Tag «amaze»

Mondar at the A MAZE 2019

We visited the A MAZE this year, and it was relaxing and fun. After missing it in 2018 (we went to the Reboot in Croatia instead), we were eager to meet fellow German and international developers in Berlin again. For those who don't know the A MAZE, it's a games festival with exhibition, talks, live music and workshops (and probably more). The focus is on art/games, and not on the business side or even the development of games. It's all about personal stories, crazy, mesmerizing and/or glitchy visuals, VR/AR/MR/XR/PR and generally digital weirdness. So, we had a good time.

The A MAZE happened at a new location this year, at the SEZ, a big building reminding Friedrich of his former school which was built in the 70s. While the Urban Spree was always very fitting for the AMAZE in our opinion, the SEZ brought the event together well and was also better suited for this year's cold weather. The venue change was good!

In order to justify our visit a bit, we also brought Mondar's Dungeon with us and showcased it for a few hours at the Open Screens (right next to Sos' Open Sound System). Some people eagerly played the game and gave feedback, and overall we are stoked by the positive reception. Mondar's Dungeon was originally meant as our entry for the 7-Day-Roguelike-Challenge (yes, the same event Pitman Krumb was part of, back in 2011!), but we didn't finish in time and instead worked a bit more on it until it felt complete. The elevator pitch: "Mondar's Dungeon is a roguelike, but with cards." While future updates might still come, it is mostly finished and can be played on itch.io for free!

Our friend Björn was also at the A MAZE. He released his game Murder Machine Mini on Steam two days before, and Friedrich lent his laptop so he could present the game at the Open Screens too. He did, and quite a few people had a good look at this retro shooter.

As mentioned before, the A MAZE also offers talks and workshops, and we attended some of these. For example, while Jana took part in a workshop by Anita Sarkeesian about diversity and representation in games, Friedrich was more interested in the technical side of game creation and attended workshops about ray marching shaders and about stage design in Unity. But our personal highlight were the Hyper Talks, where nine creators each had five minutes for talking about everything, from playing with dogs to creativity burn-out.

It goes without saying - we also talked to friends and friendly people at the venue all the time, discussing games, game design and the weather. Jana took part in a podcast (about game difficulty), over at the Saftladen.

Now what does the future hold for Rat King? Sadly, Behind Stars and Under Hills is on hiatus with an unknown fate. But to keep going, we accept commissioned work - the second half of 2018 was dedicated to the game for an app about the sky disk of Nebra, commissioned by MotionWorks GmbH. This sky disk is probably the oldest still existing depiction of the cosmos - we will write a bit more detailed blog post about the game soon.

Of course Rat King is still indie, thus we create concepts and prototypes for different game ideas floating in our collective rat hive mind. This blog will hopefully be more active again soon!

SOLITUNE at the AMAZE and on Steam

Jana's small and short art game SOLITUNE (you might have read about it before) is nominated for an award at the German games festival A MAZE. It's a great honour for us, as SOLITUNE will be showcased next week at the location in Berlin, along with more than two dozens other games! Of course we will be there too - as usual.

In related news, the game went through Steam Greenlight and is soon available on Steam, most likely during the "Games Week" in Berlin (26.-28. April), which the A MAZE is part of.

So if you want to put SOLITUNE on your Steam wishlist, or just marvel at its Steam page, now you can! :-) By the way, if you bought the game on itch.io you should already be able to claim a Steam key of the game. With the release on Steam a few improvements were made, visually and technically. The mandatory Steam achievement and trading cards will be there, and it's now also possible to play the whole experience with a gamepad - perfect for the avantgarde couch potatoes among us!

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EGX Rezzed, Amaze and Making-of part 3

Birmingham - EGX Rezzed 2014

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The REZZED, including 2 days of visiting Birmingham, were a blast! The convention is full of interesting games, diverse genres, from AAA to smaller and very experimental indie titles. It was really fun and rewarding to be chosen for the nicely arranged Leftfield Collection. And to have TRI presented to young kids, families, a whole bunch of YouTubers, and curious players for the first time after two years of work was a really good feeling! Of course, meeting other devs and talking about their games was pretty cool, as well.

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I really feel that I should have written more about the Rezzed, since our days in Birmingham were absolutely enjoyable and also important for us, to show the game around. But unfortunately, we take the final sprint to the release of TRI, which makes writing up all the events nearly impossible.

A Maze Berlin 2014

At least I have to mention that we visited the third edition of Germany's very international Indie Festival A Maze in April, again. Being there is always a big highlight of our year! It feels almost like coming home to the place where you belong. The A Maze is a crazy colorful exhibition with all sorts of games you might or might not imagine. From weird stuff you never fully understand, to multiplayer games you can play for hours, to pieces of art and artistic expression, students' works and polished diamonds smash hits. Not to forget workshops and talks. This festival is always so fully packed with interesting people, enlightening talks and fun games that I just get crazy, not knowing where to jump first.

amaze14_01 amaze14_02

Making-of TRI episode 3

For the lack of written blog posts we made this third episode of our making-of story. This time we talk about our first prototype and why it was scrapped, again.

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We soon have some fresh news for you at the end of the month, as we're working on the Steam integration! Until then we need to give this guy here more interaction, voice and animation.

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TRI – The AMAZE-ing update released

TRI 0.2.1 update

We are pleased to announce that the new update 0.2.1 for TRI is live and can be downloaded now. As already said before, this will be the last version with the low price of $4.99 only. We currently scheduled version 0.3 (the STORY update) for end of May, and that one will come with a price increase!

0408_Amazeupdate

Now, for the AMAZE-ing update we have some new stuff, especially worth mentioning two new levels. The first one let's you walk on walls and ceilings a lot, and has windmills and a glimpse on the floating ghosts (the Kami). The second one re-introduces light rays and acid pits. If you already owned and played the TRI alpha, for your convience you can play the new levels directly - but don't miss the enhancements in the other levels! For example, we added the monk in the tutorial level, mainly for demonstration purposes (as he doesn't talk much right now).

The monk appears

And you can finally run now. This was the feature requested by most people so far. :-P Unfortunately, this changed the balance of the gameplay a bit where it wasn't wanted. On the bright side, if you have to walk up a long wall you will need far less triangles now, as you can run quite a while on the wall after leaving a triangle until you fall down again. (Just try it!)

The complete changelist for the AMAZE-ing update:

  • Fixed NullReference in output_log.txt regarding save files
  • Fixed the feedback functionality (via F11), should work always now
  • Added possibility to use/activate/pick stuff with Left Click
  • Fixed rotating box in level 7 ("Reluctance")
  • Changed savestate fileformat, saves from 0.2.0a and before not usable anymore
  • Removed GUI key statues in the top right corner for the first level
  • Added possibility to sprint via Left Shift key
  • Improved visuals/gameplay of some of the levels, changed tutorial a bit
  • Added option (in tab "Performance") to disable fullscreen antialiasing
  • Fixed a glitch with climbing on slopes
  • Fixed the minor issue of antiwalls playing sounds even when not activated
  • Added two levels, introducing (again) light rays, acid and autosave
  • Added an NPC with simple behaviour for demonstration purposes

You may wonder why we call this update the AMAZE-ing update. From April, 24th to 27th we will be in Berlin, visiting the AMAZE IndieConnect! We will meet other indie developers and give a talk about why and how to limit your game in a healthy way. So, if you want to talk to us in person, this might be your chance. :-)

And now for some more screenshots of the new TRI levels:

tri2_screen_20130420_132312 tri2_screen_20130420_132107 tri2_screen_20130420_135738 tri2_screen_20130420_141246

Day 2 and 3 – Amaze Indie Connect

Missed Day 1 of our Berlin adventure? Click here!

After I failed at being more business-like and professional, we really enjoyed talking to all the Indies. Especially what they are working on, where their secret jelly glass filled with coins is to be found and, of course, how their business works.

This whole Indie thing was some kind of conference meme everybody interpreted in their own way. Many people reacted a bit bugged out when it comes to the question what is "Indie" and what not.
Some don't like the discussion, because we all need money and partnerships, which doesn't necessarily mean that we are the marionettes of publishers.
Others loved the Indie label to keep out stiff business guys and get recognized even with smaller titles.

And many folks prefer to just call all the little game company start-ups Indie, without making a distinction what it exactly means to be Indie.
Even Thorsten Storno – the host of Germany's first Indie festival didn't come up with a manifest. Although he wanted to, but couldn't afford doing one due to the lack of time. Luckily! Because maybe too many restrictions would contradict with the Indie mind of being independent from stupid guidelines. At least this can be said, I think.

foyer

A fact is, that we all need money and that a pure Indie-fication seems to be only possible with sponsorship, waiting tables, freelancing, putting aside our own projects to work at errands or being purely commercial from time to time. So in the end, everybody is Indie and nobody is.

At this point Cactus from Sweden comes in. He held the first talk/keynote and gave us all a telling-off about stopping to be so commercial. After his 2-year sponsorship ended he now has to sell his games, too. Ironic!
I really enjoyed his speech, though, especially as a contrast to the Quo Vadis - he stood there somehow drunk with a canned beer at 11am. Although I was a bit unsure what exactly his point is, but I think he was as confused about him being business punk now, as I was.
Cactus' talk strongly reminded me of Anna Anthropy's book “Rise of the Videogame Zinesters”. Both complain that on the one hand making games is easier than ever, but on the other hand, it is harder to get an audience with free games or in other words, the barrier to gain a foothold is getting higher.
The funny thing about this discussion is that I – as somebody who tries to sell games – saw this always from another perspective: There are tons of awesome and super-creative free games and I never understood why the heck they gave them away for free. Because it basically means that I as an Indie dev who needs money has to explain myself for being greedy.
The developers of free games - on the other side - argue that they get no coverage for not having polished, super-functional games. They seemed to be the Indie Indies, the artsy ones, while we are the black suits.
The good thing is that most of us do both ways, which brings the whole discussion together somehow and makes it dispensable.

I have to admit that I didn't follow most of the talks, again. I think my attention span is extremely short and every talk was followed directly by the next one. A little pause to discuss what you heard just moments ago is very important.
Especially when controversies occur: Martin Nerurkar's talk was about to use every possibility to make and sell games - even free2play. This was followed by a discussion that our creativity should not be destroyed by, let's say, free2play. Like I mentioned in the post about Quo Vadis, free2play and social games are the end of creativity to many game developers. This kind of friction was fascinating.

douglas wilson

The talks on the next day were interesting and very inspiring, too. Douglas Wilson, member of Die Gute Fabrik and brain behind Johann Sebastian Joust, compared his game with the minimalism in Proteus. He pulled a metaphor about gameplay being the chips and the surroundings, graphics, atmosphere, etc, are the sauce. And Indies too often just think about the chips, which are flavorless alone, but he loves the dip and would be glad if the chips would be more often just used as a vehicle to eat more dip ... I think, that was what he meant!? Using tasty food pictures as a metaphor didn't work for me that well.

This speech was followed by a talk from Thomas Bedenk of Brightside Games about the Flow-theory by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the difference of player and designer perspective. Well – look at the picture.

Vlambeer rocked with a lesson about back story. Although it's fun to hear this from the masters of fast-paced arcade games, in my opinion everybody comes up with some kind of fiction. Some for the need of design ideas, while others have a vast epic story early before even knowing about the gameplay. But it's nice to see them playing their games and understanding how every piece fits together. (You can re-read the talk here.)

vlambeer The talks were followed by two workshops. Apparently there was even a third one, called "Lesson learned", but most people couldn't recall the content from the website and a rumor explained that it was about business ("About the art of staying independent") - I wonder if it took place anyhow.

The other ones were about sound and coding with libpd and location based games, the last one we took part in. It is extremely interesting to speak to people like Michael Straeubig, who is a game designer for board and location based games. I think our games belong to the PC, but it's always awesome to get some input from other genres, especially the offline ones.

Again I missed the outcome of this workshop. I think I was looking more for input then laying my hands on gameplay.

So instead we joined the others on a lawn enjoying the invasion of summer.

workshop

The summit closed with the award for the most amazing game, which was Proteus of Ed Key and David Kanaga.
I loved the decision, because I just bought the game some days ago and was fully inspired. I guess games like Proteus, that suck players into their world without any double-hint what is next or where to go now and what exactly is the point, was the perfect choice for the first award. It was in fact some kind of orientation which way the first edition of the festival should lead to.
Ed, your game is perfect for this, like the festival itself: Not too polished, leaving lots of room for own interpretation of what exactly will happen next.

The best thing, after the award, was the party with the mandatory 8bit electronic music and Proteus playable flashing against the wall. We sat there for a very long time and played it. The best thing: people came along and watched us.
After observing them, these are the five phases playing Proteus:
1. Skeptical look. "THIS won the award?" Erm....
2. Just fascinatingly watching, being completely silent.
3. Curiosity, what this thing exactly about. "What do I have to do, just walking?" or "Oh, I have to follow the frog!"
4. The deep wish to try it themselves.
5. "Oh my god this is awesome. I gonna buy this."

It's funny how people kept playing it, although being extremely confused about this "Notgame". I would love to achieve this one day, without a ragequit stopping people from doodling to find possibilities in the game out for themselves.

amaze

podium

So, the big question from all, who missed the event: Was it worth going to Berlin? Just another Indie festival? "Germany? - I went to GDC San Francisco!" So, next year A.Maze, again?

Answer: Yes, YES, triple-yes. Just standing in the foyer and discussing different standpoints about business, money, gameplay or favorite beer labels made the thing awesome. Meeting many of the well-known faces in person and discover new ones you never heard of before. Or finally meeting the German developers in person, that seldom actively use Twitter or blogs - in most cases.
The talks were more an add-on to be inspired, provoked or initiated for further discussion. But I took home many good ideas, motivation and encouragement for our game-to-be TRI.

And it was fantastic to play all these games during the summit and nibble my nails about who is going to get the fantastic looking lolly-pink silicon concrete trophy. Great people overall … what should I say?

Thanks a lot to the organizers of the whole event! I miss Berlin, this whole communicative, relaxing AND exhausting event plus the international flair - Fuck yeah! In this scene I felt extremely welcome! Thorsten, this was amazing!!!

BTW: Next time with a game jam, please!

joust