Good news everyone!

If you are one the lucky and wise ones to have pre-ordered Okhlos, you now have the chance to enter the closed beta and try the game before everyone else! You will have the opportunity to gaze upon unfinished marvels, buggy bosses and misspelled hero names but at the same time you will be able to give feedback on your favorite/least favorite aspects of the game, chip in ideas and help make the game even better!

How will I be able to do that, you say? If you pre-ordered the game, check your mail! All the instructions about how to get your key are there! If you DIDN’T receive the mail, let us know. Then, all of the beta participants will have access to a super secret forum where they can share all their thoughts, info and comments about the game! How cool is that?!

If you do join the beta, a little disclaimer. Please, keep in mind that the game is not finished yet. So expect to find bugs, lots of things to polish and a few missing content we have yet to add. Also, we are starting the beta with a Steam PC version. Our plan is to soon support Mac/Linux version too, but is being a little more challenging than expected so it may take us a few more days to launch those version.

Finally, if you haven’t pre-ordered the game, do not despair.  Pre-orders are currently close, and it is very unlikely that we will open any new slots for the time being, but hang on a few more months. We are really close to announcing a launch date! Also the beta will definitely help us improve Okhlos in many ways so it will be worth the wait!

 

 

Now, to celebrate, here is a HUGE screen, showing over 200 units on screen (pure Chaos)!

 

And some GIF magic about this magic moment.

Keep in mind that this is a particularly big .Gif! It may take a while to load.

And here is the 1bit / Obra Dinn style render of the gif (I wanted to share the gif on twitter, and removing the color information really helps the compression!)

 

So, that’s all! If you pre-ordered the game, and want to try the game, check your mail!

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First draft by @roketronz, final draft and editing by @pfque_ .

First of all, vote for Okhlos!

2015 Indie of the Year Awards via Indie DB
Hi gang!

After a short break we’re back to close of our Spotlight on Okhlos’ New Heroes! This will be the final installment of our four part series. (If you missed out on the first three parts, you can catch them here, here, and… here!)

It’s been a fun few posts. We learned a bit about history and Greek myth, and just how silly Hero abilities can be! We’ll probably do another post on new Heroes further on down the line, but it won’t be for quite some time.

Well, without further ado, here are today’s new Heroes!

 

Frozenatos

The name’s a placeholder, but this dude totally isn’t. He doesn’t have much to do with ancient Greece – at least not until we find some way to shoehorn him in – but we really like his special ability: he briefly freezes enemies in places!

 

 

We were able to implement his ability pretty quickly as we used a little work around we had set up when we made King Midas. Midas turns enemies into gold, so in order to make that work we had to create states that discarded the enemy sprite’s color information and tinted them gold.

 

 

Since we had this workaround already set up, it hardly took any work to create a frozen state that turned them blue!

 

Epizelus

Epizelus is an obscure historical reference… as obscure as it gets, really. (Hint: He’s from a little founding work of Western history… The Histories.) His may be the first recorded case of a conversion disorder or PTSD – he went blind in the middle of battle for no apparent reason.

 

 

We don’t really love the character’s look right, so we’ll probably improve it or change it rather radically as soon as we have the time. His ability is a bit silly, but it’s one we really like having in the mix:

Every time one of your units lands a critical hit, everyone in the mob heals up a little! Neat!

 

Queen Gerana

Gerana, also sometimes known as Oenoe, was the queen of the Pygmy folk in Greek Mythology. She bragged she was even more beautiful than Hera herself, and, well, guess what happened to her? That’s right, the same thing that happens to most prideful and insolent mortals who mess with the Greek gods – she was turned into animal.

In Gerana’s case, she was turned into a crane. (And then for some strange reason the Pygmies started waging an eternal war on cranes? Greek mythology is so weird!)

 

 

Like other royalty in Okhlos, Gerana will improve the capacity of your mob, allowing you to take more units with you! So far she’s the only Queen with this mechanic. (Queen Hyppolita does something a little different.)

 

King Pyrrhus

It is common in Spanish (and a little less so in English) to refer to battles won through great sacrifice as Pyrrhic victories. That expression comes from this guy, Pyrrhus, who lost almost all his men defeating the Romans in battle. :/

Like other royalty, Pyrrhus will increase the capacity of your mob, but this time, at a high and costly price…

 

 

…We’re trying to be mysterious here, but the truth is we’re still not sure exactly what the tradeoff is going to be. :/

 

Themistocles

If you saw the movie, 300: Rise of an Empire (that’s the second 300 flick, the sequel) you know this guy already! (Also, just like us, you saw one of the absolute worst movies about ancient Greece ever made! You have our deepest sympathies, you poor sod.)

If you haven’t seen the movie (and we very much envy you that!) and you’re not up and up on your Greek history, you should know that Themistocles, despite his funny name, was an extraordinary Athenian general and politician. Also he probably had one of the silliest hats in all of Greece!

 

 

In Okhlos his special ability will highly increase your chance to score critical hits! Try having both Epizelus and Themistocles in your mob to combo up for some crazy effects!

 

Narcissus

Narcissus was already in the game, but we didn’t feel his ability was cool enough, and it didn’t really work very well after all the changes we’d made to the gameplay.

So now this handsome hunk has a brand new ability – with his mirror he’s not only able to reflect his own beautiful face, but also enemy attacks!

 

 

…Perhaps we made him too cool.

 

 

Well, that’s it! That wraps up our Four Part Spotlight on Okhlos’ New Heroes™!

We actually have a lot more Heroes than the ones we’ve shown you over these past few weeks. I mean, just have a look at the Hero Counter:

 

 

That’s a lot of Heroes! We didn’t want to show you all of them because, well, we wanted to keep some surprises for when you actually play the game! ;D

Look forward to Kings such as Ptolemy I and Priam, and legends such as Ajax and Andromarche!

Also, if you have any suggestions for new Heroes, please feel free to drop us a line or comment below!

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First draft by @roketronz, final draft and editing by @pfque_ .

 

Heroes, heroes, spam, heroes, and more heroes!

It seems like that’s all we talk about nowadays and like we’ll never run out. Well, it’s not true! At this pace we’ll run out week after next. But worry not, that’s a problem for another day – today you get to enjoy Part 3 of our amazing Four Part Spotlight on the New Heroes of Okhlos!

Our weekly Hero count is now up to:

Meaning you will be meeting 6 brand new Heroes today!

 

Hannibal

Hannibal Barca of Carthage, one of the greatest military commanders this world has ever seen, was a leading figure in the Punic Wars, a conflict that just might’ve set the course of western civilization, and he has absolutely nothing to do with Ancient Greece. He rose to prominence almost a century after the Greek Classical Era had already ended!

Buuuuuuuuuuut… he was just too COOL and BADASS to leave out! We don’t care if it’s a bit anachronistic, we want our eyepatched tactical genius in the game and by the beard of Zeus, it’s our game and we’re going to include him!

In fact, in the game Hannibal is going to have a very interesting ability with a lot of tactical potential. Any enemies within a certain area around him will be automatically slowed down, allowing for some cool mix-ups and close calls.

 

No, this isn’t the cannibal dude played by Anthony Hopkins, this is the guy who marched elephants over the Alps!

 

[Super Slave With Multitple Arms But No Name Yet]

Slavery and serfdom were very common in Ancient Greece, and slave units are an important part of your mob in Okhlos. Rebelling against gods and society, they fight alongside philosophers and warriors to bring down the oppressive machinations of fate!

… Actually, they just mostly carry items for you….

But even the valets have their Heroes, and [Super Slave With Multitple Arms But No Name Yet] is a Super Valet Slave! This big ol’ bloke, reminiscent perhaps of a mini boss from some well-known, deadly fighting game, will be able to carry up to 4 items at once with his big strong, muscly arms!

 

Fun Fact: [Super Slave With Multitple Arms But No Name Yet] also gives the best high-fives in all of Ancient Greece.

 

Icarus

Icarus was the son of another of Okhlos’ Heroes, Daedalus, the famous inventor of the labyrinth. (No, not that movie with David Bowie, the inescapable death-trap with the Minotaur.) Well, if you know Icarus’ tale, you know that his good ol’ pop made him a set of wax wings to fly around with, but warned him sternly not to fly too close to the sun.

Did Icarus listen? Noooooooooope.

He flapped up right there next to those beautiful sunrays, and the wings melted in the heat, and Icarus fell to his dumb, stupid, very much preventable death.

Moral of the story: the Ancient Greeks didn’t really know how the solar system worked or that the incandescent ball of hydrogen that lights our world is actually really, really, really, impossibly far away. Or that the higher you climb up in the sky the colder it gets. (Oh, and there was something in there about hubris and arrogance, but I don’t remember.)

 

 

 

By the time we dug him up for Okhlos though, it seemed like Icarus had well learned his lesson and he promised us he will never fly again. (It’s totally not because the game is already chaotic enough without some snotty kid flapping about!) We’re not sure if we believe him, but just in case, to compensate, Icarus’ Hero ability will speed up the whole mob!

I mean, just look at how cool his running animation is!

 

PUT PUT PUT, PIDGEON BOY!

 

King Nestor

So far we’ve included a King in each part of our Spotlight and we don’t want to break the habit now!

Nestor is a HUGE figure in Greek Mythology! We’re talking B-I-G! He was an Argonaut, took part in the Trojan War, fought the centaurs, and participated in the hunt for the Calydonian Boar! Many other heroes and important figures of Greek Mythology looked up at him for advice, and he even had a shield made of solid gold!

We’ll be honest, we haven’t quite decided what Nestor’s ability will be in Okhlos just yet. He could be a simple King unit, like the others, and raise the amount of people you can have in your mob… but the man is important, and we’re very tempted to give him an additional ability on top of that. We’ll just have to wait and see…

 

Although, you have to question the ‘wisdom’ of a man with a shield made of solid gold, a mineral as precious as it is soft and totally not protective…

 

You might or not believe this, but we actually do some research for every Hero we include in the game. We look up the character’s history and the myths told about them as well how artists have portrayed them in the past (read as: Google Images). This last bit was pretty tough for Nestor, because our searches kept getting swamped with pictures of Argentina’s ex-President, Nestor Kirchner, a very influential figure in our country at this time, since we’re nearing elections. We swear, this man must have more streets named after him than anyone else in the world!

Sisyphus

Oof, Sisyphus, once King of Ephyra, is perhaps our most miserable of Heroes. For leading a life of trickery and deceit, for repeatedly deceiving the gods, for being pompous and arrogant, believing himself more clever than Zeus, and generally just being a huge pain in everyone’s butt, Sisyphus was cursed to roll a giant rock up a hill for the rest of eternity. Every time he got it near the top, the boulder would escape from his hands and roll all the way back down. I guess when you piss of Ancient Greek Gods you lose some and you lose some.

In Okhlos, we freed Sisyphus from his eternal torment so he could join up with the mob. It seems he’s grown really fond of his rock and has decided to use it against the very Gods who cursed him… and also against anyone and everything in his way. Let’s not forget that he’s still kind of a huge jerk though, so monsters are a lot more likely to go straight after him than the rest of your units.

 

Go Sisyphus! Distract them with your boulder, ya  jerk!

 

Fun Fact: Sisyphus also appears in another Latin American game, Rock of Ages,  made by the amazing Chilean devs, ACE Team!

 

Arachne

If you thought that the divine punishments had ended with Sisyphus, you’re dead wrong. Dear Arachne was the greatest weaver in all of Greece, and boasted that she was even better at weaving than Athena herself, the very Goddess of Crafts. As Ovid tells it, Athena was outraged by Arachne’s arrogance and challenged her to a weaving contest. But when Arachne won, demonstrating that she was indeed the greatest weaver of them all, bitter and vengeful Athena turned Arachne into a spider, dooming her and her descendants to weave for all time. (Greek Gods sure have a thing for ‘eternal punishment’.)

Just like with Sisyphus and Icarus, we managed to save Arachne from her fate, and gave her a cool Hero Ability to smooth over the transition. Arachne will cause area damage to all enemies around her.

 

There’s something to be said about having complete dedication to your craft.

 

 

Well, that’s all we have for this week folks! Tune in next week for the final instalment of our Spotlight on Okhlos’ New Heroes!

 

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This post was outlined by @roketronz, then written and edited by @pfque_ .

 

Hey gang!

Welcome to Part II of our New Heroes of Okhlos Spotlight!

As we mentioned last week, we’ve decided to turn Okhlos’ special Hero units up to 11, that’s inspired us to create a bunch of new dynamics and characters. This spotlight is meant to be a meet-and-greet, a way for us to introduce them to you and show you just how fun it’ll be to try them out!

 

Well, without further delay, let’s check on our Current Hero Count:

58! That’s six up from last week! Let’s get ready to meet them! :)

 

Panacea

Panacea is the Greek goddess of universal health and remedy. Her name literally translates as, ‘Cures All’, and she hung around on Olympus with a potion that healed the sick – it’s where we get the modern concept of ‘panacea’, a solution or remedy that is supposed to solve all problems or cure all illness. (It’s also from where we get the Final Fantasy item that removes all status ailments. ;p)

In Okhlos she’ll revive your fallen units strewn around the battlefield.

 

You see? All better now! Up and at ‘em, Tiger! :)

Ernestos

You might or might not know Daniel Benmergui, a friend of ours who’s appeared on the blog before. He’s made a few games like Today I Die, I wish I Were the Moon, and Storyteller… and won the IGF 2012 Nuovo Award, I guess? He’s currently working on Ernesto, a cool puzzle game about charting paths through dungeons. It’s a game we like a lot and we wanted to make a little tribute to it in Okhlos. So here’s he is, our brand new Hero, Ernestos!

Ernestos will allow the mob leader to draw a path behind them as they move across the level. This path will last only a limited of time but during that time enemies will not be able to cross it, herding them off to one side!

 

If all goes well, Ernesto and Okhlos should actually be launching very close to one another! :)

 

Pygmalion

Pygmalion was a Cyprian sculptor who carved a statue out of ivory so beautiful and lifelike that he immediately fell in love with it. The statue, Galatea, was later given life and they smooched and had a kid or some such cliché thing. (Pygmalion is also a play by Bernard Shaw, from which they then made the movie, ‘My Fair Lady’, I guess?)

In Okhlos, our love-struck sculptor will occasionally summon badass, combat-ready Galatea to punch some serious monster butt with her ivory fists!

We like to think of her sort of as the equivalent of an ancient Greek battle robot.

 

King Agamemnon

King Agamemnon of Mycenae or Argos, depending on your sources, was the commander of the united Greek armies during the Trojan War. He doesn’t differ too much from the other King units in Okhlos – he increases how many units can join your mob – but he was just too cool not to mention here!

 

He was also the father of Electra… you know, the one that Jung named the Freudian complex after…

 

Hipparchia

Hipparchia of Maroneia was a Cynic and one of the most well-known women philosophers from ancient Greece. (Despite not being given top-billing traditionally, there’s actually more of them than one might think!) Hipparchia’s Hero ability will make enemies drop items, and as she’s also a philosopher unit, you’ll be able to play as her!

 

Cynic 4 Life!

 

Deianira

Deianira – whose name also translates to ‘man destroyer’ – was the wife of super-famous demi-god, Heracles, and she was said to “drive a chariot and practice the art of war.” She sounds like a badass! But also she maybe accidentally killed Heracles by smearing the blood of this centaur dude, Nessus, inside his lion-skin shirt? Oops! Talk about clumsy!

(I guess the centaur’s blood was poisonous or toxic??? How was she supposed to know? That’s not a reasonable thing for a person to assume!)

So, anyways, inspired by that little “accident”, we thought it’d be appropriate if Deianira’s Hero ability caused ongoing bleed damage to enemies when they get hit. Kinda like how rogue classes work in some games.

…wait, does this mean we can put rogue-like on the back of the game box now? Wait, we’re not going to have a game box, are we? That’s not something a digital game can have, right? Can you like, download a game box?

 

You know,  just in case, maybe try not to have Heracles and Deianira in your mob at the same time…

 

And, THAT’S THEM!

Thanks for coming by and meeting our new Heroes! We’ll have a brand new batch next week when we put up Part III of our New Heroes of Okhlos spotlight! See you then! :)

 

 

 

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Hi gang! How’re you folks doing? Here at Coffee Powered Machine we’re as swamped as always! We’re busy, busy, busy! But that’s never stopped the DevBlog train from rollin’ on and it’s not going to stop it now! Choo choo!

As you might’ve heard (since we can’t stop bragging about it!) we got to go to PAX Prime this year! Well… Sebas got to go, anyways. I couldn’t get my stupid visa paperwork done in time so I had to stay here…

*GRUMBLE-GRUMBLE*

Self-Potrait of the Artist

 

From everything Sebas tells me, PAX was great, and showcasing the game to the crowds was a really amazing experience and opportunity. Personally, I’m really grateful Okhlos had a showing there and that so many new people got to see the game!

…But at the same time, not getting to go to PAX and having to stay here in Buenos Aires to keep working while Sebas partied and got to see Seattle…

Well, let’s just say I had a lot of anger and frustration to churn and channel into a productive outlet.

So, good news! With all that productive energy I’ve written up a four-part spotlight on Okhlos’ Heroes!

Rejoice! :D

Heroes

Heroes, as you may already know if you’ve been keeping up with the DevBlog, are Okhlos’ special units. Each one of them is unique and once you recruit them they’ll change the mob in their own particular way. Originally we designed these changes to be subtle, so as not to break the game’s balance nor distract too much from the carefully constructed flow of the game’s base mechanics…

But then we remembered this game was supposed to be FUN!

So we threw all that caution to the wind and decided once again that if we were going to make a game about a chaotic mob then it was going to have to be chaotic! We turned those damn Heroes up to 11 and made sure they were just as destructive and chaotic as the rest of the game!

So we’ve been designing a lot of Heroes! How many Heroes? Well, here’s a fancy graphic we made for the sole purpose of letting you know!

I bet you wish YOU had a fancy graphic now, don’t you?

 

52! That’s right! And we’ve come up with so many weird and wild and beautiful things. Some ramp up your stats wildly, others introduce entirely new mechanics to the game, others change enemy behavior, and some just explode! But there’s a lot more than that! That’s the thing – there’s so many of them and they’re all so different from one another that it’s hard to generalize.

That’s why we’re spotlighting them here!

We want to show off our favorite Heroes so that you can get a good feel for them. This is the first part of our four-part spotlight, showcasing individual Heroes and all the beautiful, terrible things that they do to make Okhlos unique and a Whole Riot of Fun™!

Paris

Paris, Prince of Troy! You remember that whole squabble about the Trojan War and that giant wooden horse?

Kind of his fault a little bit.

When we first put him in the game his ability was fairly passive. All it did was influence the range of aggression of some enemies. Well, we scrapped that and turned things up a little!

Paris’ new ability gives every Hero in the mob a chance to land a one-hit-kill! Depending on how the dice roll, their attacks might straight out kill an enemy just like THAT!

However, it comes with a cost! Paris is one of a few Heroes who will actually REDUCE the amount of people you can have in your mob. It’s an important trade-off that we’ve been experimenting with and it’s resulted in a lot of very interesting strategies and tactical play. A small mob with a few powerful Heroes can really pack a punch!

Paris never actually got to see the French city of Paris, as it was built many centuries after his death. :(

 

Asuracenturos/Gordon

These new Heroes are styled after two we’d already included in the game – Orpheus and Elviros. Like them, they’re both musicians.

Asuracenturos is inspired by the tortured and very misunderstood Celt musician, and Gordon well… by our very own composer and musician – Gordon! :)

Their music will pump up the stats of all nearby units giving them a strong in boost in combat.

Asuracenturos – pictured here without a boar or a hammer flying at his head.

Can you spot the 10 differences we’ve hidden in these two pictures?

Empedocles

Empedocles, who spoke of the elements, who spoke of Love and Strife! He’s one of the new philosopher Heroes.

His ability will create a force-field around your main character, negating the first attack dealt to them. This field recharges every X seconds, thus helping to prevent a lot of extra damage and perhaps saving you from that dastardly finishing blow!

Like with Paris, having Empedocles with you will reduce the amount of people you can have in your mob – but it’s well worth it!

(Philosopher Heroes like Empedocles are of particular note because once you buy them they’re permanent! At the beginning of a new game all the philosopher Heroes you’ve bought will be right there waiting for you and you’ll be able to select them to be part of your initial mob.)

Speak to me of of universal laws~ Speak to me of love and strife~

Glitchos

The Missingno of our game!

 

Glitchos (working name) is one of the coolest Heroes of this new batch. If they’re in your mob, each time a unit dies it will EXPLODE, harming all nearby enemies! The damage dealt will depend on the unit’s stats and the explosions will be rendered in beautiful gigantic pixels!

Glitchos forms part of a particular subset of Heroes which, as you might have noticed, don’t actually have any historical basis or relation to ancient Greece. We’ve had a lot of fun with these and it’s allowed us to come up with a lot of fun, weird characters. Keep your eyes peeled for them in the following parts of out spotlight! :)

Sophocles

Sophocles, the playwright and tragedian!  Writer of Oedipus and Antigone and a bunch of other miserable people.

Like Paris and Empedocles, this Hero will lower the amount of people you can have with you in your mob, but in exchange, every time you kill an enemy the entire mob’s max HP will increase!

“Overpowered FTW!”, as we’re sure Sophocles himself would have said.

Sophocles, fine tuning the lean-mean-bleak-machine that was his writing.

King Philip II

King Phillip II of Macedon is often overshadowed by his son – you know the one, no?

His name was Alexander… the Great… and he conquered most of the ancient world before he turned thirty? Remember that guy? No big deal, right?

Well, King Phillip was a cool dude all in his own right. He did things.

I mean, he must have done some things! I’m sure of it.

Well, I’m not sure sure of it. But it’s very probable… right?

Well, anyways, in Okhlos, like most kings in the game, he increases the amount of people you can have in your mob. That way you can wreck even more havoc and chaos across Ancient Greece!

See? I told you he did things!

So, like, it turns out King Phillip II actually did do a whole bunch of things – and someone wrote all them down! :0

 

Oh, and last but not least, before we go – someone wrote us a Wikipedia page! You have no idea how exciting that is for us. :)

 

This was all for this week! Keep tuned for the next three exciting installments of our Heroes Spotlight!

 

This post was written by @roketronz, then edited, rewritten, and doubled in length by @pfque_ .

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