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Futuridium EP Deluxe |OT| Una "MixedBag" di Idee Semplici Ma Sofisticate

C

coolasj19

Why are you reading my tag instead of the title of my post?
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What Is This!?
Futuridium EP Deluxe is the definitive version of Futuridium EP, and it's out now on PS4 and Vita. As a match made in heaven, the fast paced action of Futuridium is a perfect fit for the awesome PSVita and DS4 analog stick and controls and the colourful, psychedelic graphic pops out from a gorgeous screen directly into your eyes. Death Star trench run at full speed meets old school difficulty and modern fast paced action with unique gameplay mechanics, all turned up to eleven in the Deluxe version, with added levels, play modes, enemies and mechanics. The music as always is a central part of the experience and the 45-minutes long soundtrack will be enhanced with new, exclusive music tracks, for over 60 minutes of music. Oh, and you'll really feel those 60-frames-per-seconds. Ohhhh, yes.

History!
Futuridium EP is a retro fast paced shoot’em up with a modern twist, that was inspired by one of the greatest 8bit C64 shoot’em up of all time, Uridium by Andrew Braybrook. In Futuridium you are a lone starship pilot who gets lost in a dimensional loop just before a big space battle: with a limited and constantly depleting energy bar, your only hope is to fly as fast as possible over enormous space dreadnoughts and destroy all the cyan power cubes, replenishing your energy tank and revealing the dreadnought’s power core, which must be destroyed to move on to the next ship. You have no power-ups and limited control over your speed so you can only count on your reflexes, your dual lasers, the nimbleness of you starship and... the ability to turn 180° on the spot, an essential ability to navigate on the intricate passages on the dreadnoughts. Three parts hi-speed actions, one part hi-speed puzzle game: the gameplay is heavily score based, you can gain big multiplier destroying cubes and chaining cubes together to get huge score boost. You can play it safe, but only taking big risks and learning the right path on the dreadnoughts will lead you to the top of the online leaderboards.

Gameplay!
http://youtu.be/u43gqUxgaAI
iv2JDvB.jpg
u9fGTYe.jpg


Reviews!
PunkAndLizard.com said:
MixedBag have stripped away the unnecessary and gone back to basics to produce something extraordinarily special. Highly polished gameplay and amazing mechanics deliver to PS4 and PS Vita a massive heart pumping release. Late night gaming just got a whole lot later.
Click to expand...
Eurogamer Italy said:
- there's a lot of content (multiple modes, including Flappyridium)
- great ost
- hard as fuq
- 60 fps on both PS4 and Vita
- Controls are flawless on both PS4 and Vita
Click to expand...
The rest are in Italian... o_o

Pricing!
Futuridium EP Deluxe is out now as a Cross-Buy title for a regular price of $12.49 and for a first week PS+ price of $9.99!
---
Made by the 2 person independent developer Mixed Bag based in Turin, Italy, Futuridium EP Deluxe is quite the gem.
They can be talked to at @MixedBagGames
 
2

2+2=5

The Amiga Brotherhood
While i'm pleased to see an Italian title i think that a traditional English title would help the game more.
 
D

daydream

Banned
I like the title. Ouch at "Mexican".

This game looks really good, I just don't have any time on my hands at the moment. Will pick it up down the line for sure, though.
 
C

Carl

Member
Played this at EGX and it was really fun. Need to get some money in my bank account and buy this :)
 
S

Skyrise

Member
Hi guys!

Mauro from MixedBag here! So glad to have a post about Futuridium on NeoGAF, and so excited to have finally released the game on PS4 and PSVita.
It was quite a lot of work for a two person team!

I'm hanging around here, happy to reply any question about the game! :)
 
W

wouwie

Member
Just something i noticed: it's a pity that it's not possible to navigate the menus with the d-pad arrows, which seems faster and more natural to me for some reason.

Other than that, i like the presentation: smooth visuals and effects, nice sound effects and great soundtrack. I need to play more to judge the gameplay.
 
V

VLiberty

Member
lol @ title, needs to be Una "MixedBag" though

2+2=5 said:
While i'm pleased to see an Italian title i think that a traditional English title would help the game more.
Click to expand...

Maybe the italian title will get more people's attention because of the strange name.


btw I just ran out of PSN money so I'll skip it for now, but it looks great


The rest are in Italian... o_o
Click to expand...
quoting myself from the PSN thread:
Eurogamer Italy reviewed the PS4 versions of Futuridium and gave it an 8/10, but they also tried the Vita version. From the review:

- there's a lot of content (multiple modes, including Flappyridium)
- great ost
- hard as fuq
- 60 fps on both PS4 and Vita
- Controls are flawless on both PS4 and Vita
Click to expand...

Will do the same for the other reviews
edit: nothing to add from the other two
 
T

The Amusing Ciderman

Neo Member
I played this at EGX and loved it. Is it out now? So buying this game. Loved the visuals, controls were tight, didn't hear much of the soundtrack as it's so loud in Earls Court. And the guy stood next to the game on Thursday was very helpful and friendly too.
 
C

coolasj19

Why are you reading my tag instead of the title of my post?
daydreaming said:
I like the title. Ouch at "Mexican".
.
Click to expand...
I chuckled really hard.
2+2=5 said:
While i'm pleased to see an Italian title i think that a traditional English title would help the game more.
Click to expand...
Was going for intrigue and the theme of the studio that is also Italian.
VLiberty said:
lol @ title, needs to be Una "MixedBag" though
Maybe the italian title will get more people's attention because of the strange name.
btw I just ran out of PSN money so I'll skip it for now, but it looks great
quoting myself from the PSN thread:
Will do the same for the other reviews
edit: nothing to add from the other two
Click to expand...
PM'd a mod. Thanks for the correction. Exactly. Edited in. Thanks.
 
T

The Amusing Ciderman

Neo Member
Hey Mauro I thought I unlocked a new skin. Was I seeing things? Had a look through the options and cannot see anything. Where would the skin options be? Am I just missing something obvious?
 
W

wouwie

Member
The Amusing Ciderman said:
Hey Mauro I thought I unlocked a new skin. Was I seeing things? Had a look through the options and cannot see anything. Where would the skin options be? Am I just missing something obvious?
Click to expand...

I wondered the same thing but i think that the skin is a different color/look for the level itself. Sometimes you'll see that the same level will have a different colortone. Looks very nice too.
 
S

Skyrise

Member
wouwie said:
I wondered the same thing but i think that the skin is a different color/look for the level itself. Sometimes you'll see that the same level will have a different colortone. Looks very nice too.
Click to expand...

The Amusing Ciderman said:
Hey Mauro I thought I unlocked a new skin. Was I seeing things? Had a look through the options and cannot see anything. Where would the skin options be? Am I just missing something obvious?
Click to expand...

Yeah, skins are actually different colour patterns for the levels. :)

They get selected randomly for each level when you start but, little secret, you can change them on the fly pressing the Triangle button. ;)
 
S

Skyrise

Member
The Amusing Ciderman said:
I played this at EGX and loved it. Is it out now? So buying this game. Loved the visuals, controls were tight, didn't hear much of the soundtrack as it's so loud in Earls Court. And the guy stood next to the game on Thursday was very helpful and friendly too.
Click to expand...

Cool! So glad you enjoyed the game!

And... that was me! :))
 
S

Skyrise

Member
wouwie said:
Just something i noticed: it's a pity that it's not possible to navigate the menus with the d-pad arrows, which seems faster and more natural to me for some reason.
Click to expand...

It may sounds weird but doing the UI and all the menu stuff was actually one of the hardest thing. :/

We reserved the d-pad to change the music with left / right and the viewpoint with down, so we had to use the analog control for the menu options. As much as I tried to nail it I know it's far away from perfect. Will definitely try to improve it in a patch.
 
I

I Wanna Be The Guy

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
I played a demo of this at Game earlier and quite liked it even though I sucked hard at it. I can see it being quite addictive. Got more than enough Vita games to play right now but I'll get it at some point in the future.
 
W

wouwie

Member
Skyrise said:
It may sounds weird but doing the UI and all the menu stuff was actually one of the hardest thing. :/

We reserved the d-pad to change the music with left / right and the viewpoint with down, so we had to use the analog control for the menu options. As much as I tried to nail it I know it's far away from perfect. Will definitely try to improve it in a patch.
Click to expand...

Ok, though when the player is in a menu, he does not want to change music or viewpoint but navigate the menu. But maybe it's technically not possible to have both functionalities. Personally, as a player, i would have maybe put the viewpoint change on triangle and change music on L1 or something, leaving the d-pad free for menu interaction. I don't think i will ever change music myself and i don't plan to change viewpoint either (unless it has big advantages) so i would probably have given fast menu interaction priority.

Futuridium seems like the kind of game where you want to be able to restart a level as quickly as possible so it might need a bit more frequent and quicker menu interaction than most games (it's rather similar to Velocity 2x in that sense).

Anyway, consider it as constructive feedback. It's just something i noticed :)
 
S

Skyrise

Member
wouwie said:
Ok, though when the player is in a menu, he does not want to change music or viewpoint but navigate the menu. But maybe it's technically not possible to have both functionalities. Personally, as a player, i would have maybe put the viewpoint change on triangle and change music on L1 or something, leaving the d-pad free for menu interaction. I don't think i will ever change music myself and i don't plan to change viewpoint either (unless it has big advantages) so i would probably have given fast menu interaction priority.

Futuridium seems like the kind of game where you want to be able to restart a level as quickly as possible so it might need a bit more frequent and quicker menu interaction than most games (it's rather similar to Velocity 2x in that sense).

Anyway, consider it as constructive feedback. It's just something i noticed :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback, they're extremely important for us!

If we can improve some aspects of the game through a patch we'll definitely do it. We're not 100% satisfied of menu interactions, and it's something we'll try to fix.

Also, adding an even faster restart function as the L + R in Velocity 2X, is something we can do easily. ;)
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
Loving this so far, will do a proper video after I've had some time with it.

Much to my relief, the pseudo chromatic aberration effect doesn't bug me in-game at all. The colors only bend at the edge of the screen, where your attention usually isn't focused, so it mostly manifests as a surprising sense of speed as you move past things (that bend away in your peripheral vision).

Loving the level design, not too hard so far but not easy, fluid controls. Love the look a lot, but I'm sure it's a love/hate thing. Fantastic music.
 
Agent X

Agent X

Member
Skyrise said:
Hi guys!

Mauro from MixedBag here! So glad to have a post about Futuridium on NeoGAF, and so excited to have finally released the game on PS4 and PSVita.
It was quite a lot of work for a two person team!

I'm hanging around here, happy to reply any question about the game! :)
Click to expand...

Your team has done done great work with Futuridium EP Deluxe! I posted a few brief comments about the game earlier in this post in another thread here.

I finally tried the PS4 version about two hours ago (my earlier playtime was on the Vita). It plays about equally well on both systems--silky smooth frame rate and responsive controls either way. When playing on PS4, I like the way some of the sound effects are emitted from the controller speaker, in addition to the TV.

For trophy hunters out there, the game maintains separate trophy lists for PS Vita and PS4. There is no cross-save functionality, so your progress and unlockable bonuses do not carry over between the two systems. This is evidently why the trophy lists are separate, since you'd have to earn the trophies separately on each system. Interestingly, though, the online scoreboards are shared.

I finally managed to survive the entire zone 1 on the PS4 version. My former 5th place score on the zone 1 scoreboard was knocked down three pegs today, but since then I've risen back up to 4th. I think I'm 15th on the overall scoreboard (the one that counts score through all the levels--not the number of cubes).

One suggestion I'd make is that there should be a way to scroll the scoreboards, so that you could examine all of the scores (not just the top 10, or the few surrounding your own score).

Once again, I'd like to congratulate the Mixed Bag folks, and hope that you have a lot of success with this fine game!
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
One oddity I noticed, is it just me or is there much more chromatic aberration in the Vita version? It was never really warped in my focus on the PS4 version, but it seems much more significant on Vita. Can't tell if it's just the smaller screen (I was playing on a monitor rather than my TV though, so not a huge screen) or if the color warping effect is actually closer to the center on Vita.
 
Cha

Cha

Member
Bought it yesterday for Vita. Played a little. Died. died again. died again…
I know that I don’t have to go fast all the time, but I just can’t help myself. Really enjoyed what I played so far. Runs super smoothly, and looks gorgeous on the Vita.
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
Cha said:
Bought it yesterday for Vita. Played a little. Died. died again. died again…
I know that I don’t have to go fast all the time, but I just can’t help myself. Really enjoyed what I played so far. Runs super smoothly, and looks gorgeous on the Vita.
Click to expand...

I would really recommend not going fast all the time, having to turn around repeatedly will actually make you play a lot of levels slower
 
I

Ingueferroque

Banned
Interesting, didn't expect it to play the way it does.

Vita/PS4 versions look/play really great, just had the usual issues with cross-saves not syncing. (I want this to be an explicit, easy to access UI option at all times)

First person mode is great.
 
B

banagher

Member
Cha said:
Bought it yesterday for Vita. Played a little. Died. died again. died again…
I know that I don’t have to go fast all the time, but I just can’t help myself. Really enjoyed what I played so far. Runs super smoothly, and looks gorgeous on the Vita.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the Vita impressions.
 
N

napalmjam

Member
Really enjoying this game on both vita and ps4 it feels like the vita version is more responsive when controlling the ship .
 
V

VLiberty

Member
napalmjam said:
Really enjoying this game on both vita and ps4 it feels like the vita version is more responsive when controlling the ship .
Click to expand...

That's great to hear. I'm playing R&C2 on Vita and the ship controls are total shit, Ace Bunyon's platinum bolts are a PITA to get while they were way easier on consoles, so that was one of my main concerns


edit: that makes me raise a question, can you use the dpad to control the ship?
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
No, d pad is for music and perspective, doesn't even work in UIs

Ingueferroque said:
Interesting, didn't expect it to play the way it does.

Vita/PS4 versions look/play really great, just had the usual issues with cross-saves not syncing. (I want this to be an explicit, easy to access UI option at all times)

First person mode is great.
Click to expand...

I dont' think it has cross save at all, does it? If it does it definitely needs to be more obvious. Also a game like this shouldn't just have explicit explicit easy to access UI options for it, it should be totally automatic. There's really no reason to have maintain separate save files in a game like this. Just sync or no, and erase save really.
 
D

DUFFMCWALIN

Member
Played it real quick before the Giants wild card game last night. Loved how it felt like a trench run. Can't wait to play more after work.
 
S

Skyrise

Member
Sir TapTap said:
One oddity I noticed, is it just me or is there much more chromatic aberration in the Vita version? It was never really warped in my focus on the PS4 version, but it seems much more significant on Vita. Can't tell if it's just the smaller screen (I was playing on a monitor rather than my TV though, so not a huge screen) or if the color warping effect is actually closer to the center on Vita.
Click to expand...

It's actually a bit more pronunced on PSVita: the effect depends on the resolution of the screen, so you get more distortion at PSVita native resolution than on PS4 at 1080p.
It's something we can 'fix', but we left it that way since... I really love the colour distortion! :)
 
S

Skyrise

Member
Ingueferroque said:
Interesting, didn't expect it to play the way it does.

Vita/PS4 versions look/play really great, just had the usual issues with cross-saves not syncing. (I want this to be an explicit, easy to access UI option at all times)

First person mode is great.
Click to expand...

:)

There's no cross save support unfortunately. We have cross leaderboards but the PS4 and PSVita version don't sync saves.

It's a feature we really didn't have time to fit in the first release, we will probably add it in a patch.
 
S

Skyrise

Member
napalmjam said:
Really enjoying this game on both vita and ps4 it feels like the vita version is more responsive when controlling the ship .
Click to expand...

We read and manage the inputs in the same way from both the PSVita and the DS4 analog stick. The fact is: the PSVita stick physically is shorter and has a shorter run.

So controls on PSVita are a bit more 'twitchier', while on PS4 you have a bit more control on slow speed turns.

It all depends on the hardware configuration of the analog stick. :)
 
W

wouwie

Member
I really like the fact that you can stay in the main menu and listen to the awesome soundtrack. It automatically changes tunes too or you can change tunes with the d-pad. Neat idea and shows that the soundtrack was an important part of the game. I've been sittng here listening to it for half an hour already :) Especially great with proper headphones.
 
C

coolasj19

Why are you reading my tag instead of the title of my post?
wouwie said:
I really like the fact that you can stay in the main menu and listen to the awesome soundtrack. It automatically changes tunes too or you can change tunes with the d-pad. Neat idea and shows that the soundtrack was an important part of the game. I've been sittng here listening to it for half an hour already :) Especially great with proper headphones.
Click to expand...
Spoiler Alert: You can buy the soundtrack off the Vita store. Then export it to whatever you want from there. I bought the V2X soundtrack and I'll probably get this one shortly.
 
Agent X

Agent X

Member
There seems to be a bug in the online scoreboards. I have a friend who has also been playing the game over the last 3 days, as I've seen some of his scores. Today, when playing on my PS Vita and trying to check the friends scoreboard, all I see for him now is a ranking of 0, a blank name, and a score of 0. I doubt he's rolled off the bottom of the list, as he's a good player and wasn't too far behind me yesterday. I know he has been playing on PS4, while I've been bouncing back and forth between PS4 and Vita, but yesterday his actual score appeared on both of my systems.
 
Agent X

Agent X

Member
The scoreboard bug that I described above seems to only affect the PS Vita version of the game. The PS4 is still showing the proper information for my friend's score.
 
I

i-Jest

Member
Just bought it. Love it. Shout outs to Mixed Bag. You guys made an amazing game. For a two man team, I can't imagine this was a easy thing to do. Just game-shared it with a friend. We'll spread the word around.


Skyrise said:
:)

There's no cross save support unfortunately. We have cross leaderboards but the PS4 and PSVita version don't sync saves.

It's a feature we really didn't have time to fit in the first release, we will probably add it in a patch.
Click to expand...

Yes. Please do. That would be wonderful. Also, Vita controls seem noticeably more responsive than PS4 controls. I've read the post as to why.


In Deluxe level 10, I think it was, did anyone get stuck on that moving cube? The one that would shifts open and close.
 
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