Official Race the Sun Level Building Contest Rules

Written by

Workshop-Contest-Banner-Just-Text

Workshop support for Race the Sun on Steam is live as of today, March 10, 2014. To celebrate we’re selling Race the Sun at 50% off and kicking off a level building contest.

To participate just submit a Race the Sun level you’ve created between March 10 and March 24th with the tag “Contest” on Steam. On March 25th we’ll announce as finalists and on March 28th we’ll announce winners.

Prizes:

Grand Prize (one winner): Your choice of either a $100 Steam Wallet card or a pair of 3 day passes to PAX East. Plus; a Race the Sun T-shirt, a signed Race the Sun Poster, 3 Race the Sun Steam Keys and a grab bag of Race the Sun Stickers and patches- plus a little something extra TBA.

First Prize (Up to 4 winners): A $20 Steam Wallet card, a Race the Sun T-shirt, a signed Race the Sun Poster, 2 Race the Sun Steam Keys and a grab bag of Race the Sun stickers and patches, plus the extra which we’ll announce during week two.

Second Prize (Up to 5 winners): Choice of a Race the Sun T-shirt or a signed Race the Sun Poster plus a Race the Sun Steam key and a grab bag of stickers and patches, and the TBA extra

Runners Up (No Limit): Race the sun patches and stickers and a Race the Sun Steam Key – plus the extra which we’ll reveal next week.

 

Rules:

  • Anyone can enter by submitting levels for Race the Sun through Steam Workshop before March 24th with the tag “Contest”.
  • There is no limit to the number of levels you can submit, although each level creator is entitled to only one prize.
  • Winners must be able to provide a mailing address for physical prizes- Flippfly will pay for shipping but recipient may be responsible for VAT or other costs in some areas.
  • Winners of the PAX pass grand prize will receive their PAX passes in the mail before PAX and must supply their own transportation and lodging.
  • Winners will be selected according to the following criteria:

Creativity - We like seeing new things created with the level editor! Show us new types of objects, new movement patterns, or crazy things we never imagined! Try to move beyond the types of objects you see in the existing built-in worlds.

Fun    - It should be fun to play your world. This is hard to define, but think about the gameplay. It can be challenging or easy, but make sure the user is having a great interactive experience, and not just watching a visual spectacle.

Polish - Take some time and make the world really look great. Think about the color palettes you use, the movement patterns the objects have, and the difficulty. Also think about making things change up as you progress through the regions – just like the built-in worlds.

Popularity – Votes through Steam workshop will be seriously considered during the selection process.

 

Good luck!

Race the Sun Level Design Contest on Steam Workshop

Written by

Workshop-Contest-Banner-Just-Text

Celebrate Race the Sun’s Workshop Launch by making awesome levels and winning awesome prizes:

On March 10th, to celebrate the launch of Workshop Support for Race the Sun on Steam, Flippfly is kicking off a new level building contest. Building content for Race the Sun is simple and easy, regardless of your previous skill level and modding experience- so check it out and win some cool stuff!

To participate, submit levels between March 10th and March 24th using the tag “contest”. The levels must be submitted through the Steam version of the game, using the Workshop sharing feature (which will become available starting March 10th.)

On march 25th, we’ll announce finalists, and on March 28th, winners will be announced. We’ll take into consideration both the quality of each level, as well as the community ratings.

We’re organizing a number of live events to help get aspiring level builders going- including Q&A and level building help on twitter and live streaming events during the finals runoff period between March 25th and 28th.

First prize will be the winner’s choice of 2 free PAX East passes or a $100 Steam Wallet card in addition to a signed Race the Sun Poster, Race the Sun keys, Patches, Stickers and a T-shirt.

Runners up will receive steam gift cards, race the sun keys, stickers, t-shirts and other cool stuff.

And there will be lots of opportunities for people playing and voting on the levels to win cool stuff along the way too.

Want to know how to get started building levels? we’ve got an easy to follow guide. If you’d like a video overview to get started with, check out this one.

And if you want help directly from the developers, tweet @flippfly and let us know where you’re stuck.
Lastly, please visit the Steam Community Portal for Race The Sun to talk with other modders!

Bh6w4BjCIAANNEb

Happy level building!

Opinion: Flappy Bird, Empathy, Appreciation for Simplicity

Written by

photo

There’s been a lot of talk about Flappy Bird lately. For those who somehow haven’t heard about it – it’s a mobile game from an indie developer in Vietnam named Dong Nguyen.
Over the past few weeks, it’s taken the mobile gaming world by storm, climbing up to the #1 spot in the app store. This is pretty rare these days, because publishers spend tens of thousands of dollars every week to acquire enough new users to maintain their chart position.

Long story short: the internet kind of exploded on the game and its developer. Blogs sprang up accusing the developer of cheating the chart position and cloning other apps, and Kotaku even ran a piece with a headline claiming the developer had stolen art assets from a Mario game (They later published an apology, because clearly this wasn’t the case.) And at the same time, millions of players were playing the game – a LOT. All of this attention seems to have been too much for the creator, who subsequently removed the game. The app’s success had completely changed his life, and it was too much for him.

There are lots of interesting things going on here, but I find two things particularly noteworthy:

1. The Hate Continue reading…

Pixel Pressure Cooker, #3

Written by

Hey everyone!

As you may be aware – today is Monday, and the more astute readers will remember that we did our Pixel Pressure Cooker on Thursday last week.

So, apologies for the late post :)

This week’s Pixel Pressure Cooker was pretty interesting and different, because we worked with a guest artist – Cellusious. Cell is a talented artist we’ve followed on Twitter for awhile, and we thought it’d be a ton of fun to get him in a quick jam. He did not disappoint! It was a treat for us and our viewers to see his painting methods – he cranked out an incredible amount of artwork in the hour-long jam, and you can watch it here:

Now – coming into this jam, we didn’t have a super solid plan for what the game play would look like, as we wanted to give Cell free reign on the visuals. And, partly because we were distracted by all the awesomeness landing in our assets dropbox folder – we kinda failed to turn it into a complete game at the end of the hour!

Here’s an animated. gif of what the game looked like at the one hour mark:

 

ScreenCap

 

So – we decided that instead of tossing this up as a “playable” game, we’re going to spend a few more hours on it and turn it into something that’s more representative of the final concept Cell drew:

PP3Concept

CLICK HERE TO PLAY