Harpooned - Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator

#1 Interesting concept for a game. While I am not one for the blood and guts it does showcase some interesting things.

I love how you have to fire around the other boat and dodge it.

I could easly see some type of space combat game with the same design. A mission where you have to escort a civilian passanger vessel through enemy space. Both protecting it from enemy fire and also not fireing upon it yourself.

Useing multi-layers (one on top of the other) to produce space nebula effects that can block your view..

Oh well interesting concept of a game there. Great work on the graphics and putting everything togeather.

#2 Nicely done!

Great use of black humor to convey a political message. Good graphic presentation and music. And released under Creative Commons to boot. Kudos!

#3 Very cool.

#4 Japanese whaling has become a large issue here in Aus. This is pretty nifty!

#5 Just downloaded and played it. Terrific game! I love the dark humor of the game and the writing, absolute genius.

#6 Great, great black humor here. Anyone who hasn't already at least seen the YouTube video needs to see how you "get points."

#7 Phillip - I live in Melbourne so I was lucky enough to see Sea Shepherd when they were docked here.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Please forward the game onto your friends post about it on forums. As D. Robert Duke said - it's creative commons licensed so you're free to copy it as much as you like. More media attention on this game and whaling in general will bring pressure on Japan to stop whaling.

It would be great if Japanese kids played the game!

#8 I love it!

#9 When I played this game, it kind of made me feel sorry those whales. All in all, what a radical concept this is to convey a message about saving these sea creatures.

Just shows what can be done with TGB. Any concept that anyone can think of.
Good Game!!

#10 The game was mentioned on an Australian news service and has now reached over 4,000 downloads in 3 days. I hope my website can handle the traffic!

Thanks again for the comments and support everyone.

#11 Conor, I sympathize with your bandwidth concerns. Have you looked into Amazon S3?

Amazon S3

It appears to be a fairly cheap way to host files, and scalable far beyond mortal needs.

Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used

Data Transfer
$0.10 per GB - all data transfer in
$0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Requests
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests

Let us know how your bandwidth issues play out, I'm sure some of us here may face similar problems at some point. Though maybe not on the same scale, if I get 4000 downloads a month I'll be happy. :)

#12 Conor, I sent off an email to you, let me know if we can be of help.

#13 D. Robert Duke - thanks for the link, I will check them out.

Chris - I've tried emailing you at the address in your profile but it bounces back. Is there another email address I can contact you at?

#14 I got the email, so I have no idea what happened with that, but I bet it has something to do with the new control scheme of our web host. No worries though I did what I said I was going to do and before I even got a chance to post on the Game Politics forums, it's on the front page:
gamepolitics.com/2008/01/18/whaling-game-uses-outrage-to-spread-environmental-me...

edited to make link clickable

#15 Conor,

As always nicely done! Your artistic ability always amazes me. The game is a little creepy, but I suppose that's the point, huh?

Kudos

#16 I've written a short article for Gamasutra about the development of Harpooned.
You can read it here: www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17718

#17 Nice article, Conor. Its good to read how a successful TGB developer goes through with game conception and execution.