Tag «Mops&Mobs»

A Maze Open Screens and festival baby

There's one festival that's an absolute no-brainer, a must-go-every-year event for us: the incredibly colourful, inspiring, and inventive A MAZE. Festival in Berlin. With its talks, a huge exhibition, and wonderful attendees, all set in the relaxing atmosphere of Silent Green — a former crematorium right next to a cemetery — it’s weird, but in a very Berlin way.

We were there to enjoy new games, meet friends and colleagues, and show Mops & Mobs around a bit. Like every year, there was a space to showcase games outside the official award competition: the Open Screens. For two hours, Friedrich presented our Dungeon Novel to curious festival-goers.

Our slot at the Open Screens was on Friday from 12pm to 2pm (together with a few other games). While there was almost always someone playing Mops & Mobs, the attendance was pretty low overall, especially compared to the Long Night of Computer Games from the weekend before. Of course the game wasn't to blame for this, there just was a lot of great looking competition to play all around us — and midday maybe isn't the best time for showcasing? We're not disappointed by the outcome, though, as we got valuable feedback once again. Big thanks go to Phillip Gong for organising the Open Screens!

By the way, the only person who actually played the demo till the end (quite a feat, considering there were no chairs) left quite quickly without saying a word… our guess is that they were satisfied.

A Baby At A MAZE. – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

This year also brought a new twist for us: we attended A MAZE. with our child. That alone was a whole new experience. Would it work out? Would it even be possible to enjoy the festival while caring for a baby?

In the end — no, it wasn't the same. I missed just forgetting time and space to submerge myself into the exhibited games and talks. I didn't watch any talk, but played more games than I expected. We took turns with childcare and split up, so we both could enjoy the festival. We even brought her to the exhibition - but that didn't work out for very long.

But after nearly a year with her, if we learned anything, it's this: be patient and let go of expectations. It was exhausting at times, but also fun and meaningful to bring her along. Indie games have always been something personal for us — it would be strange to exclude something so beautiful and personal when work and private life are so intertwined anyway.

So, yes, it works and we didn't regret it. (Okay, maybe the weather. That was annoying. Our plan to chill with her on the meadow in the festival area fell through for most parts.)

Looking forward to how next year will be.


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The Long Night of finding out your core gameplay

(Photo 3 by Friedrich Lüder, Photo 4 by René Meyer)

Right now we are in a crucial phase of development: all core features have been programmed, implemented and can be tested as part of our demo. But as we recently started production phase, it's up to us how often players will talk to characters, fight with cards, decorate the dungeon, or do tasks as part of quests inside the dungeon.

If you would ask us, dialogue is the heart of our game. It's all about meeting quirky monsters and getting to know them better. And the card game? We added that to make everything more (inter)active for players, to provide some kind of "conflict solving". Plus, it's inspired by our own Mondar's Dungeon, which is our most played and best rated free game on itch. So this new addition to Mops & Mobs wasn't well tested, but we liked it enough. Still, we knew it might be at odds with the expectations of players that are into hardcore deck builders like Magic or Hearthstone.

Therefore, we attended the Lange Nacht der Computerspiele (Long Night of video games), a huge event on many floors featuring indie games, board games, card games, tabletop, Pen & Paper, retro games as well as hardware.

We wanted to find out: are five card battles in the demo too much?

Well. Turns out - quite the opposite! Some even asked why they had to light torches or clean the table before they could get back to playing MORE card battles. Now we have to find out if that was genuine excitement? Or just a side-effect of our booth's proximity to the trading card room where they hosted games like Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon?

Come to our Discord if you want to answer that question and play-test the latest demo - not yet on Itch or Steam!

And of course: a big thank you to the wonderful team of the Lange Nacht! It was a wonderful possibility and great fun for us!

Production on Mops & Mobs begins

The dungeon gates to the underworld open up once again! Today marks the start of production, as we secured regional funding to continue our dungeon novel Mops & Mobs.

In Mops & Mobs you step into the boots of the dungeon's janitor — a role that turns out to be far more heroic than it sounds. You'll befriend monsters, decorate somber hallways, clean up what’s left of overambitious adventurers and yes, uncover dark secrets along the halls.


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About a year ago we uploaded a first little demo to check if players would enjoy serving dungeon monsters and utilize a variety of gameplay elements like quests and a decoration mode. In short: lots of you did! Meanwhile, we had a (pre-)production baby that, well, kept us from producing. Instead, we focused on finding additional teammates to work with us and secure some capital. Of course we also worked on our demo, developed the story further and added a very important feature to Mops & Mobs: a card-based mini-game to fight critters and clean-up in the dungeon.

Over the next year we're going to share insights, more about our characters, details of the gameplay and how the story will continue.

Find some more info here: https://mopsmobs.ratking.de/
Subscribe to our newsletter: https://mopsmobs.ratking.de/
Wishlist Mops & Mobs on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2851050/

If you wonder where to find the demo of Mops & Mobs, please be patient. A new version will be up soon.

Games Baked in Germany on Steam

Want to know what's up in the German games industry lately? The GAMES BAKED IN GERMANY event got you covered: The current game sale on Steam features the latest and upcoming games with a huge sale and new demos.

We are happy to be part with Mops & Mobs. For the first time, we put a demo from our WIP game on Steam - and polished it for that matter. We added a new little character, a tutorial and a new song for the kitchen by Paul Hanisch.

We hope you enjoy the new demo. Make sure to wishlist the game on Steam and give us your feedback!

Short interim project: Mops & Mobs

While PATOU is still in the making but also in need of funding (hello, publishers!), we started a shorter interim project. We focused on all the design elements that come fluently to us and combined them: Exploration, character dialogues and giving players some freedom to decorate things. Voilà: Here comes Mops & Mobs!

A red-hooded small creator stands in a dark cellar like place with lots of candles and a chimney in the back.

We love dungeon fantasy settings in games, comics and pen&paper - and Friedrich always wanted to work on a crawler someday. While there already are quite some interesting takes on the genre, we decided to change things a bit. Instead of being an adventurer going to slay the hell out of monsters, you take the noble job of a janitor. You care for the well-being of the dungeon's monsters, pick up adventurers' left-overs, decorate the dusky halls and passages and find ways to let our beloved Dungeon Master look more competent.

By focusing heavily on the monsters and their personality, Mops & Mobs also is a visual novel-styled game. You do quests which are powered by our own dialogue editor Connected, as we use it to write non-linear and context-sensitive dialogues.

As a change of pace - and for reasons many of our readers probably can guess - we didn't use Unity this time as game engine for Mops & Mobs, but Godot instead. After only a few weeks of evaluation and orientation we're confident with our choice - Godot definitely has its quirks and short-comings, but allows quick iteration and prototyping and is perfect for the scope of the game.

A parchment that declares: We are hiring! Looking for a Dungeon Custodian Extraordinaire

So far, we created a short prototype, where you can play test our idea of becoming a dungeon janitor. Sounds like a job you'd like to do? Head over to itch.io to download the free demo!

If you want to support this project, you can also wishlist Mops & Mobs on Steam!

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