New Grappling Hook Version

Grappling Hook Version 1.03 is available, both demo and full-version.
When you are an owner of the full version, you can download the new version here.
Your savegames will be not affected by an update.

Changes Since Version 1.02:

• The bloom-shader will disable itself automatically, when it is not supported. That caused some crashes on old graphics cards in the past.
• The timer has a higher resolution.
• You can restart a level by pressing “4”.
• All important keys can be configured in the keys.cfg.
• After level-loading there is a 1 second pause.
• More resolutions are supported in windowed-mode.
• Fixed a crash-bug with “Disabled Sound” in Level 7.
• There is an option, that not the last checkpoint will be loaded on death, but the level will be restarted.
• Loading a checkpoint is only allowed, when the character is on ground.
• Fixed a small bug, when a mouse-keys was used for running.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Special thanks to Stephan and David!
I also want to thank Kim from BMT Mirco for the great support.

Reviews

There are two new reviews:

“Grappling Hook [..] an incredible first person puzzler/platformer, a title that already is one of the best indie games released this year.
[..] the way it is right now – with short but challenging and intense levels, all smartly done, it’s perfect.
As a whole, Grappling Hook is an amazing product. It is lighting fast and very challenging, it manages to deliver some really smart puzzles and oblige you act quickly. Or die.”
Calin Ciabai – Unigamesity

“Grappling Hook is a fantastic first-person puzzler which is very much in the same light as Valve’s Portal.”
Mike Rose – IndieGames.com

Thank you, Calin and Mike!

Quiz: Win A Free Copy Of Grappling Hook!

Don’t miss your chance to win a full version of Grappling Hook!
More information here.
Till now, there are 32 potential winners!

Version 1.02 of the full game and demo are available.

Changes Since Version 1.01:

• You can switch the language of the game to German. (Spanish and Catalan will follow)
• The controls can be configured with a config-file.
• Recreated the font and changed the font-renderer so it supports all ASCII-characters.

First Review

There is also a first review of the game in Spanish.

The online-magazine Rock,Paper,Shotgun wrote an article about Grappling Hook.
There is also an article by an Italian blog.
Do you know of any other sites that mentioned Grappling Hook?

Currently I’m creating a list of press-contacts.
What are your favorite gaming news-sites or blogs?

Version 1.01 of the full game and demo are available.

Changes Since Version 1.00:

• Added an option in the launcher to disable the bloom-shader. This will improve performance a lot on PCs with older graphics cards. A graphics-card with shader-support is still required.
• Tweaked some sounds.
• Extended the controls. Have a look at the ReadMe.txt for details.
• Made some minor changes to the levels.
• Cleaned up the font.
• The game shows the right icon, now.

Grappling Hook on ModDB and Facebook

You might have noticed the four new icons on the right side-bar.
Grappling Hook has now a profile on ModDB and Facebook.
Currently Grappling Hook is on rank 9 of 1193 of the most popular games on ModDB!

Interview with Acagamics

The Acagamics games club made an interview with me.
It is in german and can be found here.
Acagamics is the games-club at the University of Magdeburg, where I have studied Computational Visualistics.

Grappling Hook in Spain

A spanish video-game blog was on of the first sites, that wrote Grappling Hook. There will be also a review within the next week.

For support and feedback visit the forum.

Latest Changes:

• created a new website for the game  ( Special thanks to Bernhard, Stephan, Erlend, Jens, Boris, John, Jan, Aaron, and Norman for suggestions and advice! 🙂 )
• created the demo
• installed the forum
• tested the full game and demo on multiple PCs ( Special thanks to Stephan, Bernhard, Charles, Erlend, John, Hans, and Roger 🙂 )
• changed some things so the game runs on Linux ( the Linux version will be released soon. )
• created an installer for the game
• written the ReadMes for demo and full game
• evaluated e-commerce services

Hi, 🙂

sorry that this update is a bit late. I was in Bulgaria at a marriage of two friends. 🙂

New Grappling Hook Trailer:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAn9mw5wPNo

The song is part of the game music among 4 other tracks. The name of the song is Cellule by Silence.

Latest changes:

• added music to the game
• polished the levels again 😉
• Playtests with Fabian, Heiko, and Roger ( Thank you 🙂 )
• changes some sounds
• fixed alot of small bugs

Hey, 🙂

London was very cool. The subway-lines have funny names like Piccadilly or Jubilee and you hear/read every 5 seconds “Mind the Gap!”.

London is full of creative street artists!

I met a bunch of cool people. Steven Spielberg gave me some great tips about story-telling.

Elvis tried to convince me I should choose “Love me Tender” as background music for Grappling Hook… I hope he is not angry that I picked some Techno/Trance/Electronic-songs. 🙂

Finally Lara almost killed me, because I did not gave her the Grappling Hook for her expeditions.

Enough offtopic. Some new Grappling Hook screenshots:

Next week I will post samples of the music, latest changes and perhaps a new trailer.
Stay tuned! 🙂
Christian

Hey, 🙂
today I added an achievement-system, 30 achievements, and worked on the Windows deployment.
From 9 to 12 august I will take a vacation in London. When I’m back I will work with 200% energy to release Grappling Hook as soon as possible!
Do you have any recommendations for my London-trip?
What should no one miss who visits London for the first time?

Hey, 🙂 I’m really proud of Grappling Hook in its current state, because it is very polished and the best thing I have ever created.

Last major changes:

• Play-Tests with Heiko, Hans,  Charly and Bernhard on their machines. Thank you! 🙂
• Created 4 new levels. Yes, there are 22 now! Two more than promised, because I could not stop building. ^^
• Polished and tweaked every level again.
• You can hear and see now, if your hook-shot was successful or not.
• Implemented an ingame typewriter-block.
• The game tells a small story now!
• Improved the usability.
• Added a surprise for everyone who will finish the game. 🙂
• Added a new statistics-screen with a bunch of values like, how many teleporters you have used or how many times you have jumped.
• Recreated the level-end-screen with your time, records …
• Added popups to notify when you beat a challenge or your own record.
• Created many builds to test on different machines and get familiar with deployment.
• Made some important structural changes.
• Changed a few things in the engine to get the game running on Vista 64bit.
• The game will save everything to the userfolder now.
• Added the credits-screen.
• Fixed many bugs.

Most open tasks are now related to PR and distribution.
Stay tuned! It is almost finished! 🙂