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Super Icon planning fixes for Indoor Sports World on Vita | PSNStores

Super Icon planning fixes for Indoor Sports World on Vita

Posted by on December 31st, 2013 | 3 Comments | Tags:

The two-man indie developer Super Icon, makers of the PlayStation Mobile games MegaBlast and Life of Pixel, have recently released an amazingly realistic looking pub games collection called Indoor Sports World exclusively for Vita.  Some much needed difficulty fixes are coming.

In their post-mortem on Indoor Sports World, Super Icon reflects on the mistakes they made in development:

We always try to fix mistakes/hiccups if we can; user feedback is really important to us and one of the best bits of development.

Those fixes are detailed below:

  • Tweak the AI, as Darts and Air Hockey are exceptionally hard to beat on later levels
  • Fix Darts issues; sometime it is too easy and sometimes seemingly random
  • The player’s finger obscuring the darts and pucks at times on the front screen
  • Add aiming aid for pool & snooker back into Arcade Mode

Vita is a the perfect platform to receive such a collection of pub games. Indoor Sports World is beautiful example of what can be done on the system with just two guys. However, making games is tough and Indoor Sports World is very different from the other games that Super Icon have made. These fixes are step in the right direction for the budget priced title ($4.99/£3.99) and will help curb the difficulty if only a little.

You may recall, Super Icon patched Life of Pixel for it’s cheap deaths. Jumping into the next screen and landing on an enemy you didn’t know would be there is about as difficult as a game like that could ever be. It was patched, but may have also suffered what Super Icon’s artist calls “developer familiarity”, being so familiar with the game that performing a playthrough is easier than someone who’s never played it before.

Having been a tester for seven years at Sony, I can tell you that the lowest paid faculty in a game’s development is the most important. They are not only responsible for reporting bugs, but for providing feedback while a game is in development. Having worked on several Ratchet & Clank games, during alpha we were asked to provide subtitle suggestions. From the name of a game to “finger passes through wall” to difficulty spikes, testers need to be part of every game plan.