Clodhoppers is FREE on itch.io!

The first official Clodhoppers prototype is now available for FREE on itch!

We revealed the build yesterday at Riverside Games Night in Sheffield where several gamers got to experience the joy of lobbing crates and bombs at each other. With four players on-board for the entire night we ended up the last game there, having to ask the players for one final game just so we could get home to sleep!

Although this prototype is still extremely early, we hope it’s fun to play with a friends huddled around your telly.

Clodhoppers at Riverside Games Night 5

What’s included?

First draft 2-4 player brawling, crate throwing, shotguns, bombs, and a variety of level experiments.

What isn't there yet? 99% of the game! Much of the artwork is placeholder, no audio, unrefined close combat, no online play, single weapon, no enemies, no single player, and more! 

Requirements

• Windows or OSX with game controllers
  (tested with wired PS4 and XBox 360 pads)

• A friend or friends to play with (local multiplayer only)

Also, remember we’re doing the entire development in public via our Discord.

Cletus Clay makes a big screen comeback at #gamayo

At GaMaYo in Leeds last night, Cletus returned for the first time in almost a decade!

Much has changed in the intervening years. The clay may have dried and started to crumble but some things remain intact and as certain as they ever were. Catching your teammate off guard with a cheeky shotgun blast to the nether regions can draw a smile from the most sullen of faces. A crate eagerly lobbed across the screen striking a glancing blow, an over ambitious dropkick which misses the intended target but strikes happily on your friend's chin - it warmed the hearts of our players on a cold winters night in Leeds.

There were interesting talking points about the production back then too and buckets of love for the clay models and animation - such a shame Anthony Flack couldn't join us from his home in New Zealand!

Showing an unfinished 10-year-old game did come with some concerns. However, we left encouraged as the zany gameplay and Hillbilly characters had lost none of their charm or potency. The spirit of Cletus endures and we continue with renewed vigor that maybe, just maybe he has a place in today's market.

One last thing. A massive thank you to Fee Laming and Jamie Sefton for organising the GaMaYo and Game Republic events and providing us with a screen the size of a skyscraper to demo on. Vital for the well being and sanity of game developers in the region. Next event in May 2019, make sure you’re there :)

A Brief History of Time

Back in the early days of downloadable games, before Steam was even invented, Anthony made a PC game called Cletus Clay, a rambunctious clay-animated action platformer with a heavy arcade influence which was intended as a more ambitious follow-up to Platypus. After three years of work, the game was close to being finished, but it was also clear that the PC downloadable games market as it existed in 2006 was simply not ready for such a thing. Seriously, it was all bubble poppers back then.

After a demo of the game caught the interest of Microsoft, Anthony teamed up with Alex and the Tuna team to bring Cletus over to the newly-launched Xbox 360 Live Arcade instead - a proper console with a proper game controller, and a much more appropriate venue for this sort of thing. We had a terrific deal with Pinnacle Entertainment in place, but also various stipulations from Microsoft, including that the game support online multiplayer and, eventually, acres of documentation. This and other changes meant a full redesign along with a complete re-coding, so everything except for the original stop-motion animation had to be done over.

All of this effort however would ultimately come to nothing when the Global Financial Crisis hit and Pinnacle Entertainment shortly thereafter ceased to exist. A brief partnership with Microsoft didn’t work out as the game’s visuals no longer appealed to the rapidly changing team at Live Arcade. Nearly ten years ago the game was shelved in mid-production and that was basically the end of it.

Until Now

We still have all the original assets and we wanted to do something fun with it, in the spirit of the original game. We aren’t tied to any publisher this time, we’re just going to do it and hope it all works out. Which means we can do whatever we want, but we need to find an audience early enough to support it.

The multiplayer aspect was actually a really cool addition and we are keen to develop it further, hence the new name CLODHOPPERS. It’s not just Cletus any more.

We’re also tired of working away in the dark so this time we are going to let everybody watch us build this thing. We’re working in an open environment and you can follow and even contribute to the team’s progress on Discord. You can participate in our discussions, try even the most rubbish of early builds, see how we flail about with social media and marketing, but we’ll also do what we can to help with your games too.

We intend to release lots of materials from the game’s history along the way. We have so much unreleased material! Not only do we have demos of the first two versions of Cletus Clay, there’s a couple of iOS game prototypes here as well… all kinds of things.

Stay tuned.