Cheapshot – A map-based multiplayer shooter game for iPhone

by borodich • 11 years ago

26 34 11 years ago

kikki• 11 years ago

I mean, I get it, but it just looks like it would get really boring fast. Also, this should be submitted as a 'Show HN'.

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

fabrika5• 11 years ago

I'm one of the game creators and this submission is not mine. I couldn't resist to upvote it though. As for the game getting boring I really hope you're wrong: most of the players find it very addictive and it will get better if more people will find adversaries online.

lnanek2• 11 years ago

There's a real life game where you "assassinate" other people that has been popular with schools for decades: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin_%28game%29

This is essentially a computer version except with some complexities like hit points and damage taken from modern computer games.

So I really can't see it getting old quickly since it is based on a successful concept already. Indie game developers are often told to start from these successful concepts since it reduces the user research costs and rewriting.

thom2• 11 years ago

Um, does one of the demo avatars have to be Ian Brady?

goodmachine2• 11 years ago

+1, unbelievable.

Using child rapists in your marketing is not good, even for a company called Cheapshot.

fabrika5• 11 years ago

Living in Russia I wasn't aware of him being a child rapist. That's definitely not a part of our promotion plan. Will remove him.

linkeex2• 11 years ago

Gamer's arguments have always been that shooters are artificial environments with no personality involved. In Counterstrike you're fighting against stereotypical terrorists that are in no way related to your personal life.

Here, you "kill" real people with a face. Objective? Motivation? Kill him before he kills me?

I'm deeply concerned about this and find it disgusting.

fastball• 11 years ago

I always thought the argument was "it's just a game".

If you can't separate fiction from reality, you have deeper issues than violent video games.

linkeex2• 11 years ago

I can, but other people might not.

freehunter3• 11 years ago

Yeah paintball and airsoft and laser tag are disgusting, no one would ever play a game like that in real life.

downandout3• 11 years ago

I'm deeply concerned about this and find it disgusting.

As others have pointed out, if this inspires violence in someone, they already had serious mental issues. The larger issue for this game is that it simply doesn't look very fun. I think the idea of involving one's environment in mobile games is good, but this particular implementation doesn't seem very compelling.

DanBC6• 11 years ago

Stop linking violence to mental illness.

comex• 11 years ago

My view is that it's largely about realism. Even in today's first-person shooters with fancy HD graphics, you're usually aiming at a person who pops in and out of a single cover location, conveniently waiting for you to shoot him. Even if you've killed all his buddies, he won't run away or do anything different, but just keep yelling generic insults at you. If you shoot him, but not enough times to kill him, he will start shooting you again after a few seconds, seemingly no worse off for the injury (just like your own character). If you kill him, he will make a generic yell and fall over, but never die any more gruesome way. His corpse may have some blood around it but won't look remotely realistic. Originally this was basically mandated by technical requirements, but today it would certainly be possible to go further; I suspect most games don't do so precisely because players would feel weird being more realistic killers.

That's for FPS. In this game, even though the opponent has a face on their profile, the shooting consists of hitting a button and seeing a health bar go down. It's so abstracted from any reality that it's not even close to a problem.

wasyl• 11 years ago

I've seen the landing page and "watch in action" video. I still have no idea what are this game's rules. I only saw some flashing images of in-game screens, which didn't really explain anything

fabrika5• 11 years ago

You are positioned in your location with a simple handgun. 'Debtors' are created around you based on Foursquare and Instagram activity. Other players will also appear nearby. Attack by tapping/long tapping. They will fight back.

Level-up, get better guns, chems and equipment.

rasz_pl• 11 years ago

needs more jump cuts and video glitches, you can still barely see lackluster "gameplay"

mackwerk• 11 years ago

The whole phone number thing is broken, at least for danes. Danish numbers are 8 digits, this app believes they are 9.

fabrika5• 11 years ago

This is embarrassing. We will fix it. Thank you.

desdiv• 11 years ago

Just like crypto, you really shouldn't roll your own phone number validation libraries. Just use Google's libphonenumber[0]. There's an iOS port of it [1].

[0] https://github.com/googlei18n/libphonenumber

[1] https://github.com/iziz/libPhoneNumber-iOS

orange_county• 11 years ago

Played the game for a little bit. Kind of weird to see someone approach you on the GPS and have to kill them.

Impressive design and intro of the app. I really liked the video you guys made at the beginning of the app. I never seen anything like that. Would you mind sharing with us how you did that?

fabrika5• 11 years ago

Thank you! Basically it is a series of 2 seconds square videos with a small interaction: you tilt your iPhone to explore the videos. Just like photos in Paper by Facebook.

The videos and transitions were filtered with a combination of destructive After Effects filters. Some of the effects were achieved by using a nice little iPhone app called Glitché.

We intentionally lowered the quality when we exported the videos so that they look 'authentic'.

Cheapshot – A map-based multiplayer shooter game for iPhone

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