We've been fans of turn based tactical games for as long as we remember. Not just a couple of them. Pretty much all of em. Final Fantasy Tactics, Silent Storm, Fallout (1, 2, and Tactics), Heroes of Might and Magic, Jagged Alliance, XCOM, and many more.

I know what you're thinking. "Really bold stand. Loving some of the industries most beloved titles. Really going out on a limb, Bootsnake." So true, random non-crazy Internet person. But there's a reason so many love these games. They're so damn fun and tickle your brain all the right ways.

At Castle Bootsnake, we play a lot of board and miniature games. (Yeah, we nerds.) We've played a bunch of Games Workshop games like Warhammer 40000 and Necromunda. We've been playing WARMACHINE and HORDES for years. There are stacks of rulebooks scattered around our halls for all sorts of games.

We knew a long time before Bootsnake was even a glimmer in our handsome eyes that we wanted to make a turn based combat game. It was just figuring out when.

BOOTSNAKE COMPANY PHILOSOPHY

We began Bootsnake to make small, fast, awesome games. And make a bunch of them. We failed at this.

Hard.

Originally, Containment didn't have a campaign. Then people thought it would be cool to do this one thing. Then that thing. Then the other thing. And it got too damn big. We were way past our initial schedule. But we realized something in that process. We want to make bigger games. Bigger than our britches in some ways. Whatevs. Its fun and gets us going. A few times a year we find something that is going to be really really hard and we say, "Fuck it. Let's just do it anyway."

That led to Containment being awesome and polished. 15 hand built levels, 150 hand built blocks, dozens of physics based kills, boss fights, and more. Come to think of it, we probably should have had the kitchen sink be one of the random items that drop just to fit the metaphor.

POST CONTAINMENT

We weren't going to make another puzzle game next. Not because we don't love them (we pretty much bet our entire lives on a puzzle game), but because we love lots and lots of games. We need to see Bootsnake tackle another genre. Now we need to figure out our new hotness.

We had a bunch of design talks, wrote down some ideas, started working on an idea, ate some gyros, and repeated the process. We had a few ideas we really liked. We just had to pick one.

Making a tactics game is going to be a lot of work. We talked about making some games in other genres that we had prototyped. Our final chat had us deciding to make a different game than tactics, then saying "Fuck it. Let's just do this. We might not get a chance to make another game at Bootsnake."

GOING BIG

So here we are. We are making a game in one of our favorite genres. We are doing it in our own way by making it big in our own way. And we are building it knowing it could be our last game.

This game will be fun. It will be unique. It will be awesome. It will be Bootsnake.

Talk to you guys soon,

Bootsnake

Postscript. Here are some images of the prototype we took to PAX East.

We had a great show. We were very busy from the moment we set foot in Boston until we landed back in Seattle. We showed up sick, got more sick during the show, and may someday be not sick anymore. Thanks to everyone that stopped by our booth and talked with us. It was a lot of fun meeting everyone or seeing you again. These shows are what make all the long hours worth it.

Here is a quick run down of our booth we had at the show. This should have been posted before we left but sadly any time we weren't sleeping was spent working on the games. In all honesty, we needed another month to get properly ready for PAX. That said, we had a great showing but are working to make sure we are even more prepared for future shows.

We brought Containment to PAX. We will always bring Containment to PAX or any other show we do. Every time we bring the game, we get tons and tons of new people who have never played the game to become fans of our favorite zombie puzzle game.

Our good friend, Steve Snoey, came with us and helped at the booth. In case you do not know, Steve is the creator of America's Fighting Dinosaur which can be seen for a brief few seconds in the drive in level of Containment. Steve helped us out as well as showed a bit of his documentary at the booth. You can find information about his documentary of the dinosaur that fought in World War 2 over at americasfightingdinosaur.com

And finally, we brought the prototype for our new game!

Our next game is a hybrid of a sandbox RPG with tactical turn based combat.

In the near future, mankind has begun to move into the stars. There is a mineral known as Deadrock which is incredibly important for space travel. In a region of an asteroid belt, there is found to be a lot of Deadrock. Corporations have sent out people and material to begin a large scale mining operation in the area.

Eventually, the corporations have reached saturation in the area. They begin to squabble and fight amongst themselves over certain "rocks" in the area. The player enters when the corporations are coming to conflict with each other.

As the captain of a mercenary crew, you will be able to fly around the asteroid belt and live in this world. The player can join and help one of the three major factions or any of the minor factions. The player can also become a pirate or only trade.

We are inspired by many other open sandbox RPGs in the past like Freelancer, Mount and Blade, and Sid Meier's Pirates.

You will board other ships, assault mines, liberate space stations, and more using tactical turn based combat. Your character will level up, gain new abilities, try on amazing new belt buckles and more.

And you can upgrade your spaceship

The game is coming along very well. Its still CRAZY early, but we are mega excited about where its going. We were very excited to show the game off in its early stages at PAX East. We have a lot of feedback to process and we'll make the game much better for it. We are going to have a LOT more information about the game coming forward. We want everyone to get a chance to get their little space hands on the game soon.

You can sign up for the Bootsnake Games newsletter here. We will keep everyone updated with the progress of the game and eventually pre-alpha and alpha testing information.

I wanted to talk a bit about the patch that is coming along with it.

The main purpose of the patch is to update Containment to Unity 4.0. While we aren't using all the new features from the Unity update, the update helps us out on the other platforms and we want to keep all platforms on the same version. The big wins for us is we can finally get the Android version working, the performance on the tablets should go up a bit, and we will be able to release on Linux in the future, as well. (iOS update to be released after holidays)

In addition to the Unity update, we decided to push live the UI we have been working on and off of for a while now. The reasoning for this is many fold!

The original UI is very cool but was made when the direction of Containment had a more clinical feel throughout the game. The game shifted and the UI is the last thing that never really shifted with it. We wanted a UI that introduced you to the experience you were about to have playing the game. I think the new one accomplishes this better. It shows what the graphics of the game are like more and starts bringing you onto the streets with our in-world text from the get go. Containment is about being down on the street and moving through the city of Franklin as the story progresses.

This UI kicks off the Containment experience in a way that we felt it was important to have it for this week. We will be on sale and on the front page of Steam for the very first time ever. We aren't sure if this will get us a lot of new users or not but at least any new users we do get will have a game experience more like we planned.

Thirdly, the new UI has room to grow. If we add new acts or chapters, it is easier to add them to this UI. If we ever add score to the campaign like we keep wanting to, this UI has more room to show that as well.

The other reason behind the UI update is that Mat has never worked on a UI before. The original UI was created by Jeremy and I just needed practice working with the tools.

We realize a new UI isn't a big reason to load up a game you've probably beaten a million times already but we wanted this to be in place for any new users we get and I hope you understand. We like it a lot and hope you do too!

Enjoy the sale, tell your friends, buy them copies, have a happy holiday and we will be talking to you in the new year with more exciting news!

Stock photo of business people doing that "Go Team!" thing.

PLANNING AT CASTLE BOOTSNAKE

We've had a lot of people ask us what is next. It's a very good question, and one that is hard to really answer.

You'd think it would be easy. We're an indie developer and we can do what we want! So we're totally building the next crazy weird indie game! Or wait, we're going to support Containment and keep working on that! Or neither? Or both?

So the short answer is, "we're working on it." That is such a good non-answer. It is such a cliche type answer, but the it is also the truth.

CONTAINMENT

We are working on Containment. We have a patch based on feedback we got directly from people at PAX. It isn't the world's biggest update, but every time we update, the game gets better and better.

We also have some more patches in the pipe. They are much meatier updates. Some of them cosmetic, some of them new content. It has been a challenge for us to figure out how to support the game. Most of the game is hand built, which means there aren't a lot of cheap ways to get new content. But we are going to add to the game, as long as we can figure out how.

NEXT BIG THING

We are working on "THE NEXT BIG THING." We just don't know what it is yet. We have ideas. We have LOTS of ideas. We even have playable ideas! What we don't have is THE idea yet. That doesn't mean we don't have it yet, it just means we haven't picked it yet.

Our goal, which is something that we want very badly, is to have our game at a playable state by the end of the year. Not finished, but playable and fun. That means with some real art, real content, something that we are proud to show off.

We want our next game to be something unique and fun to play. Containment is something different in the puzzle game space. We want to do something special in whatever game we do next. It probably will look nothing like Containment, but that's how indies do. We love games of all genres and we want to work on lots of cool stuff.

THE ROADMAP

So we're left with our roadmap. Here it is, in all its glory.

1: Support Containment

1: Make new game

1: Do more stuff

It's prioritized quite well.

We have posted an FAQ to help answer some questions about Containment!!

It's on the site, and we will try to add to it as people ask more questions.

http://www.bootsnakegames.com/containment-faq

If you want to know more, please ask away! We want to make the best games that we can, and we want to keep making things better for what we have released so far.

The gerbils are fed, the wheels are turning, and it’s time for another Bootsnake Games update before we feed the gerbils to the snakes. It’s been a busy couple of months here at Bootsnake Games.

We are happy to announce that Containment: The Zombie Puzzler is now available on Mac at the Steam store!

The Mac version has all the latest patches from the PC version and shares leaderboards, achievements, and all that good stuff. You can find the most recent patch notes below.

Survival:

- Added a new survival level. Freeway Survival which is 7 blocks long.

- Added a survival bonus zombie. Surround the bonus zombie to get bonus points.

Controls:

- Right click will deselect zombies and clear any item loaded.

- Fixed some issues with not deselecting zombies when clicking in open space.

- Can now click on crates and objects in the world with a tile selected. The tile will be deselected but the crate, etc will be interacted with.

- Fixed a bug where you could only drag out items during the final boss fight.

Main Menu:

- Added some "How to Play" screens in the main menu.

- Added sound volume option in the main menu options screen.

- Added click/drag control selection in main menu.

General:

- Most animations re-exported with new animation events added to fix a lot of bugs where events wouldn't always happen.

- Updated some mip data for the characters.

- Fix VC Redist trying to install every time game loads.

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler has been updated on the iPad! Get it now while it's on sale!

A couple of things we want to highlight is that the game now runs in retina display, the new iPad makes the game look amazing! Also, we have  updated the iPad version with Checkpoints. Now when playing, you can start where you left off if you leave the app. To celebrate the update, Containment will be on sale for a week at $0.99!

Please check out the full patch notes below. Have a great summer, and keep checking back for upcoming news!

- Checkpoints!! Added checkpoints so players can start where they left off.

- The game now runs in retina display.

- Added a new seven block survival level. Freeway Survival!

- Added a bonus zombie for survival mode to get bonus scores.

- All in world interactive items can now be single tapped as well as swiped.

- Fixed a bug with the UI where it would freeze in some situations.

- Fixed a number of issues where animations would play but the event would not always happen.

- Improved the main menu touch.

- Added a how to play screen in the main menu.

- Added options for sound and control in main menu.

- Lots of tweaks to textures to get the game to look better.

- Updated to new Unity version.

We are as confused as you are.

We have double checked the emails.

We have slapped each other repeatedly to make sure we are not sleeping.

We still weren’t quite sure to believe it until the actual web page launched.

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler has been selected as one of the PAX10 for the year 2012.

 BOOM!

We have spent the past 2 years starting a company, going broke, and doing what we love: making games. We can safely say it has been the hardest work we’ve ever done.  It has also been the most rewarding work, ever. Along with the highs, the lows have been just as extreme and there have been many weeks and months of uncertainty.

There is still so much we wanted to do with Containment. We did most of it. We have always believed in Ziggy and all that the game brings.

It is hard to accurately express how exciting this is for us. So we are delighted, honored, humbled, confused, ecstatic, nervous, and supremely proud to have been selected this year.

Thank you to Penny Arcade for selecting us. Thank you to everyone who supported us along the way. And thank you to everyone that bought our game and continue to follow our adventures at Castle Bootsnake.

We can’t say what our future looks like but this feels pretty damn good right now.

For more details on the PAX 10 and to see the other games selected, check out the site.

The Steam Summer Sale is here!

Now is your chance to grab Containment: The Zombie Puzzler for only a couple bucks. (Or gift it to a friend.)

Let your friends know that now is their chance to get a great game at a great price!

Don't make us start a Kickstarter :p

Steam Store

We are working on some new help menus for our next patch on PC.  Since we are now in Indie Royale, we are getting some new players and thought this might be helpful. Plus, it lets us preview what is coming up in the future.

The new player experience is something we were very mindful of when creating the game. We also wanted to teach the game in an unobtrusive, classy way. What we learned at PAX East is that we could have done a bit more. Having thousands of playtesters is always better than the dozens we had during development. So, with that in mind and some suggestions on our Steam forums, we are working on new how-to-play screens for the main menu. Here is a sneak peek.

This is still early art but I think it is coming along nicely, already.

Let us know what you think!