Gamelab
February 18, 2012
Last Tuesday I was invited to Gamelab, a gathering of Dutch Games Industry professionals that investigates current trends and acts as a knowledge sharing platform for Dutch gaming companies and students alike. It was brilliantly hosted by my friends Matthijs Dierckx and Eric Bartelson of Control Magazine who poured the content in a fast paced talk show format. They presented the topics in a “Bert and Ernie” fashion, with Eric bombarding the audience with ad-rem jokes and Matthijs safeguarding the quality of discussions.
The evenings’ topic was all about the recent Global Game Jam and how a 48-hour game making process can help established studios such as Guerrilla to prototype new ideas. The GGJ teams also had the opportunity to present their titles to the public/publishers. It is amazing to see what can be achieved in just 48 hours. All of the titles on display were innovative and enjoyable gameplay experiences and some of the games could well grow into interesting products if the teams are given appropriate budget and resources. The most promising Dutch GGJ games were on display and I got to play test them all. Below I’ll list out 5 titles (not necessarily GGJ winners) I deem to be the most promising of the bunch.
1 Sophie in the Sky
Sophie in the Sky is a 3D platformer that uses musical elements to enrich the gameplay experience. Art-wise it feels a bit like El Shaddai and if you look at the video you’ll probably agree with me that this game looks absolutely gorgeous. The gameplay is somewhat floaty and needs to be addressed and at the moment the game lacks goal, narrative and depth, but technically it was one of the most impressive titles on display. Why don’t you have a go here: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/sophie-sky
2 Rebirth
Rebirth instantly reminded me of Jonathan Blow’s Braid. The fantastic art has been done by my friend and Fairytale Fights Art Director Robin Keijzer. Ard Bonewald did the game design and Matthijs Dierckx gave the game some tunes. It is a puzzle/platformer that uses the players’ ghosts to complete certain tasks. You will need to play the same level a couple of times to be able to reach the end. Every time you play, your ghost of previous sessions will help you trigger switches to progress further into the game. A very interesting gameplay idea that in this early build already works quite well. I really hope this game will be developed further. You can meet your own ghosts here: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/rebirth
3 Size Matters
Size Matters was developed by 4 programmers and they lacked an art department. This didn’t hurt the visuals though as I really like the Tron-like minimalistic approach. The game is a physics based puzzle/platformer that seems to take elements from Trials HD and N+. The game let’s you control a ball that you can manipulate to become smaller or bigger. This mechanic will help you to overcome the game’s many intriguing puzzles and obstacles. In my mind the best game the Dutch GGJ produced. Does size actually matter? Why not find it out for yourself here: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/size-matters
4 Crocktail
Croctail was developed by RageSquid, a very talented Indie studio that already made very promising games in previous GGJ editions. This years’ entry was Croctail a frantic multiplayer game that let’s you control a crocodile. The gameplay principle is simple. You need to bite the tail of other crocks, these will then change to your color. Visually one of the most impressive games on display. Heads or tails? Find out here: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/croctail
5 Bezircle
Bezircle is a multiplayer game that is an innovative take on “land grab”. You have to plot a route and pick up energy particles that enables you to mark the circles to your colour. The player that has claimed the most circles wins. The devs are planning to port the game with XNA, so we could well see the game coming to Xbox Live Arcade or Windows Phone 7. But until that happens you can play the game here: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/bezircle
As you can see it is amazing what a dedicated little team can do in just 48 hours. These 5 games show more innovation and freshness than the average AAA blockbuster and I hope some of these titles will be developed as fully fledged games.
Another highlight of the evening was Dutch Indie favourite Vlambeer making a game live in just 2 hours. Amazingly the game has a (funny) plot, distinct art-style and an amazing soundtrack. The Hyper Game Jam Is born! Check the game Cafe Noir here: http://vlambeer.com/downloads/misc/filmnoir/
Happy Chinese New Year!
January 17, 2012
Just a small update of my blog to let you know that my company is giving away two of its mobile games for free! With the Chinese New Year just around the corner (January 23rd, to be exact), Gamania is offering its new game Subcat, and recently released Gu Morning for free for a limited th of which are available from today. Furthermore, you can pick them both up for free at the Appstore for free until the 21st of January.
Subcat on Android: http://goo.gl/SwZkW
Gu Morning on App Store: http://goo.gl/ofzMl
Gu Morning on Android: http://goo.gl/Yf8mJ
About Subcat
In Gamania’s latest iOS game Subcat players assume the character of a diving mask wearing cat and set out for an adventure in the deep sea. The goal of the game is simple: catch the most blue fish and starfish within 2 minutes. The player must swipe the screen every now and then to clear away the fog (like a real scuba diver!) and tap the fish to catch them. Not all fish are meant to be caught though — if you accidentally run into a vicious lantern fish or jellyfish, you may get zapped and lose the game! Subcat features an easy to use interface with adorable graphics. Its 80 stages are set in 4 different themes.
About Gu Morning
Gu Morning has won its way to become the cutest chart-sweeping puzzle challenge worldwide! The Chinese New Year version of Gu Morning features 5 extra stages in each of the six themes, which means a total of 120 stages with festive Chinese New Year graphics and cheerful background music, celebrating the coming of springtime! The goal of the game remains the same: Spin and drop the falling blocks to build a path for chick Gugu so it can safely get to its father, Colonel Rooster. But watch out for bombs along the way—or in this new update, firecrackers!
Fairytale Fanfare
January 16, 2012
Jonathan van de Wijngaarden recently launched his YouTube channel where you can find all of his work, past present and future. The award winning composer/audio designer has also included works that unfortunately never seen the light of day. One of these musical delights is the soundtrack to Fairytale Fights Arcade, a game that should have been released on XBLA/PSN in 2010. This game was never launched due to the fact that its publisher/developer Playlogic went into administration that year. It is really a shame that this project was never continued or picked up by another developer/publisher as it showed so much promise. Some of the work (artwork, prototypes and gameplay ideas) still circulates on computers of ex-staff and Jonathan’s audio work would have been the icing on the cake. It is very cool that Jonathan decided to release it so we can now at least enjoy the music.
Other gems can also be found on Jonathan’s YouTube channel. There is the orchestral version of the main theme from Nomos (also a game that was never released), Jonathan’s fantastic work on the Adam’s Venture franchise and music for EA’s Need for Speed promotional web game. The cool thing about Jonathan is that he can make serious grand themes for story-driven games just as easy as creating catchy tunes for a casual puzzle title. Don’t believe me? Please check out his audio awesomeness at YouTube
Also check out Jonathan’s Official Site
Lame Excuse
January 13, 2012
It has been some time since I last updated my blog and I am really sorry about that. I know it is a bad excuse, but hey I have had a busy year. My company went bankrupt (and restarted), OneBigGame’s WINtA launch took up a lot of time and I started a challenging job at an exciting company.
As said Playlogic unfortunately went bankrupt, so I had to look for another job. After some soul searching and successful interviews at several companies I decided to opt for a Marketing/PR Manager position at Gamania Entertainment, a very ambitious Taiwanese online gaming company that opened their European HQ in Amsteveen, the Netherlands (near Amsterdam). I am now with the company for one year and oh boy what a year it has been!
The cool thing about working at Gamania is that you have a lot of creative freedom. While the company is huge in Asia (1700 employees), it is relatively unknown in the West. Basically I am working in a start-up environment which is demanding on time and resources but ultimately fun. The company aims to introduce their successful IP from Asia. In just one year we have set up our publishing divisions (we have offices in Paris, Brighton and Berlin) and released the first batch of games on our beanfun! platform and iOS/Android: Lucent Heart (mmo), Bright Shadow (mmo), Gu Morning (iOS/Android) and Hero 108 (iOS). Soon we will publish our first game in Germany, a sexy strategy browser game by the name of Koihime Battle Maidens.
Furthermore, to pre-hype our coming titles we have attended Gamescom and hosted our very own Gamania Game Show in Taipei, Taiwan, where I showed our upcoming games to the leading European press. Who knows, you might have read something about us in PC Gamer, EDGE or Gamesindustry.biz. This trip was an absolute highlight for me as it was the first time for me to visit Asia and the first time I could see our new games in action. I think our guests have enjoyed the trip too. We dined at Taipei 101, visited the night market, checked out the HQ and we had a great party with an awesome Karaoke session to finish it all off in style. Taipei is a fantastic country by the way. The people are very hospitable and the food is great, the only down point was the damned heat. The humidity is terrible and 35 degrees Celsius is not healthy for a Dutch man like me.
So there you have it…I was busy, but I am aiming to update my blog a bit more often in 2012!
WINtA Profits To Directly Benefit Children Affected By Japan’s Earthquake And Tsunami
March 17, 2011
Masaya Matsuura’s iPhone Game Provides Support for Save the Children Activities in Japan for the Coming Month
San Francisco / Tokyo – Mar 17, 2011 - Japanese game design legend Masaya Matsuura and OneBigGame (http://onebiggame.com), the non-profit publisher of videogames, today announce that for the following four weeks beginning March 17th, net earnings from their latest iPhone and iPad music game WINtA will directly benefit the Save the Children charity teams active in Japan, helping children affected by the devastating earthquake and tsunami in the country.
Matsuura-san calls for iPhone and iPad game consumers around the world to help his country and download the free WINtA game (http://itunes.com/app/winta) and start purchasing songs. The net amount received from each track by NanaOn-Sha will be distributed via OneBigGame to directly support Save the Children in setting up a network of child friendly spaces for children in the worst affected areas of Japan. Staffed by trained volunteers and furnished with toys and games, these spaces are safe havens for children to play and socialise with peers their own age, helping them recover from the trauma of the disaster they have just experienced.
Save the Children is a leading expert in this field, operating child friendly spaces in major disaster zones around the world, including the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti, Italy and the floods in Pakistan.
OneBigGame already has a long-term partnership with Save the Children and normally redirects 80 per cent of all its net earnings towards Starlight Children’s Foundation and Save the Children to support their global on-going campaigns. However in light of the recent events in Japan, OneBigGame are proud to make a special case by re-routing donated funds generated by WINtA to support Save the Children’s relief efforts in the affected regions, with immediate effect.
Tomonori Watanabe, Director of Communications at Save the Children Japan: “I profoundly appreciate this new effort through the game WINtA by which people all over the world are able to join in the charity. We are determined to send your heartfelt messages to children affected in the disaster. Thank you so much!”
Douglas Rouse, Save the Children, said: “We are extremely thankful for One Big Game and Masaya Matsuura’s incentive offer to help us in our appeal to raise £1 million for children in Japan. We hope that this game may offer a new digital way for people to donate to help our aid relief and bring back a bit of normality for families suffering from the disaster.”
ITALY LIKES ONEBIGGAME
January 10, 2011
WINtA is making a few headlines arround the world. Today I want to share with you this article from Italy’s WIRED magazine (January issue). They have a list of the best ten things you can do in your spare time. Although we think that playing WINtA is the number one thing you should do when you have some minutes to spear, we are still proud to have made it in their top ten. Playing WINtA is slotted at number seven, beating playing with LEGO Star Wars no less.
WINtA is a free iOS download in Apple’s AppStore and at the moment you can download several tracks for free. If you buy any of the other tracks you will be helping OneBigGame’s charity partners Starlight Foundation and Save the Children. Don’t forget to keep your eye on our in-app store and this blog regularly as many new cool tracks will be released this year!
LINK: www.wired.it
Also spotted in Italy’s première TMC PC magazine is a Chime review. Although I can’t read anything they say…I really like the number at the bottom right!
Chime is available on XBLA and STEAM. More info about Chime can be found at: http://www.chimegame.com/
HOW ANGRY BIRDS MIGRATE
January 9, 2011
PORTING SUCCESS
Angry Birds is a phenomenal success on iOS platforms, it sold 12 million copies to date, so it is a no brainer that publisher Chillingo is bringing the game to a range of other platforms. My former Playlogic colleagues Ralph Egas and Erik Bastianen (now the proud founders of Abstraction Games) were responsible for the PSP MINIS/PS3 port and that makes me sooo proud. I decided to contact them to fire some angry questions.
Ralph Egas (Founder and co-owner Abstraction Games)
How did the deal with Chillingo materialise?
RE: Chillingo asked us to make an iOS port of our own IP Potpourrii, which was originally published on WiiWare. It only took us a couple of weeks to pull it off and we even managed to squeeze in some extra polish. Chillingo was impressed with what they saw and offered us to port their very popular iDracula game to WiiWare, DSi Ware and PSP Minis. That was basically the beginning of our relationship with Chillingo and allowed us to work on Angry Birds.
Was porting Angry Birds challenging from a technical standpoint?
RE: We faced some challenges on a technical level. The game has scattered script code and because Angry Birds has so many levels, it is a lot of work and requires a lot of testing to pull it off. We had to adjust the controls for each level, instead of having it to do once at one central place. We are very proud of the polish we gave to our port and we also think that Angry Birds’ control scheme works natural on either PSP or PlayStation 3. The stick is a fine metaphor for a catapult, so the concept behind the new controls was a no-brainer. Contrary to what many people believe, the controls of Angry Birds on iOS are not typically unique for iOS games nor super-tailored for that platform at all.
What aspect of this port makes you particularly proud?
RE: We are very proud on how our version of Angry Birds looks on a big-ass TV. We had to fix that and needed a lot of workarounds to make it all work. Even better are the fixes we have done to the original textures (visuals). Because Angry Birds was originally an iPhone game, it would look rather ugly if you just blow up the image for TV. We had to add pixels and filters to make it look as good as it does now. I think that is our greatest achievement, because unlike many Minis, our game doesn’t look retro and that is exactly what I mean, when I utter the word ‘polishing’!
Your phone must be ringing all the time now, did your involvement in Angry Birds give you extra business?
RE: That is something you would assume, but unfortunately our involvement remains underexposed. When you read about our port in the media only the names Sony and Rovio are mentioned, but I am trying to lift on Angry Birds’ succes by mentioning our involvement on social media. We hope to get more exposure from Chillingo for our current project. I think this will work out because Chillingo has a very good relationship with that title’s original developer
Any plans for new Abstraction Games IP?
RE: We would love to make another game ourselves, we have already thought of a beautiful concept and even made a production plan, but at the moment we are so busy with working for Chillingo as well as other contract work, so we have put our project on the back-burner. It will come, it is just a timing issue. We will focus on iOS, Android, but we also want to make games for XBLA and PSN. It also depends on what the market does. We are very interested for instance in the Mac OS AppStore and OnLive.
I can’t wait to play your new game and many thanks for the interview!
iPAD RETRO SHOOTING WITH JEFF MINTER
January 9, 2011
Minotaur Rescue is Jeff Minter’s latest game and is available for iPad and iPhone. It is basically an updated version of Space War! with a distinct 80′s feel. You pilot a space ship by stroking your screen. Your spacecraft will automatically move in the direction of your stroke. The ship auto-fires and you can upgrade your ships’ weaponry by collecting Minotaurs (No Lama’s this time Jeff?). It is a very simple game and although you will need to adjust to the game’s control scheme, its easy to get into, but also very challenging. You will need to blast asteroids, enemy spacecraft and protect the sun from impacts. The Sun’s gravity field bends your bullet trajectory, which is a very cool effect. For just 99 cents Minotaur Rescue is a steal and I would recommend everyone to download this beauty!
FAIRYTALE FIGHTS ART DIRECTOR RELEASES COMIC
January 8, 2011
My friend Robin Keizer, who was mainly responsible for the unique art style in Playlogic’s Fairytale Fights has released a comic. Splash vs Clean is available in good old paper form and you can order it here. You can also check out Keizer’s interesting blog where you can view examples of his amazing artwork. Oh and if you want a signed copy, Robin will sell them soon, including a personal message at www.robinkeijzer.com
IS SEGA TAKING THE PISS?
January 8, 2011
Well yes, quite literary in fact. They have started a little pilot in Tokio called Toylet. This is basically an arcade cabinet where gentlemen can play a couple of games by urinating on a sensor. Gameplay is very simple. The direction of the wee and pressure is the base for the ’toilet arcade’ control scheme and four games are available for the device. “Mannekin Pis“, is a game that measures your peeing force, basically your Little John’s version of ”High Striker” or “Test your Strenghth”. “Graffiti Eraser” is self-explanatory and “The North Wind and Her“, is another pressure game, where your urine force operates wind that can blow up a girls’s skirt. The harder you pee…the more details you will see. Some sort of multiplayer is also covered. In ”Milk from Nose” you compete against the person who last used the urinal. Again the force of your stream will decide the winner (probably the guy who drank the most). Your results are translated into an avatar that is spraying milk from its nose…err…yeah. The bigger the stream, the more chance you have pushing your predecessor’s character out of the ring.
toylet
Monetisation comes from advertising that will be shown on the same display, but I seriously wonder if that is not affecting gameplay in a negative sence. Oh and if you place a high score, you can put your stats on a USB stick. Let’s also hope for achievement or trophy support. Although SEGA hasn’t confirmed anything, my guess is that the following titles are in development: “Super Monkey Ball: Piss & Roll” and “Pissing the Dead”. So if you have forgotten your iPhone or Nintendo DS in Tokio, you can count on SEGA for a quick gaming fix. The best thing of all is that you always carry your own personal joystick.
If you think I am sounding a bit sarcastic, you are right. But actually I think this is a very good idea, because it will improve your aiming and the Toylet concept will be welcomed by those noble people who clean public toilets every day! It also shows that SEGA still thinks outside the box, something they are known for since their arcade/console heydays. It may sound silly, but to tell you the truth…I want one! Let’s hope its coming to a bar near you!
