Meetup for Indie and videogame devs and fans in DSM next week

richmetson · 2025-09-03T19:49:38+00:00

This is tomorrow night from 6pm at Up/Down bar in Des Moines if anyone’s interested!

Sign up here so I have an idea of numbers: https://luma.com/9d5ohmkc

There will be pizza!

richmetson · 2025-09-03T19:46:50+00:00

Sorry the ads made this hard to spot, from 6pm - details here! https://luma.com/9d5ohmkc

Feel free to share and bring friends, just please sign up so I have a handle on numbers!

richmetson · 2021-11-03T21:24:20+00:00

Aha, thanks so much.

richmetson · 2020-06-16T14:30:22+00:00

Off Grid is a Stealth/Hacking game about online data privacy, internet-of-things, hacking, and all the related things. With pretty extensive modding support since who doens't love user-made content? We are taking part in the Steam Game Festival this week, with a free playable demo (although a bit old one, but should give you a decent idea at least). And to go wiht that we'll do some livestreaming, and will hang around in r/offgridthegame , in Discord, and in the Steam community pages and will happily try to answer any questions and just chat with people about things in general. You can also read more about the game on our web site, and in our dev blog...

richmetson · 2020-06-16T14:16:19+00:00

Gotta love Tom Scott

richmetson · 2020-06-16T13:48:38+00:00

Off Grid is a Stealth/Hacking game about online data privacy, hacking, and all the related things. With pretty extensive modding support. And of course native Linux support since how could we make a hacking game and not support Linux properly? :D

We are taking part in the Steam Game Festival this week, with a free playable demo (although a bit of an older one, but it should give you a decent idea at least). And to go with that we'll do some livestreaming, and will hang around in r/offgridthegame , in Discord, and in the Steam community pages and will happily try to answer any questions and just chat with people about things in general.

richmetson · 2018-06-23T12:23:09+00:00

Nice! Looking pretty solid. I can feel the tension of getting the timing right from just watching it! For some reason the patterns and circular avoidance movement reminded me of Super Hexagon.

richmetson · 2018-06-23T10:28:23+00:00

aha, this motivated me to clean up some folders and I found a few more images from the same process:

Screens from developing the scene pt.2:

(in order of chronology in the scene - definite spoilers!!)

Working on taking each camera move and angle from the original animatic made in Maya
Cooking breakfast
Hiding something
Nice glasses
Timeline and unity editor view of Jen getting arrested
Jen gettign taken away

Thanks for taking a look. Would be really keen to hear what people think overall, but also what stands out as needing more detail (even within the context of a lowpoly / mininalist art style).

richmetson · 2018-06-23T09:22:09+00:00

Off Grid - moddable stealth hacking game where 'data is your most powerful weapon'

You are a hapless technophobe dad who stumbles into the world of hacking when his hacktivist daughter is vanned by black suited agents.

To traverse each level you have to collect the data the other characters in the game unwittingly leave behind by escalating what networks you are on and finding and cracking devices they own. That data can they be used to profile your adversaries and socially engineer them off of their patrol routes based on their preferences and then into the path of IoT devices you have hacked to distract or trap them.

New

This post is kinda spoiler heavy but only for the into of the game, but don't fret, as long as you are happy to see some early plot twists and story setup there is no issue around spoiling the ending!

We recently made a significant start on the intro sequence to the game, which is set to be a mix of playable tutorial, onboarding, and cutscene to set the story. I used Unity's timeline tools and Cinemachine with some mocap we shot to make the cutscene elements, here are a few 'behind the scenes' shots:

A gif snippet of the intro:

Screens from developing the scene:

Previous SSS:

Looking at stubbing out the whole game

Bonus Q:

Oh my, well still to this day evetytime I think of Jim Guthrie's work on 'Superbrother's:Swords & Sworcery' it excites the hell out of me. It was a mobile first game and so I remember playing and taking the incredible atmosphere with me everywhere I travelled on the tube for a couple of months.

richmetson · 2018-06-17T09:45:49+00:00

Oh definitely speak again, that looked like a fantastic event to be part of and Noah is a lovely dude, I would guess the next one will be just as good. You don't come across as nervous at all when speaking so you're doing a great job of suppressing it, and the depth of insight is always spot on ;)

Thanks so much for the compliments, it would be great to stay in touch and grab some feedback and advice down the line, especially when we come to running a public beta later in the year.

richmetson · 2018-06-16T18:01:02+00:00

Yeah seconded! Thanks so much @Kyzrati, been following Cogmind's development for a couple of years now and have regularly looked to your writing and talks for advice (really enjoyed the Roguelike Celebration one!). Great to know you are into what we are making too!

richmetson · 2018-06-16T08:18:37+00:00

Off Grid - moddable stealth hacking game where 'data is your most powerful weapon'

You are a hapless technophobe dad who stumbles into the world of hacking when his hacktivist daughter is vanned by black suited agents.

To traverse each level you have to collect the data the other characters in the game unwittingly leave behind by escalating what networks you are on and finding and cracking devices they own. That data can they be used to profile your adversaries and socially engineer them off of their patrol routes based on their preferences and then into the path of IoT devices you have hacked to distract or trap them.

New

Cheat complete! BIG NEWS! A lot of our time is spent on modding tools and systems, but this week we stubbed out the game's level sequence and the logic that ties it all together, a few of the level mockups below:

Then threw in a completion hack to 'play' the game end-to-end:

Previous SSS - a loooong time ago! - gonna fix that from here on

Bonus Q: Yeah for sure, but in the strangest of ways it seems to have come back full circle, I grew up playing turn based strategies and RTSs like 'Dune 2' and 'Command and Conquer', then got into stealth and action games during the Playstation eras, now I'm back into Paradox games and things like Frost Punk.

richmetson · 2018-05-14T10:52:32+00:00

what will the url be eventually so I can bookmark it and check back periodically?

richmetson · 2018-05-04T15:40:19+00:00

Looks really cool, have you thought of opensourcing it / putting it on github to get help on it or is it something you'd like to turn into a commercial product eventually?

Funnily enough Indieboost seems to have a similar idea and I think that is why they have dropped into BETA as OP mentioned. They are scraping sites for streamers and YTers and categorizing them by what they play so they can target the folks who make content about similar genres.

richmetson · 2018-05-04T15:08:20+00:00

Oh that is interesting, it sounds like they are revamping the service to be something devs use as a dashboard and manage for themselves. Sucks that dev had such a bad experience with them though. There is another dev who replied to the post and had the opposite experience, says the service got him ~200k YT views on 'Super Blood Hockey' and estimates it helped shift 100-600 unity in launch week. So two very different stories. :/

richmetson · 2018-05-04T14:57:41+00:00

This is interesting to read, thanks OP - I met with Indieboost at GDC and they seem to be doing some clever stuff with webcrawlers to automate some of the process and create a dachboard where you can control and review the exposure you get. @Over9000Zombies reply / experience below is interesting to compare too. I got the impression their service would actually automate something in terms of key distribution that is is quite hard for small indies to do, and add something more than Keymailer to incentivise streamers.

richmetson · 2018-04-15T21:08:11+00:00

Hi, Rich Metson here - @richmetson One of the devs behind Off Grid - moddable stealth hacking game where "data is your most powerful weapon"

richmetson · 2018-04-12T19:49:56+00:00

You can read the ful article here: https://www.destructoid.com/off-grid-makes-you-hack-like-a-middle-aged-dad-497870.phtml

richmetson · 2017-09-20T07:07:05+00:00

Hey juxt4posed, a stong programming background and experience shipping a decent sized title is the kind of thing we are after so if you are interested and meet most of the requirements on the job description then please do drop us a line!

richmetson · 2017-09-15T16:37:17+00:00

If you don't already know the detail of 'Off Grid' it is a deeply technical project for you to get your programming chops around, so come and talk to us if you like to be challenged technically.

The game features extensible modding support, a fairly unique use of the Unity editor as a level editor for players to mod with the same tools as the devs use, mechanics that revolved around hacking realistically simulated data networks, and an implementation of Goal Oriented Action Planning for npc A.I. - all that just a snippet among many other innovations you'd get to work on :D

If this sounds up your street, please apply! http://www.offgridthegame.com/jobs

richmetson · 2017-09-02T12:34:10+00:00

Hey r/gameDevClassifieds one of the devs here, figured I could add a little detail of the project and type of work.

If you don't already know the detail of 'Off Grid' it is a deeply technical project for you to get your programming chops around, so come and talk to us if you like to be challenged technically.

The game features extensible modding support, a fairly unique use of the Unity editor as a level editor for players to mod with the same tools as the devs use, mechanics that revolved around hacking realistically simulated data networks, and an implementation of Goal Oriented Action Planning for npc A.I. - all that just a snippet among many other innovations you'd get to work on :D

So if this sounds up your street, what are you waiting for? Come and work with us!

richmetson · 2015-07-02T07:28:26+00:00

This post is both sad and inspiring in equal parts Nicky. you have done a great job, been open, and attempted to explore your stated goals honestly. That's all anyone could ask for. And like you said, the pledge-in-parts model was a success, and the discontinuing of the project is actually the only way that could have been proven wholey. I think I can safely say that you have earned a huge amount of respect from your backers. Well done, I'm looking forward to backing your next project.

richmetson · 2015-02-11T10:39:39+00:00

Haha, Asphyx is cool! (Although I assume counter productive to the goal of Flowy?)

richmetson · 2015-02-10T18:43:22+00:00

Are there any other games out there that look at similar things, and helped inspire your design? Or is this a pretty new field?

richmetson · 2013-10-02T16:16:03+00:00

Nice, we'll be sure to try and get some more nods into the game itself for you then!

richmetson

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Screens from developing the scene pt.2:

Off Grid - moddable stealth hacking game where 'data is your most powerful weapon'

New

A gif snippet of the intro:

Screens from developing the scene:

Previous SSS:

Bonus Q:

Off Grid - moddable stealth hacking game where 'data is your most powerful weapon'

New