Shwip cover
Shwip screenshot
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Genre: Shooter, Indie

Shwip

HammerLog 10 - Better support for control types
Shwip is built with the Unity game engine. It's a fantastic toolset, but one aspect has been subpar for years now - and that's the input system. While we could have spent dollars to buy a third party plugin, we generally like to roll our own solutions rather than rely on third parties. This gives us more flexibility while maintaining support from Unity itself.

We recently implemented an version of the new input system, and it's been very promising so far. You'll be able to use a number of supported controllers and keyboards with ease. We are also thinking of adding binding options, but that is for another day. Look forward to more updates here and on twitter.

Take care and happy Friday.
-Jamhammer Games

HammerLog 09 - Microsoft Store, Hands Eye Society, Shwip in one of Canada's largest malls
We were recently invited to showcase Shwip at an event named Play 2 Practice at the Square One Microsoft store in Mississauga this weekend. The folks over at the Hands Eye Society have put on this event several times now in an attempt to bring local indie game devs into the spotlight. This Sunday was our turn, and we were honoured to be able to showcase our newest version of Shwip to everyone walking around the mall.



Kids and adults sat down to enjoy some single and multiplayer Shwip action. Feedback was great - ranging from some bits of confusion in relation to our newest mode Style to random people stopping in their tracks and commenting on how beautiful all the colours looked.



We got a chance to test Style mode publicly for the first time yesterday. The ability to have all sorts of people play a new mode without explanation is one of the best parts of these events. As small developers, we often don't have the resources to hire QA departments or user testing groups or sign up for major events like PAX or EGLX.



We want to say thank you to the Hand Eye Society, the organizers of the Play 2 Practice event, and the Amazing crew over at the Microsoft Store in Square One. We can't wait to participate again soon, maybe with a new game we have in the works ;)

HammerLog 08 - What's going on?

HammerLog 07 - The Road to Style
Work on style mode is coming along nicely! Our original vision for the mode didn’t translate well towards players initially so we decided to scrap it and start from scratch.

The original vision of Style was an upgradable version of Arcade. You had the same slew of enemies, but they were harder to kill. By using combos and “style” points, you could upgrade your ships abilities to better dispatch enemies. Unfortunately, this concept didn’t translate well to players on show floors and in the beta. Ultimately, the mode is called Style, and we want players to do exactly that – play with style. But how?

Growing up, our favourites were the likes of Project Gotham Racing and Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2. Those games had players string together massive combos for both the ultimate feels, and a massive combo bonus. We are building the new Style mode based on those factors. Gone is the upgrade path, along with the harder to kill enemies. Replacing that is a combo system and the ability to fill up a TUR-BOM-ETER bar, which will allow players to unleash up to three very nice powerups of their choosing.

Stay with us as we develop the mode and begin showcasing it to the world.

Upcoming changes to Shwip in v1.1.3

EGLX, Forest City Comicon, CNE Gaming garage all gave us incredible insight into how players react to the game. So instead of having players organically learn the small nuances of each mode, we created an intro screen. Here’s a look at the three modes so far. Style is still a work in progress.



We don’t want to hold your hand, because the intricacies of Shwips control scheme is better experienced organically and naturally, but we figure you need a BIT of an intro before the pixels start flying.

Thanks again for your support in our development of Shwip. Until next time.

V1.1.2 Update
Hey everyone,

Some updates we've been working on the past few weeks since launch. Thanks to Tempest and a few others for pointing out some bugs.

Notes



  • Added a small introduction screen to better introduce minefield mechanics
  • Added more music options
  • Purge particles are less annoying now
  • Shwipball mode multiplayer better shows who won and who scored
  • Fixed a minefield bug where one player would fail to actually die
  • Fixed a few spelling mistakes here and there
  • Removed vibration feature in menu
  • Camera improvements
  • Decreased spawn time in minefield when you die
  • Missile fire rate adjusted
  • Floater enemy adjustments
  • Many other small fixes, tweaks and adjustments


Keep a lookout for this update, and please use the forums!

Shwip is now available on Early Access!
It's been a long time coming but Shwip is finally available to play! Thanks for following along with us through this journey, and be sure to post your comments, feedback, videos, everything!

v1.1.0 Notes

  • Style mode has been temporarily disabled because it's still in development. Once we're comfortable enough with its fun factor, we'll release a patch that unlocks it.
  • Initial load might be a bit slow, we're working on a loading screen that should ease the transition between launch and the main menu.
  • Achievements have been disabled for now. We'll activate them once they're all in and finalized.


Please post your issues, comments and feedback! And thanks for playing Shwip!

HammerLog 06 - Shwip is going early access
We need your input to make Shwip the best game it can be, so we decided to go Early Access for a short amount of time to gather feedback and data. Being an indie developer means you need to make a large impact with a small amount of resources, and being a two person group – that is hard to come by. Showcasing Shwip at events over the development of the game has proven to us that people like yourselves love playing the game. Some of what made our choices easier was feedback by the community. So look for news regarding Shwip’s early access launch on twitter or stay tuned here. Thank you for understanding!

Come play Shwip at EGLX in Toronto Oct 26-28!


Swing on over to the Metro Toronto Convention centre Oct 26th to 28th and play Shwip with us, the developers. We'll be at booth 838!

Read more about EGLX here.

Excited to see you there!

Hammerlog 04 - Getting Ready
Ok this time we're really close.

We're getting ready for Shwip's release and it's finally go time. Time to let our baby into the wild after years of development, polishing, feedback, playtests and a pretty awesome beta. Shwip has been a labour of love since it's idea first dug itself into our brains, and we can't wait for everyone to have a go.

We are currently finalizing each mode while putting together a trailer with our fantastic audio guy Scott Holmes. Stay tuned for a final release date once we nail all the final details. Expect Shwip in the next month or so!

P.S, hammerlog's 2-3 are not related to Shwip, but if you'd like to read them just hit our site! Jamhammer.ca

Hammerlog 01 - The State of Shwip
Dude it's been years, where's SHWIP??

Shwip has been in development a while now, mostly because we built it once and then rebuilt it from scratch again. We realized that the original game would have been good, but not the introduction we would have wanted. Switching engines was also due in part to our relationship with Microsoft and id@Xbox. Getting "OG Shwip" to run on the Xbox One would have been a gargantuan task of porting XNA to a modern language, and we didn't want our first game on Xbox to be less than it could be. So we made the decision to start from scratch in Unity. Being a team of only two part-time guys, we needed that single codebase that Unity could provide, not to mention it would also allow us to launch on new platforms. Unity also allowed us to spin off the game into Shwip Turbo Thumb, our top down mobile endless shooter. It's available on Google Play and the App store if you want to go check it out.

 Jahammer in 2017

2017 was our "breakthrough" year, as we began our roll-out of Shwip to the public. We started in Toronto with the CNE Gaming Garage back in August. While incredibly fun and an awesome experience overall, it didn't have the greatest impact to our game. We met some really great people, but ultimately - the people walking around were not as interested in gaming as we had initially hoped. Fortunately, we received a bunch of feedback from potential casual players of the game and have since implemented it.

Next, we headed to Forest City Comicon in London, Ontario for a one day event where we showcased the game to cosplayers and gaming fanatics. The con was a great success and we had a lot of new players introduced to the game. With that came a boatload of new feedback we recently implemented. Hype train in gear, we then headed to a dev only event at Raiders eSports bar - it was nuts! Met up with some folks we had met earlier in the year and had a great night of gaming and drinking. That same weekend we then headed to Extravalanza for a two day AMD sponsored ROMP.

Other than sore feet and huge smiles, we learned that our next appearance to the public would only happen after the game is released. Nothing sucks more than having someone super excited to play your game and then fall flat when you tell them it isn't available yet. We did get an insane amount of insight into new players of our game, and we look forward to getting it to them ASAP.

 Shwip will be available sometime this summer. We're finalizing a few of the modes and will then settle on a release date for Steam. Until then, look for an update to Turbo Thumb in the next week or so! The update will introduce Minefield mode and a few awesome upgrades to Endless, and the game over all. Until next time - PEACE!

Check out jamhammer.ca
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