Hi there! We've had a nagging feeling for a while that there was something we forgot to do, and this morning we realised what it was - we'd never officially announced that Binaries is available for Linux!
Thanks to the keen fans in this discussion we got a Linux build working a while back, and quietly made it available. Since nobody shouted about any major problems that they couldn't work around, we thought we should make it kind of official.
Now, if you read that discussion you'll see that we're a tiny dev and that our knowledge of Linux is very limited, so we've not had a lot of different configurations to test on, and even if we did come across issues we wouldn't really know the workarounds you might need to use.
And while we're announcing stuff...
We thought it might be worth mentioning that Binaries is now also available on your PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, in case you prefer playing this kind of game on a console (I don't know why you would, since the Steam version supports console controllers, but hey we're all friends here).
Reviews
As always, if you enjoy Binaries we'd really love it if you left a Steam review - they're massively helpful for tiny developers like us.
Cheers!
Tony
(An Ant man. No, not that one.)
Update v1.1, and 101010 fails
Hey Binaries-fans, how have you been. Good? Yes, us as well.
Have you been keeping an eye on the in-game "total deaths for all players" statistic recently? If you had you might have noticed that poor Blue and Orange have reached a spiky end 42101,010 times.
"But who's died the most," you're probably wondering right now, "and which levels are the biggest killers of delightfully abstract coloured balls." Well, we're glad you asked (but we're not going to answer the other, much more personal, question you're thinking - you big flirt) because we knocked up this little infographic to answer exactly those questions. What a coincidence!
Anyway, we thought that all of this was pretty cool and exciting, and so we rolled out the update wagon with a few bits and bobs we've been tinkering with (and also because it meant we could get the version number to be nice and binary again because that sort of thing is important to us).
As well as some potential bug fixes for small issues some of you have let us know about, we've also added bonus "visual styles". You can select any of these from the main menu whenever you want (they're a little gift, so we're not going to be mean and make you work for them). The styles are...
Grey
We know, we know, Binaries is a little bit too easy right now, right? You want more of a challenge? Well that's cool - this is basically "hard mode". We hope you've memorised the levels!
Inverted
What if Blue was Orange and Orange was Blue and light was dark and dark was light? We really love how this one transforms some of the levels, it brings an entirely new perspective on things.
Chromatic
We've been playing a lot of AAA games recently (we call it "research" but who are we kidding?) and looking enviously at their chromatic aberration effects. Why are AAA games so fascinated with this effect? We don't know. But we do know that we wanted it, so that we would be a little bit more AAA as well. (To be honest we might have gone slightly over board with it, but that probably just makes us AAAA, right? Right.)
Pixel
Last, but by no means least, we've made the game all pixelly. After that level that makes a joke about it being a none-pixelly indie game. We know, we're sort of ashamed at ourselves. But we like how it looks so it's there now and literally nothing can ever be done about that.
We hope you enjoy playing with the new effects, and keep adding to that deaths stat, and really we just want to say thanks again to all of you for keeping playing, it's like a great big hug that keeps us warm at night.
Cheers,
Tony (one of the Ant men)
Update v1.0.2
Hey chums, it's new update time, so say hi to version 1.0.2 and the much-requested feature of level preview images!
(And yes, we've ruined the nice binary version numbering. We are pretty sad about that but it was worth it for this handy feature.)
In the map if you select a level you've already completed you can see its layout underneath your current rank and time record. This should make it much easier for you to find favourite levels to replay.
Also I noticed today that you terrible lot have collectively killed Blue and Orange over 80,000 times since the game was released last month. You really really should try to take better care of them, you know.
As I mentioned last time, there's a community discussion thread for you to see what features we're thinking of adding, so please let us know which you'd prefer us to work on next and also suggest things you'd like to see.
(And thank you so much to everyone who's left a Steam review, we love reading every single one, and it's a huge help to relatively small and unknown indie games that people who stumble across it see that you're all enjoying it.)
Cheers,
Tony (King of ants)
Update v1.0.1 released!
Hi there!
Today we've released our first update for Binaries, v1.0.1. As the version number suggests, this is just a small bunch of quick fixes and changes, bigger updates will come later (also we really couldn't pass up the opportunity to use a nice binary number like 101).
So what's in this update?
Jump is now also bound on up buttons & keys.
Instant restart - you can press the restart button during play, rather than having to pause the game first.
Restart is now mapped to the Y / Triangle face button on joypads, so that it's as far from the jump button as it can be to avoid accidental presses.
There's an in-level death counter. This has been asked for a lot by streaming audiences, and who are we to deny them their fun? Whenever you die the level name in the top right will be replaced by a death counter for a short while. This number's also shown on the pause and level complete screens.
A bunch of little bug fixes.
Thanks for your fantastic support and feedback on Binaries, it's been really great to watch you play, read your comments, and see your reviews. Ant Workshop is a tiny developer and it's you lovely people who keep us going.
If you have any features you'd like to see in future updates be sure to let us know in the Steam community discussion.
