what this game is all about, this is the interesting part:<p><i>"Voxatron is based on a virtual 128x128x64 display. It's a buffer of 3d video memory that is rendered out to the screen at the end of each frame, much as an old-school 2d display is. You can POKE bytes into the virtual memory, and they come out as voxels. I don't compromise on this -- even the menus are drawn into the voxel display. Hopefully one day I can get hold of a real physical 128x128x64 display and play Voxatron on it with almost no modification."</i><p>The game is a top-down shooter in the vein of Robotron, but with 3D environments. It features volumetric equivalents to many basic 2D graphics operations: a scrolling background, sprites, animations, particle systems, physics, etc.<p>Everything is destructable too. If you shoot enough holes in an object, it will collapse in a heap of voxels.<p>It even includes a level editor.<p>The game looks fantastic and I've never heard of anything like it. If you are even remotely interested in games or realtime graphics, you need to see this.

I adore indie games.<p>Someone should build an iTunes for indie games, or something.

How is one game a 'bundle'?

The game is decently fun, but it was the art that sold me. The voxel style looks like one of those themes that developers rocking a low budget can pull off beautifully.

five bucks, ker-bought! I've been following the teaser videos for a while and am excited to have a chance to fool around in it.

"...do whatever the verb of Google plus-ing is" The laugh from that line alone was worth my purchase price.

Such an interesting social experiment. I am going to indulge my inner economist.

Bought it.

I wish you the best, whatever it is you are, so constructive feedback follows:<p>Voxatron is too humble. I just went to the page. I had my browser window pretty big... taking up most of a 21" monitor.<p>Here's what I could tell about Voxatron:<p>1. It's called voxatron<p>2. It's "pay what you want".<p>3. It supports charity<p>4. It is DRM free<p>5. The people behind voxatron thought a sorta mincraftish image would communicate something significant to me.<p>6. It seems like it can run on a Mac.<p>I think these are all, clearly, features you wanted to communicate, and you succeeded in doing so very well.<p>However, I then hit my back button because, in the time it took me to grasp on that, I realized I had no clue what Voxatron was.... and I have spent too much time trying to figure things like that out in the past on other sites such that I've gotten the impression that if I don't get it right away, I likely never will. (Seriously, I can't tell you how many times I've followed links from google, gotten to a corporate site, spent 5-10 minutes there, unable to make heads or tails-- when I got there because, according to the query I crafted for google, google thinks this company is selling what I wanted to buy RIGHT THEN. The barrier is much lower for links on HN.)<p>Is it a game? Is it a voice transcoder? Is it an auto tuner? Is it for musicians? Is it for kids playing around with digital signal processing?<p>Give me a one line description of what voxatron is or does, without too much hyperbole, and put it front and center, maybe right under or replacing the word "voxatron" where it is now on the page. And if there IS Such a line, and I completely missed it, then I think your page layout is too busy and it caused me to overlook it.<p>You got my 11 seconds, but didn't get me very far down the funnel to conversion.<p>Again, with all respect, and hopes that this is helpful-