Three Updates: Five New Characters!
This is the third in a series of three posts about The “Should Have Been Three Updates” Update, which, as you can probably tell from the name, was really too big for a single update. The first post is about the new fancy version of the Veranda level. The second post is about the new user interface we’re moving towards. This final post will be about the five new characters.
And we come, finally, to the final bit of exciting news about The “Should Have Been Three Updates” Update, the latest group of 5 new characters…check them out!
Meet the newest guests at the SpyParty!
And here’s the whole cast:
It’s getting crowded at this party…
That group shot looks pretty cool, but with this latest group of characters we wanted to round out the color palette of all the guests, and so we made this rainbow image, which just delights me:
Look at the pretty rainbow!
No one can say SpyParty is a brown-and-grey game!
Also, due the the twins in the new art, there are now more new art characters (21) than old art characters (20)!
Diversity
As usual, one of our design and art direction goals is to make the party guests as diverse and interesting as possible across many different axes, including race, height, weight, gender, age, etc. In a strange twist of fate, we realized we didn’t have a blonde haired white guy in the game yet, so in order to make the game more diverse we had to add the most stereotypical non-diverse dude in video games, but hey, science is not about your feelings. This batch also includes an Asian business woman, a young Indian woman, a dwarf man, and a tall black professorial type guy.
Fan Service
For the most part the new art characters have been completely original and distinct from the old art characters, but there have been a couple updates from old to new art, including Mr. G, who is an updated version of Generalissimo Ritzini from the old art, and we might also consider Mr. C an update of Brimsworth Buckswaggle, III, although the lack of a top hat makes the claim slightly questionable.
This time around we have two more updated characters, Mr. Q and Ms. T. You can see comparison images below; Mr. Q is an updated version of Danger P. Johnson, one of the “Danger Brothers”,1 and Ms. T is an homage to Virginia Vulpes, a.k.a.”Orange Dress”, one of the most cult-popular characters in the old art. There have been tournaments won and lost around the meta of whether somebody is playing Orange Dress or not.
I’m not going to say they’re better, just different.
Mr. Q
| We always knew we were going to update one of the Danger Bros to be in the new art cast. The original Danger Bros are often called White Danger, Blue Danger, and Yellow Danger, and so some folks have suggested Salmon Danger as Mr. Q’s nickname, which inspired somebody to come up with the nickname Salmon L. Jackson, which is terrible. I think he’s our tallest guest, although I think the Sikh turban stretches a bit higher. |  |
Ms. R
| She’s inspired in part by Yang Lan, sometimes called “the Oprah of China” for her media empire. She obviously drinks a Manhattan, and I’m wondering if she’s the only playable middle aged Asian business woman in video games.2 |  |
Mr. S
| If you thought Mr. I in his wheelchair was hard to see behind a crowd of people, now you have Mr. S to contend with. He’s a dwarf, which according to this FAQ is the non-offensive way (along with “little person”) to refer to someone of short stature. His face was inspired by a combination of Silvio Berlusconi and a few other actors, and I think he looks a bit like a crime boss…not that I’d share that opinion at the party. He’s impeccably dressed in a tuxedo, matching our Sikh, Mr. K, in the second tier of male formal attire, under Mr. U, below. |  |
Ms. T
| Our first guest from the Indian subcontinent, Ms. T and her bright orange sari brings a splash of warm color to the party and throws a bone to the Cult of the Orange Dress in the new art style. She’s drinking a glass of shikanji, an Indian lemonade. |  |
Mr. U
| A mentioned above, we were in the unique position of actually needing to put a blonde white guy in our video game for diversity reasons, so we went for the full Northern European royalty look just to seal the deal. He also takes the lead in terms of most formal outfit, with white tie and tails. We wanted somebody in white tie for sartorial diversity, but we also needed a bit more blue at the party so we put the sash on him and he instantly stepped up the class hierarchy a notch or two. |  |
All The Character Reveals
Here are all the character reveals so far in one place for your handy dandy reference! Click the images for the articles!
 The New SpyParty Character Art Style |
 Introducing the Next Five SpyParty Characters |
 Meet the Third Group of New SpyParty Characters |
 Three Updates: Five New Characters! |
- …it doesn’t make a lot of sense to call them brothers since the others are named Danger P. Jackson and Danger P. Jenson, but hey, it’s video games. [↩]
- I’m sure someone is going to come along and mention some obscure fighting game where you can play one! I just heard about a game with a guy in a wheelchair who has a sword… [↩]
As an LP myself, mad props to you. It’s pretty rare to see one of my folks in a game. Thanks!
Awesome, thanks for the comment! Is my take above on the “dwarf” and “little person/LP” thing correct from that linked FAQ? Trying to figure out how to talk about him without being offensive.
Aw, I wish there was 26 characters. It just makes sense, given how the guests are each given and referred to as a letter of the alphabet.
It might happen!
I have an idea for Mr. V, that being my fursona (NESFW): http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18928966/. Ignore penor and tattoo…hey, you said you wanted characters that would be easily identifiable and diverse, what’s more diverse than throwing in an anthropomorphic animal?
Does anyone know if this game works on Mac Os Sierra?
Hi, yeah, it should work fine on macs. If you have troubles, post in the Bugs forum where you’ll download it.
Quick question. How does it work. Like the whole multiplayer thing. Do you just play with random people or just with your friends?
Right now it’s a bit old-school, there’s a lobby and you see everybody online and pick the person you want to play. If you want to play friends, then just pick them and start a match, or you can play people you don’t know, or chat in the lobby and ask if people want to play or if one of the experienced players wants to do some mentor games. Soon there’ll be a simple matchmaking thing, but the lobby will still be there for people who want to pick who they play manually.
Hey! When the game is done, what do you mean by “ship” a copy? Through downloads? Or like a disc. Also, if you did ship a copy and the game did go on steam, just email everyone that got the early access the steam key to the game.
By “ship” I just mean the “final release” download, I don’t know if it’ll have a disc version, sometimes that works out for indie games, but usually not. It’d be fun to have one, but since it’s an online competitive game it really needs a lot of updating, so having a disc version doesn’t make that much sense. And yes, when it goes on Steam you’ll automatically get it there too.
jak to mam stahnut
Yeah, definitely great idea, gonna wait for Steam version (or PS4). Shame there is no demo or something to try it out.
There’s a signup form to buy on http://www.spyparty.com
Why is this game so freaking expensive? You want me to pay 25 bucks to be a beta tester for this small game? LOL. Just read comments on steam and game seems dead, can’t even find people online. This game should have been 5 or maximum of 10 bucks, even cheaper on the steam summer sale. (NAUGHTY WORDS SNIPPED) greedy developers like always, glad game is dying.
Hi, I’m sorry you’re feeling so upset about this. Luckily there are lots of other games you can play out there! If you’re still interested in playing SpyParty, maybe come check out the discord and chat and ask some of the players how they’re feeling about it. Good luck!