[NOTE: Fireball 2 was slightly delayed on Steam, but is now available on all 3 platforms.]
Back in May of 2010, Radiangames released its first title, a twin-stick shooter called JoyJoy, on the Xbox Live Indie Games service. It was the start of a small series of games, with 7 small games releasing over the next 11 months. In the 15 years since JoyJoy, Radiangames has released over 20 games on a number of platforms. Today we’re going to focus a bit on the 4th game released on XBLIG: Fireball.
Fireball was based on my favorite Geometry Wars 2 mode, Pacifism. Dodge a ton of enemies without firing, and lure them into an explosion. Despite Fireball not being that popular compared to my other early titles like Inferno or Super Crossfire, it was definitely a favorite for many people, including my wife.
Fireball ended up being ported to quite a few platforms, and was mildly successful on Android in particular (Google featured it on the Play Store a couple times). When playing through my old games, it generally holds up pretty well, aside from the XBLIG and PC version’s bombs not letting you smash through them.
I hadn’t planned to make a sequel to Fireball, but in the summer of 2023, I created a small framework for 2D arcade games based on a very-simplified version of Rhythm Storm. To test it out, I started a new project called RKDN one (Radiangames + Arcade, episode 1). The first thing I thought of to test the particle system was a fireball moving around.
A few weeks later, that small project looked a lot like Fireball. There weren’t as many enemy types, but there were far more of them at once, and the general mechanics were the same too. I kept working on it once in a while, and eventually decided to release it. You can see more details of the game in this video. Or read more about how I finally decided to call it Fireball 2 here.
The last major addition to Fireball 2 was Chaos mode, which came about due to a question on the Steam forums about modes. I was satisfied with just one main mode and two difficulties, but decided to explore alternate modes due to the question. Chaos mode switches up the enemy behavior and speed, along with a few other subtle tweaks and remixed music, to make it feel distinct from Core mode, without changing the core Fireball formula too much.
Porting Is A Process
Fireball 2 is made to play with a gamepad, and it’s made to look good on a 4k120hz screen. Any high-resolution and high-refresh rate monitor is good, really. Porting it to consoles made sense, in terms of where it feels good to play. The technical aspects were a bit challenging, mostly due to processing the enemies on the GPU. But that was not unexpected, and we figured out how to make it look and play well on all 3 platforms.
On the other hand, the complexity of releasing a game on 3 platforms is hard to overstate. Steam has a pretty complex and elaborate backend for managing games and your store page. It’s taken me years to fully understand it and know where all the settings are, and which subsites have what info. And I still have to look around to find some things. Now multiply that by 3, and try to learn 2 of them at the same time, while also having to do the first time set up and learn all the ins and outs of each SDK to port the game (save/load/achievements/etc).
I could go on for a while here, but my brain hurts just writing about it. I’ll just say the experience changed my plans for future games. You’ll see down below.
A Year of Radiangames Releases
To celebrate the 15-year anniversary of Radiangames, not only is Fireball 2 launching, but Instruments of Destruction is being featured by Steam in its first Daily Deal with its biggest discount yet. Radiangames’ classic title Inferno 2 is also on sale. And Rhythm Storm is getting a new demo next week.
The releases will continue throughout the year. Rhythm Storm’s updated demo and Speed Demons 2’s all-new demo will be in the June Steam Next Fest. Those 2 games will be coming to Steam, Xbox, and Playstation later this summer. Rhythm Storm will come to Steam first in July, while the timing of its ports and Speed Demons 2 are still a bit uncertain.
After Rhythm Storm, Speed Demons 2, and the console ports of Instruments of Destruction release, Radiangames will be shifting to PC/Steam releases beyond 2025. You can read more about that at the end of this news post on Instruments of Destruction, or on the Radiangames website.