Hong Kong Blood Opera Updated 16th January

What got you to make Hong Kong Blood Opera or HKBO for short

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I’ve made games based on Hong Kong action movies before. I’m a big fan of Asian Action cinema in general. But in particular the movies that came out of Hong Kong in the late 80s and early 90s were absolutely magic. This genre goes for the jugular and despite the genre formulations these movies take a lot of creative risks.

I had my own publishing company in the 90s and published table top roleplaying games and collectable card games. And most of our products revolved around Hong Kong Action movies in some way shape or form.

Shadowfist was my biggest hit a collectable card game based on Hong Kong Action cinema. The game was a hit but I was an absolute disaster of a Managing Director of a company. I should have stuck to simply designing games.

Lately I’ve wanted to return to the genre but from a more modern perspective. Hong Kong has changed and so has the action genre, things are more grindhouse now, less unlimited hit points. I also wanted to approach the subject matter from a more feminist perspective.

Back in the 90s female heroines in action cinema were either "Good Action " or "Dark Action " and when look at the work I published in the 90s most women fall into either archetype.

I’m a feminist now and I want to subvert those tropes with a more enlightened and interesting take. The Strong Survivor action heroine is something I used for one of the NPCs. You see it in a lot of 21st century Asian action films like Rage of the Phoenix or more recently on American Television in Jessica Jones.

The game includes a secret Matriarchy loosely inspired by 19th century suffragette scientists Annie Jump Cannon and the Computers (the greatest story you’ve never heard). Basicaly I took an incredible true story and replaced Astronomy with Kung Fu. It’s my hidden feminist action movie parable.

I love choice games, always have and whatever game I wind up playing a lot I eventually wind up designing.

So here I am designing Choice games and I’m loving it, especially the coding.

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I with you on that one

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I get the distinct impression that they’ve got a lot of room to grow, progress and develop. I also really like the community. They’re the coolest gamers.

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I am big fan of dark action movies from Hong Kong like cold war and rigor mortis

I haven’t seen them. But I just looked them up. They sound amazing. I’ll check them out.

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I’ve fixed a lot of the bugs in that part of the game and uploaded new assets but to be frank the game doesn’t play to completion much further beyond that point. The last half of the game still needs to be debugged.

I’m hoping to have Hong Kong Blood Opera at the Beta stage where you can playthrough to the ending without it crashing in about three or four weeks.

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I do want to beta test this I loved it

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Consider yourself on the list and thank you so much for the feedback it’s appreciated.

I love making this game but I’m at a stage of the project where I’m pulling out hair sometimes.

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Hahah I bet you are don’t become Homer Simpson haha

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I would like to beta test

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It’s mostly lots of fun.

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Thank you. I am going to start an open beta in three weeks.

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Hey @Jose_Garcia congrats on this accomplishment mate can’t wait to see the end result. I would love to be involved in the beta test if you’d have me but if not please know that this is a definite purchase of mine.

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Thank you kindly for the offer. I’ll DM you when it comes to Closed Beta time.

The first Beta will be in about three weeks time and it’ll be an Open Beta. The game will play through to the end but there’s likely to be a lot of continuity errors. I’ll keep the project in open Beta for about a month (maybe that’s me being optimistic) before I go to a closed Beta. I’ll email you then.

So yes you’re “in”. Thank you very much for the offer. I’m going to need a lot of playtesting in September and October.

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Doh!

No it’s not that bad actually. I was very organized in my use of state tracking variables which has saved my hair.

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Thanks mate thrilled to be involved in one of my favorite COG games

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So what’s the path to "I fell hard and fast for Baihu. "

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I think it might have been almost impossible to select this option as romance and crazy both need to be over 45 for this option to be selectable and that’s a condition that’s almost impossible to achieve at that point in the game. I ditched the crazy part of that. Now all you have to do is to have a romance of greater than 42. Most playthrough will have a romance of 40 at that stage but a good number will satisfy the condition.

Thank you so much for the feedback it’s most appreciated.

I’ve updated the demo so people can fall hard and fast for Baiyu. I’ve also removed a lot of game crashing bugs in the mid game. Some playthroughs call all the way to the end before crashing. Not long to go before I have a working Open Beta of Hong Kong Blood Opera. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are probably a lot of continuity errors lurking in these newly playable chapters.

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Wow, thanks I’m honored.

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