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. It was also nearly a year ago that Instruments of Destruction version 1.0 launched on Steam.
To celebrate the 15-year anniversary of Radiangames, Instruments of Destruction is being featured by Steam in its first Daily Deal with its biggest discount yet, and there was a minor update yesterday to fix a few mission-related issues. Radiangames’ classic title Inferno 2 is also on sale. And Fireball 2--sequel to the 4th game Radiangames released on XBLIG in 2010--is launching today on Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and Playstation 5.
A Year of Radiangames Releases
Fireball 2 marks the first of many launches for Radiangames in 2025. Rhythm Storm is getting a new demo next week. That demo and the Speed Demons 2’s 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 in July, while the timing of the ports and Speed Demons 2 are still to be determined.
The Instruments of Destruction ports are still in the works, and there will be an exciting announcement about that soon. While the majority of the porting work is done for Instruments of Destruction, the console certification process is a lot more complex and labyrinthine than I expected. Fireball 2 was a much simpler port in technical terms, but it took multiple months to get it through all the hurdles needed to actually release the game, and I’ve barely managed to do any promotion for it.
Radiangames’ Destructive Future
Though 2025 has gone relatively well so far, the experiences of the last couple years and a shift in Alan’s plans has made me reevaluate what to work on after the current games and their ports release. I want to cut back and focus on 1-2 projects at a time, rather than 3 or more, and have those projects be related to each other, so I’m not reinventing so many wheels with each new game, and it’s easier to share code between them.
Even Rhythm Storm and Fireball 2, two games that look like they share a lot, only have drawing code and a basic game structure in common. Meanwhile Speed Demons 2 looks similar to Instruments of Destruction in a few ways, but has almost nothing in common with it. It even uses a totally different rendering and particle pipeline.
The solution to all this reinventing: Start over one more time (using small bits from previous games). BUT with a plan for multiple games that build on each other, step by step. There will be some new tech for each game, but that tech adds to a framework that is needed for the future titles.
One key part of that tech will be a new destruction system, one that’s more flexible than Instruments of Destruction’s. That tech is planned for the 2nd game in the sequence, and destruction will be part of nearly every game Radiangames makes beyond 2025.
The other “change” for future titles is simple: No more multi-platform titles after 2025. Everything will be designed for PC/Steam. If a game would work well as a console port, I’ll hand it off to someone else after the PC version is done.
I have 4 foundational games planned out in my tech progression, with 2 slightly larger games after the first 4. Beyond those 6, I have at least 10 other ideas that could use a good portion of the tech. There will likely be tweaks to the plan along the way, with new ideas or sequels that I need to work on, but the goal is to keep using this foundation for every future Radiangames title. If all goes well, Radiangames will be making games for another 15 or even 30 years.