Hi game devers, I recently released my latest game Tasty Planet. It could be described as 2d Katamari Damacy. Or maybe Katamari meets Feeding Frenzy/Shark Shark. Here is the press release: Tasty Planet: Eat Everything in the World November 29th, 2006 - (Toronto, Canada) Dingo Games (www.dingogames.com) is proud to present Tasty Planet, a game of growth for Mac and Windows. In Tasty Planet players control a tiny ball of grey goo which eats everything smaller than it. The more it eats, the bigger it gets. Eventually the goo grows so big that it can eat the entire world. Tasty Planet features over 60 levels, three game modes, and tons of different things to eat. The game has simple and responsive controls which make it easy to learn. Players progress through the game by eating anything that gets in their way: dirt, bacteria, bugs, fish, mice, cats, dogs, cars, trees, houses... everything from the tiniest to the most colossal things in the universe. Comic strips throughout the game tell the story of two scientists trying to create the world's greatest bathroom cleaner. Using nanotechnology they design a ball of grey goo to eat all the dirt and bacteria in a bathroom automatically. Unfortunately, a slight miscalculation causes their ball of goo to eat more than just bathroom dirt; it starts eating everything. Now there is no stopping this out-of-control bathroom cleaner. For more information on Tasty Planet or to access the free demo, available for Mac and Windows, go to www.dingogames.com. Tasty Planet: All You Can Eat Gaming. Links: More Info

">Trailer Video Mac Demo Download Windows Demo Download

Wow, that looks pretty crazy! It does look a lot like Katamari. I think I will have to give the demo a try...

EDIT: The installer fails to do anything. Nothing comes up, no error messages, nothing.
EDIT2: Never mind. Just my laggy machine. [rolleyes]
EDIT3: Okay, I played through the demo last night. It is very well done - no technical issues, no gameplay issues. But there is one thing that bothers me - it is an almost identical clone (except 2D) of Katamari. It would have been nice to see a few different things, just to set it apart from Katamari Damacy. I would be a bit worried about the legal implications of making such an identical clone.

Still a fun game though.

[Edited by - Moe on November 30, 2006 11:03:44 AM]

Thanks for trying it out.

Obviously there are lots of similarities with Katamari. And I don't think that's a bad thing. But I think that calling it a 'clone' is a bit extreme. Can a 2d game really be an identical clone to a 3d game? If you ignore the visuals and just look at the gameplay (think of all the objects in the game as abstract shapes) then the game is actually closer to Feeding Frenzy (or an even earlier predecessor like Shark Shark).

Look at a few first person shooters and see how similar they are to each other. First person shooters are rarely considered clones of each other even though their gameplay is virtually identical. Not much has really changed since Doom. (And if there were laws against creating similar games then we wouldn't have anything better than Doom... in fact, depending on how extreme the laws were maybe we'd still be playing Pong)

But why aren't all the WWII FPS considered clones of each other? If they aren't clones then how could Tasty Planet be considered a clone of Katamari? I think it is because there is a genre called "First Person Shooter" but no accepted genre called "Growth Game". So instead of saying that Tasty Planet is in the same genre as Katamari we say that Tasty Planet is a clone of Katamari. If there were 50 growth games out there then it would no longer be a clone, it would just be in the same genre.

But maybe I'm just bitter after someone called Laser Dolphin the "Exact same game as Echo the Dolphin except they changed the graphics and added weapons and changed the controls and changed all the levels."

Quote:Original post by crazyishone
Clone or not, the game seems very well made. Definitely worth the money from the looks of it.

True, true.

Wait, you are the guys that did Laser Dolphin? I thought it was awesome! (At least the demo that I tried).