BYOND and Within #5 & 6

Over the years, I've been trying to add little things to bribe/taunt BYOND developers into polishing their games a bit.  I'm currently handling all featured games through my own volunteer effort.  Skip down to the links if you're not interested, but recent changes and traffic increases make me think I should explain a few things. =)

A decade ago, I was attracted to BYOND's review channel system.  From the outside, it looked like paid officials were taking care of developers with site-wide advertising.  However, I later found it to be a volunteer effort that suffered from neglect.  The stagnation eventually led players to instead focus on a giant, unsorted list of unreviewed games.

Channels were replaced by guild choices that controlled site-wide banners.  I ran BYOND Strategy and assumed other guilds were on roughly the same page.  I highlighted projects within my guild's list and next to my weekly column, but the traffic just wasn't there.  Most people avoided guilds in favor of a sorted, site-wide game list.  Eventually, I began posting activity/pictures from featured games on BYOND's Facebook page and got a wider audience.  I told others they could get the same treatment by meeting a guild's approval.

When the guilds were replaced by a tag system, I continued to post the old features and asked people to wait for some new standards to be posted.  Unfortunately, those standards never came.  Even worse, the staff added a banner rotation that took input from the random activity mentioned in my new column.  I felt like a fraud.

I wrote a living draft of the standards with my anal retentiveness and some input from other volunteers.  However, the staff wasn't sure whether we should dedicate any effort to maintain the system.  I was told that I was "in charge", but there was some disagreement on my implementation that made me comfortable bossing my fellow unpaid volunteers around.  Meanwhile, I had no official way to organize those who might be willing to follow my methods.

With some site adjustments from the staff, I have created BYOND Volunteers as a place where recruits can be pulled from the general community without involving the staff.  I'm hoping that some people will take the the time to read my reviewer expectations and eventually make me obsolete.  However, it's just me for now.  Please keep that in mind when visiting BYOND.  (And nevermind how popular/active games currently have the same CSS style as featured games.  Frelling positive feedback loops.)

This edited version of BYOND and Within comes to you from an unpaid volunteer using a game/development portal and software engine called BYOND.  The column focuses on recent developer activity.  Play suggestions are highlighted in the game list.

Within BYOND

Silk Games released a bug fix for their featured retro MORPG NEStalgia, held a web comic contest and, oh yeah, started an ad campaign that resulted in a race for more servers.  Check them out on Destructoid, G4, Gameinformer, GamePro, IndieGames.com, Joystiq and Kotaku.  A message has been offered to new players along with a glimpse of what's to come.

Speaking of featured retro RPGs, IainPeregrine's single-player offering, Regressia, is now free!  Those who already purchased the game will continue to receive benefits in other projects.  Meanwhile, IainPeregrine will be taking some time off to write and looking for artists to help complete the sequel to his fighting game Jeet Kune Do.

SuperAntx and friends have once again updated their team-based shooter Decadence.  The sniper rifle, grenades and the Subway Station map were rebalanced.  Check the post for more.

Rumors that my winning a match has anything to do with the game's return to feature status are completely unfounded.  But I pwned.

Forum_account's digging platformer A Miner Adventure is now featured.  The game has received many updates with a new title screen, menu, tutorial, medals and more.  There might be a minor bug or two, but they're expected in an active project and will be fixed...  Sadly, my inept platforming skills remain intact.  My scaffolding kit tends to get dissolved by lava.

Nadrew has again updated Skysaw's BYOND classic My Life as a Spy.  Among the changes are new medals, a new stat, a new task mission and a new gadget.  The keyword is "new" and Nadrew wants players to keep an eye out for more.  Try the game for free.  If you'd like more features, the Gold membership is now accessible from the main hub entry.

Another BYOND classic is getting a sequel.  Falacy has released a playable alpha for GG: Tales of a King.  The GG stands for the treasure defense game Gold Guardians.  Highlights of the latest update include new bosses, enemies and troop types along with medals, hub scores and spectators.

Could this be the final update for the economic/military sim Wargames?  Probably not, but the code has apparently reached a point where it's easier to restart from scratch.  Acebloke plans to do just that and will post a screenshot soon.  The next version will have changes for alliances, attacking, declarations of war, spying and more.  Suggestions are welcome.

Eksadus has been working with F0lak on Hazordhu II.  The recent RPG update includes multiple bug fixes and a lot of new content.  Aggressive content.  Southern Grawls, Shomps, Agriners, Kaws, Northern Grawls and Ramars.  Oh my!

Magicbeast20's Quarantine has been updated with a variety of fixes and tweaks.  The most useful addition to the wave-based zombie shooter appears to be the ability for teammates to revive each other.  I say this as someone who has been eaten.

Mechanos7 has been busy releasing three different games.  Snake is a BYOND implementation of a classic.  Defend is a wave-based shooter with upgrade periods.  Floramancer is a puzzle where players try to escape a dungeon using plant-based spells.  The latter two have been updated.

Yut Put has released an alpha demo of Sirius.  It's a horror shooter with a science fiction slant.  I could have used a help file for the small section I played, but the atmosphere seemed scary enough.  I shot at an enemy that wasn't there.  That counts for something, right? ;)

Bounce your bullets!  Oasiscircle's new Toy Tanks project looks like it grabbed a mode from a classic Atari game, upgraded the graphics a generation or two and then added team-based multiplayer.  Multiple videos display the progress.  Subscribe to the BethlehemBrothersLPs channel on YouTube for more updates.

I created a small library to help me with procedural map generation.  There's not much to it other than an abstract datum and a proc to generate a maze using Prim's algorithm.  I'll likely keep building on it while it's tested in whatever the frell my action adventure project turns out to be.  The library will handle the connections between rooms, but I still need to figure out how to design the rooms themselves.  (The picture is a room mockup.  Because it's pretty.)

Beyond BYOND