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Hi guys!

Qasir Al-Wasat is going in full steam lately, and we have so many new features we are very excited to show you! But today’s post is about the amazing Global Game Jam and its results.

We already participated in 2010 and 2011 Jams, both with different collaborators in the team, but this year we took the trial to an extreme. Our usual band of six was divided in three groups, mixed with some of our friends.

This year’s theme was:

What? A picture? – And didn’t we made a game like this before?

Super Battle Gunship Oroboros was our entry for the SPJam, themed infinity, mist and/or fire.

 

Oh well. =p  I’m pretty sure we can find a new way to translate this.

1. Team AlexFuu

Vermon (our lead programmer) and Dorte (our colaboring programmer in Qasir Project), teamed up to create a 3d platform game game in Unity. The result is ZVOL – The Walk of Life, a game based on osmosis and choices. You help Johnny Walker (what a fitting name, uh?) go throught life while climbing elevators and solving puzzles.

There are a lot of great ideas here that can be improved and built up to sustain entire games themselves. I’m sure some of them will return in a future Adugan project!

2. Team Twin Birds

Beto, Bruno, Mapperns and myself united our creative forces in a project with an obviously too long name: Roven: Oldman’s Rover Tale or the Errand Aesthete.

The game was born of our deviate rendering of the theme. Instead of infinity, cycle of life or Ouroboros, we decided to see the theme as “symbol”, “symbolism” or “interpretation”. Our plans where a metroidvania-like game, where the protagonist would learn his powers through aesthetic experiences of the world. This would happen through the interaction with seemingly normal objects of the world that would “launch” videos.

Bruno used the chance to play programmer, while I dedicated my weekend to paint scenarios. Mapperns was in charge of the character design and animations, while Beto created the level design. Unfortunately the pipe line + a target that could be smaller left us with more of an experiment than a game. However, we did learn like hell!

A HUGE thanks for Ricardo Toreh, that helped us with sound effects and music, and Gabriel do Valle, that directed and shot the videos used in game.

3. Team Moodsphere Collective

Marcel joined the group of Iuri Kato, Gabriel “Toddy” and Gabriel “Florzinha” Jacobi for the creation of an experience based on the famous Conway’s Game of Life. ByteSelf is a three player colorful game, in wich each color predates another, and the trick for winning the game is making sure your own predator prevails.

I’ve heard rumors that the game will be available in Kongregate soon enough, after some balancing and gameplay improvements. ;) We’ll make sure you are well informed when this happens!

Here in Curitiba we where surrounded by friends and inspirations.


Clockwise: Cattercannon, Everlong , Magnus Opus and Samsara.

Cattercannon was made by Mariana “Bolinho” Tonini and Paulo “Animmaniac” Reihner. The objective here is to take a steampunk catterpillar as far as you can, one segment at a time.

Everlong by Monster Juice is another multiplayer, with an interesting dynamic of dying x returning to life. Each time you die it will become harder to return to the game, but each time you do, you will return more powerful.

Magnus Opus is a tabletop game where you play an Alchemist racing to create the Philosopher Stone before his colleagues. It was developed by the group of Arthur Mittlebach, in about 20h, and was inspired by numerous EuroGames.

Samsara was created by our friend Daniel Rossato, who decided to take his students to the GGJ. It’s about the wheel of fortune and the virtues of Buddhism. We loved the use of comic sans and word art!

In Campinas and Porto Alegre where some of our favorite indie studios, like Catavento, MiniBoss, Taw Studio and SwordTales had their runs. We missed you guys! <3

 


Clockwise: Viktor the Nth (Catavento) , Trapped! In the Chamber of Eternal Darkness (Miniboss) , Soroboruo (TawStudio) and N.E.R.O.T. (Swordtales)

Viktor the Nth has an amazing concept where your past play actually influences your next one. Kind of like a Skyward Sword (with all those diode-type puzzles and obstacles) meet Demon Souls (with the mark of your past deaths clearly visible to you, giving a sense of accomplishment every retry you get past them).

Trapped! In the Chamber of Eternal Darkness is the usual Miniboss jam effort: complete, beautiful and surprisingly well polished for a 48h project. It’s an endless arena shoot’em up with a ton of self-referential material. I was expecting it would have more cows, though. =p

Soroboruo is a stylish action game with a very pleasing (and bold!) eastern aesthetics. Seeing Taw improve this much their Jam results compared to the SPJam back in November brings a smile to our faces. I hope Taw Studio considers using this great graphic style in one of their other games.

Swordtales´N.E.R.O.T. is a running game about a bionic samurai in (what looks like) a psychedelic circular world. In the best style of the Canabalt-like games, there is no time to stop. There is also that Cactus’ vibe and we love it.

Also a shout out for our friend Bolívar, who was participating from Koln, Germany, and helped develop The Tale of Archy!

We are so proud to know so many talented people! Congratulations everyone!

 

Hello everyone! Today we have some really exciting news for you! We are very proud to present the announcement trailer for our current project, Qasir Al-Wasat!

The game evolved a great deal during the past few weeks, and it is possible to say it is, for the most part, complete. We now begin one of the most enjoyable parts of the development: polishing the game until it shines. =)

So what where the latest features added to the project?

We have many new levels, including some secret areas we are very excited about.

We also worked on an improvement over our text/dialog system, to make it more active for the player. We are still testing it, but it seems to be a promising feature.

The rest was hard work with heavy bugfixing, tests and asset building.

We hope you enjoy the trailer!
If you like it, please donate and help us deliver the game: a.svotz.org/​qasirdonate

Hello again and welcome to one more update of Aduge’s Strategic Plan!
Today was a long, full of expectations and as productive as the first one (or even more).

We woke up early, thinking already of today’s main goal: to find out our next Vision statement. And what is it? The situation where we’ll be in a future moment, projecting our conquering vision and what does that means.

The starting point was a well known script for those used to a Strategic Planning (and this time we’ve learned a lot about this topic and caring a lot more for keeping it simple). Analyze the internal and external environment, understands your positioning to the next years, and understand where your target should be. Then you just need get ready to throw the dart! (And don’t worry too much, you’ll only understand all this after learning a little bit on the way).

To begin with, of course, a good coffee from Espírito Santo. From that point on our morning went through with talks about our market: other independent group, festivals and distribution portals, looking to identify significant attributes to a quick understanding of the market. That, along with our yesterday work, helped us to raise the Opportunities and Threatens that we have in our field of vision. We ended this part of the day in a detailed talk about the experience acquired with the project and through living, pointing out equally the problem as much as what went right.

Starting with these we could list with precision (at least, with as much precision that we needed) internal elements that are Strengths and Weakness of Aduge, that we can consider as the box that we found (or missed) the tool that which we can build games. A brief stop for a vegetarian nachos for lunch, funny talks and some more episodes from Extra Credits. After that an essential thin for all the warmth that is here at the beach: ice cream, lot’s of ice cream!

Time to be brace! “Where will Aduge be in March 2013″ is, well, a harsh question to realistically articulate. But with different fronts of talks we became less and less wimpy and took the chance to bring an answer to the main topics: how many games should we develop? which festivals will us take part? how will the internal and administrative  be? Where is the fish?

The afternoon went on quickly while we synced our mental images, using from a more theoretical to absurd metaphors approaches and exemplifications using glasses. To find a vocabulary wasn’t an easy task, but in the end we got to our objectives in a natural way, focusing in the moment of delivering the projects.

So where will we be in March 2013? A little bit of mystery doesn’t hurt anyone, so we live to you to find out while and when we announce our next projects! But we promise, lot’s of news soon, stay tuna! ><·>

Following our commitment to keep in touch with our readers, here is a batch of fresh news to you!

From the 08th to the 10th of November, Aduge was in Florinópolis to the SBGames 2010. Between the usual networking, inspiring keynotes and long treks under the sun, we had the surprise of Sembante, in it’s Global Game Jam incarnation, being awarded on the SBGames’ Indie Festival. The awards were the 2nd “Best Game Overall” and “Best Game Design”. Thanks to the judges! To everyone that is coming here to the Ghostboard because of Semblante, make sure to try the updated, IGF version.

Also among the best paper awards we had our share of surprises: congratulations to our two dear adugans, Bruno Bulhões and Thiago ‘Beto’ Alves, for the award of best paper on the Art & Design track.

Going forward a little, it is with great relief that we can announce that 5/6 members of our team already presented their graduation projects. Our positive energies stay with the 1/6 that didn’t. =]

And with this we finish this particular brief round of updates. When we recover from the excitement of these past few days we will return full speed ahead!


Presenting: the protagonist!


We are proud to finally present to all our readers the protagonist of Tsar Project.


These last months we were hard at work on his personality, backstory and design to create an unforgettable and unique character that represents the deep experience we wish to create with this game. And what character would be better on a stealth game than a powerful ninja?



Shadow Crow, the deadly shadow. From the secret valleys in the heart of China, his motives to be in Moscow are completely mysterious.  Is he under the command of a powerful noble? Is he on a personal vendetta, nurtured by sleepless nights? His figure is pale and stealthy, his movements are deadly. Shadow is armed with nigh-infinite shurikens, a kusari-gama cursed by 9001 demons from the 6 Shintoist hells and sharp iron claws forged by the steel wielded by his dead enemies.


As the game progresses we will discover together what obscure secrets motivates Shadow to plunge into the cold night of Moscow, and the scars left by his painful and irredeemable past. No one can stop him, his power is maximum. The Tsar Project is the greatest opportunity to become the greatest of ninjas!

We’re now entering Tsar’s Project Production Planning. More information soon. :)

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