Well, while we don’t drop the bomb itself, a small drop for everyone:

Just a shout-out. Our deadline of August 31st is just a few days away and we are currently doing some finishing touches on our next release. It will still be a closed Alpha, reserved only to our playtesters and to the jurors of any festival we happen to participate (like Brasil Game Show). A closed Beta is not too far away from now though, just a couple of weeks!

Expect some exciting news very soon! And well, enjoy the easter egg picture.

Long time no see readers! Quick update today:

Firstly, we are not dead, nor paralyzed. We were just a little away (or a lot in some cases). After a couple of weeks of rest and vacationing during most of July we are already back full force on Qasir. Last week we returned planning the final stages of the production phase of the project, what still needs to be done, what needs polish and etcetera. Currently the game is almost playable from start to finish, only the very last puzzles and rooms are not fully implemented and the feel of the game is near that of a finished product.

However, there are still some work left for us to do. Right now we are working on a full revamp of how we handle dialogue texts and how our main character’s monologues are presented based on feedback we received from players of our Alpha these past few weeks. This is our major feature to finish for this week and for the next build of the game, which will be submitted to the Brasil Game Show. After that our milestones will be related to making the game a finished, polished product, adding the necessary features to reach this goal.

Well, this was a quick one. See ya soon.

Hello again. Last time I introduced our current project, Qasir, answering some questions that might had popped about it. This second update starts with an announcement: Qasir, along with our other 2011 projects – Mnemons and Semblante – are submitted to the Indiecade festival. Whether or not we will net an honorable mention or even grab a finalist spot remains to be seen, but having the game submitted for judging at a playable state is actually what’s most important for us right now.

So, yes, the game is already in an advanced, playable state. We already began playtesting sessions with a QA team since last week and we already achieved a production pipeline that allows us to rack up new builds (with new features and the occasional bugfixes) almost daily. At this point in time, we have one of the four sections of the palace in a fully playable state (which is roughly 16-20% of the game, actually) encompassing the game’s introduction, tutorial and the first core objective. Unfortunately we are not yet ready for Beta tests, still having some heavy bugs to sort out, a major gameplay feature to implement and some other minor tweaks that are needed before the game can reach potential consumers as a Beta.

Which leads us to, well, were are we going. Our next milestone is, obviously, hitting Beta, making the game fully playable from the beginning until the end with a level of polish good enough for public scrutiny. The deadline is July 8th, just 3 weeks from now. This deadline is tight, but achievable and will mark the closing steps of the production stage of the project and the first steps of post-production/polishing.

And that’s it for today. But before I end this update, you can check some screenshots of the latest builds of the game after the break. See you soon!

What kind of game is Qasir?

Qasir is the prologue to the Tsar Project. It tells an early story of our invisible protagonist and it’s an introduction to the mechanics and themes that will be explored more deeply on Tsar. The game is a stealth action-adventure that takes place on a ominous night on 12th century Syria. The game features a invisible character, that needs to assassinate 3 targets before dawn while avoiding detection. Although invisible to the human eye, our protagonist can be covered in particles, which can be seen by guards (such as the blood of it’s victims) and it can still emit noises that attracts attention. The game deals with an important aspect of this character’s personality, that of a risk-taker, which pursuits the best given reward out of any situation even if with it comes greater risks and consequences for failure.

How big/long the game will be?

We do not call the game a prologue for nothing. It’s size can be compared to that of what a long chapter in a full-sized indie game like Tsar Project will be or that of a major Zelda dungeon. So, it’s not super shot or bite-sized, but it’s not also particularly long or “full-sized” as one should expect.

When it will be released, exactly?

By fall 2011 (for those on the northern hemisphere). Expect the game to be fully available on early to mid September.

The game will be released free of charge?/How much it will cost?

It’s our first commercial project so it’s not freeware. It will cost $5 dollars, which are what we consider a fair price for a game with this scope.

Why the choice to develop Qasir right now, instead of Tsar or Mnemons?

I will be sincere on this one. We are currently in the middle of a crossroad at Aduge. We need to deliver projects, and we need to deliver commercial-grade games. Most of us recently graduated from the university, and we are more determined than ever to finish and deliver our projects and to sell them. We started to exercise this mentality of delivering, achieving closure, with Semblante and Mnemons, two very short three-week-long experiments. However, under this time constraint, we cannot deliver a commercial, finished product with our current level of mastery on game development. Qasir is on a middle ground. It is an achievable, short project, that has enough time for us to polish it enough to warrant it as a commercial product and also serves as a good test for Tsar Project, which is bigger in scope.

What engines/tools you guys are using on this project?

So far, we used the excellent Scirra’s Construct on both Mnemons and Semblante. It’s the perfect tool for short projects and prototyping, but it doesn’t quite cut it for a bigger project under a team of 6 like Qasir. So, for the Qasir project we chose to go with Unity 3D as our engine. It’s very powerful and easy to use, enough for us to deliver a finished product with the features we are trying to achieve with Qasir. Also, we are still using Construct for quickly prototyping ideas of mechanics and level design.

Can you expose a brief timeline of the project up until now?

The project started on early March with the Direct phase, or Conceptualization, where we chose to go with an older story of the main protagonist of Tsar Project for our game. This phase was characterized by the choice of our theme, Gambit, and the creation of a conceptual/creative direction for every facet of the game, from sound design to the game design itself. It was during this phase that we decided the main mechanics, the setting and the context of the game.

After that, by late March, we entered the Design phase, or Pre-Production, where everyone, with the creative direction in mind, started designing the game’s components, rules, narrative and representation while a quick prototype using Construct was assembled to test most of what was being designed. This phase is where we also acclimated with Unity 3d as our main tool and worked out how we were going to implement all of our assets and features in the final software.

By mid-April we entered the current phase, Develop, or Production, which is where we produce and implement the visual assets, sound effects, level design, etc. namely all the content of the final product. We are about at the middle of the develop phase trying to hit a fully-playable Alpha before May 31st and submit the game for the Indiecade festival.

Oh well, that was a long post. Expect the next updates to be shorter and with more stuff to see rather than stuff to read. See you soon!

And as you can see, we are changing our colors again. This means… something is coming soon.

As promised before, we are releasing today a new build of Mnemons’ alpha. This is the last build we will release of Mnemons in a long time and, I’m not gonna lie, probably ever. March 14th we will be dropping steadily our work and support on Mnemons and Semblante and we will start from scratch a brand new project.

Download Mnemons Alpha (0.2)

These are the changes from the last version:

*    Music on the hub should be working properly now.
*    Fixed a problem with the music loop on certain stages.
*    Added different graphic settings for the game:
**    F1 for Best settings: this is the regular graphics settings with lowest performance, which needs a good video card to run smoothly. It’s the default mode.
**    F2 for Better settings: this mode removes some graphical effects, improving performance. Mid-range to budget graphics cards can run this mode smoothly.
**    F3 for Good settings: this mode removes all shaders and graphical effects. Use it if you have an IGP or legacy cards that can’t run the game properly even on the previous mode.
**    You can change the graphics settings at any time during the game or at the main menu. The changes only takes effect when you change stages, however.
*    Up to 46% performance improvement on all of the aforementioned modes by using a new rendering method for the Lethe, which means that if the game only slowed down on stages 1-6, 1-7 and 3-2, it will probably run smoothly now even on Best settings.
*    Added a brand new stage: 3-3.
*    Small fixes on stages 1-7 and 2-4. They should be less challenging now.
*    And some other small fixes…

And, oh yes! The image of this post is a wallpaper from our Mnemons Wallpaper Pack! Grab yours now!

Here it is. This is the final version of Semblante, dubbed Semblante 3.0 or Anniversary Edition, since we wanted to release it at the eve of Global Game Jam 2011. Unfortunately we missed the deadline by a matter of hours (really) and decided to release this version of Semblante only after our work with Mnemons was done (and the SXSW contest tight deadline was clear).

What has changed? Well, basically everything. We put a good 3 weeks of work on this particular version of Semblante (before it, both 1.0 and 2.0 were 48h efforts). This means that the game is bigger and more polished all around, with navigable menus, volume control and some other stuff we usually take for granted like checkpoints and a pause screen. Also, we put a distinct personality in each of the game’s shadows (and their own proper puzzle to retrieve them), revamped the game’s graphics (especially Jung’s animations) and redesigned the game’s sound effects and music (courtesy of our friend Hermann Rauth). We’re also able to finally put the game’s original script to good use, putting some contextual, albeit obscure, text integrated within the game’s backgrounds.

You can download Semblante 3.0 for free here or at the game’s page.

EDIT (18:30 BRT): The file available for download was corrupted. It should be fixed now.

In other news, we are wrapping things up here and both Mnemons and Semblante will have their final (for now) builds. We are preparing a series of posts for both games, detailing aspects of their brief development (both were developed in a 3 week time-frame). Expect the final builds to be released by the end of the week and the posts following soon thereafter.

… a Synchronous Platforming Adventure.