Rigid Force Alpha is a classic side-scrolling shoot’em up in the likes of Gradius V or R-Type Final. Battle your way through various stages, collect weapons and power ups and blast up all kinds of enemies. To save mankind and the rest of the galaxy you’ll have to face screen-sized boss enemies and show them which side the bread is buttered on!

The game is rendered by our homemade and fully scalable shader pipeline, developed and implemented by Kartoffel. To spice things up we're planning to implement unlockable bonus levels, an endless continuous mode and online leader boards. And naturally, there'll be a rocking soundtrack with a cool mixture of retro-synth music and orchestral arrangements, composed by Lauri Turjansalo (faroutmusic.net) and Michael Chait (michaelchaitmusic.com).


Specs
• Classic side-scrolling shoot’em up action with modern 3D graphics
• Unique weapon and power-up systems
• Lots of different enemies, challenging mid-bosses and huge end bosses
• Exciting story mode with animated cutscenes and full voice-overs
• Additional Arcade and Boss Rush game modes
• Six different action-packed stages
• Challenging but fair gameplay
• Adjustable difficulty level - for beginners to experienced players
• Leaderboards and 40 achievements included
• Gamepad and rumble support
• Original synthwave soundtrack by DREAMTIME featuring Michael Chait



2018/08/31 - LAUNCH DAY!!
• It's finally out on Steam!


2018/08/22 - Launch date announced!
• Rigid Force Alpha will launch on 31st August, 2018 on Steam!
• New Trailer released!

2018/04/16 - Steam Product Page launched!
• Rigid Force Alpha Steam Product Page launched
• New Teaser Trailer released.
• Scroll down for new screenshots!


2015/12/13 - New Trailer Released!
>>> 2015 wip preview trailer


2015/12/13 - Some development screenshots from some time ago:












Links:
Check out the following links and follow us for further updates!
• Rigid Force Alpha on Steam
• Rigid Force Alpha on IndieDB
• com8com1 on Twitter
• com8com1 on Youtube

Wow looks awesome! Exactly the type of game I love!

Fantastic work, gameplay and visuals, commented under the youtube video!

Btw. I'm still not a big fan of the second to last shot, it looks severely underwhelming compared to the rest, like all detail work has gone into the background instead of the foreground. Some mushrooms, plants and such would be a good start to break this up. And the texture seam is a little harsh too.

Thanks to both of you!

@Superku: Yes, I read your comment! Good points, I'll take care of both of them. And yes, I still remember your critique from some months ago regarding that particular screenshot. The actual scene has already been replaced by the desert style which you can see in the new video (0:17). How do you like it? I personally believe that the new style works much better and eliminates the background/foreground issues, even though it's still lacking some effects and visual anchor points in the background (large buildings, rock formations, et cetera - I'll just have to try some things out).

While I'm at it - here are some of the latest dev screenshots:









Find these and more shots in higher resolution on RFA's IndieDB site. Also: Follow us while you're there.

Many surfaces in the video look a little bit flat. Also a little bit more contrast might be nice, adjusting the tone mapping could already do the trick (try the uncharted 2 tone mapping operator if you don't already, most people prefer it over Reinhard and others).

Yes, there are still some placeholder assets left, and most of them lack good textures and/or normal maps. That will be fixed during polishing next year. The tonemapping method looks interesting, I'll certainly put it onto my research list.

Dont know if it matters much, but in the snow-like map the ui below seems to be a bit camouflaged. Adding a transparent darker/grey bar behind in such cases may help (I think if you make it transparent enough it should not make it too ugly).

I have to hand it to you guys , especially kartoffel ,it is truly beautiful , well done !

I haven't looked at the video/s but I can clearly see , it is one of those gamestudio projects that wil be remembered .

one thing though , not to sound negative at all ,because everything is so beautiful , but to me personally the ship appears odd and I cannot really explain it to you guys , maybe it's related to depth against that awesome eye catching backdrops , or better put in other words , its like it doesn't really catch your focus against the backdrops ?

perhaps if you added layers of particles/plasma/dust/blurry transparent cloudyness/something that is flying by towards the left , such that it build's up depth from the backdrop towards/past the ship , it might pull the ship for the player more in to the environment , but I don't know if you have something like this already or if it would be a bad idea.

thumbs up .

Looks amazing, i like the game. The new screnshots looks great and the gameplay looks pretty good.

Really cool analogue slight de-tuned or happy mod wheeled synth music and game play

@Reconnoiter: Yeah, good point. I'll try to fix that either with a transparent element or an outline.

@Wjbender: I see what you mean. This foreground vs. background stuff seems to be a common problem with shoot'em ups, and many games solve this by simply highlighting the gameplay objects in some way (with an outline or glow effect around player ships and enemies). Will try that!


@Iglarion: Thanks!

@sitrep: Now that's a spot-on name for a music genre. Thanks. ^^

This looks incredible. Great job!

hey, i like it! the gfx fits niceley together and especially the music takes me back to the good old days - keep it up sir!

congrats, it's a really HQ project!

2016/09/10 - Boss Battle Trailer Released!
Hello everyone! Major update on RFA! I just finished implementing all boss battles and thought I might show a new preview video. So, here we go!

The music in this clip is part of the Rigid Force Alpha soundtrack and has been composed by Michael Chait. Next steps on our way to world domination: Streamlining and gameplay polishing, finalization of code and shaders and main menu/UI stuff. Maybe we'll also add additional content besides the main mission mode, but we'll see about that soon!

Critiques and comments highly appreciated!




Some more screens:











Links:
• Rigid Force Alpha on IndieDB
• com8com1 on Twitter
• com8com1 on Youtube

Amazing! I love the artwork, graphics look fantastic!

Yeah very original and good looking graphic designs. I noticed on your older videos (2014/2015) that sometimes it isn't always clear where you can fly and where not, maybe you already fixed it, but just in case I thought I would mention it here.

Great stuff!
Only thing to criticize is that some of the projectiles look rather bland IMO, like those big bright pills at 0:13 coming from small barrels with no muzzle flash or other effect. Or the ellipses at 0:22, they don't hold up with the rest of the visuals.
Apart from that, good job and I'm looking forward to playing it!

Thank you guys!


That's true. I recently attached a stronger point light to the player ship, so surfaces close to it will now get illuminated and the player gets instant feedback about an imminent collision. This helps a bit.

Apart from that I'll also check all levels for collision readability soon. Not sure yet how to fix it in a consistent way - maybe I'll texture every foreground object a bit brighter or put some pointlights there. Or I'll separate foreground and background layer with sprites. Any other ideas?


Yes, those are my placeholder projectile textures. I'll make sure to replace them with nicer animated versions soon!

, your idea about lights is great. Sometimes just flatout dark or an other color or a little bit of blur (or a mix of the three) work also. I am not a side-scroller veteran (especially not with 3d ones), mostly just played some Metal Slug and recently a bit of indie game Gigantic Army, here are some reference pics for color and brightness differences:
https://lh3.ggpht.com/uWrKdnWGdUE-tGWe_X976ALV6pVggiGS8OjMV2hDhGNPjOsQOODn-ejL3WF1Z0zrMdEy=h900
https://thanksforyourplaying.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/ms2-x-hold-back-train.jpg
http://nyu-media.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gigantic_army_onsteam.jpg
http://d2oah9q9xdinv5.cloudfront.net/cache/images/games/1/30/29039/crop_640x480/GA_314.jpg

Though from the sound of your recent additions it probably already is alot better, futher additions are like cherry on top.

I see what you mean. In some cases it already works pretty good, while in some others you hardly can judge what's in front and what's in the background. I think it's mostly about having much less contrast and details in the background graphics than in the foreground. I think that's pretty much the point here. That rule also matches your screenshots.

That's good input.

Judging from screens
AWESOME WORK

greets

Long time no see! Sorry about that, there's so much going on right now that I rarely had the chance to post something new here. But that doesn't mean there's nothing happening with Rigid Force Alpha!
I recently switched to full-time development and am currently in the process of polishing all my content and finalizing the levels. Next up will be balancing, which is long overdue. I've also planned to add additional gameplay modes for enhanced long-term motivation.

During the past months I reworked the overall gameplay system, which is now a bit more coherent, and it's working nicely. I think I'll tell you more about that in one of my next posts. Until then, you'll find some random impressions from the last few months under this one.

And not to forget: There's now an offical project website which you can reach under www.com8com1.com, as well as Facebook and Twitter sites. You can also find us on IndieDB and Tumblr . We've got some cool content prepared, so make sure to stay in touch and follow us!

And some more random in-game shots - enjoy!

is this done in gamestudio? This is probably the best looking game ive seen Awesome work my dude!

Thank you! Yes, that's all done in 3DGS!

It just keeps getting better, the backgrounds and particles are great too.

Thanks! Yes, it's slowly getting more and more complete. And the particle effects really add to the overall look, I think.

Hey all,

today I'd like to announce that Rigid Force Alpha will be coming soon to Steam!

You can already visit our Steam Product Page and add Rigid Force Alpha to your Steam wishlist, if you'd like to stay up to date!

Here's our teaser trailer along with some recent shots from the game to show our progress.

>>> Click here for the Teaser Trailer <<<

Congratulations, the game looks great!

Finally some good news! I'm proud to announce that Rigid Force Alpha will now officially launch on 31st August, 2018 on Steam.

Of course we also released a brandnew Trailer for this special occasion, so have a look if you like.


And here are some new screenshots from the near-final version.

Congratulations!

All my wishes the sales accompany that great quality.

Thank you so much!

Almost seven years of development are over now. Just wanted to let you all know:



Hope to see you there!

7 years sounds insane, but the final product seems to be so cooool!

Wow! Awesome looking! Great work! Everybody going through Acknex deserves respect ...and if the final product looks like this...simply great.

Congrats with your release. I've read in a review that you have to restart the whole campaign if your lives/credits are exhausted, is this true?

Thanks @all!



Yeah, that's true! Since RFA's gameplay is strongly based on classic shoot'em ups, it uses this genre-typical characteristic. I have noticed that one or two reviewers don't like this mechanic, but maybe they just misunderstand the game's arcade-style principles. See, when you play a shooter in the arcades, you won't be able to save, either.

Fans of the genre actually expect this restriction and get along well with it, and usually they are able to play through the game after a few attempts. This learning curve and the required memorization related to it is part of the shmup experience. In fact, it's not limited to RFA; you'll also find this in other modern shooters, like Super Hydorah or Astebreed.

On the other hand, please also keep it in mind that you get 3 lives and 3 credits from the start, so you get 9 chances to play through and you can also collect further lives throughout the game. I think it's all balanced in a very fair way. Plus: After you beat a stage, you can always practice it in Arcade mode as often and as long as you like.

Ah okay, it does makes sense from that point of view. The fact that you get 9 chances and that stages are playable (as loose levels?) in Arcade mode does sound fair.

Yep, that's the way it is. It should be fair enough, even for shmup beginners.