It all started with our dear Cassandra Khaw’s post over Indiegames.com! The day after new reviews of the trailer started popping on “the internets”(sic), with JovemNerd.com.br‘s Stephan Martins writing our first Brazilian review on the 21st! Here is the list of original posts, so far:

Indie Games
Game Side Story
Game Set Watch
Game Dot
Seand Knight IGN Blog
Igrorama
Indie Shelter
No Name Radio
Joven Nerd
Gameplay

Meanwhile, the trailer itself (if you  haven’t seen it yet pray go check it on vimeo!) is getting astonishing (at least for our humble expetations) view counts! By the time I’m writing this it’s far over 9000!

If you spot any other review please leave a comment with it, send us an email [aduge (at) adugestudio (dot) com] our tweet @aduge!

So we are back to work, rushing with the development ahead of the Beta2 release in the next few weeks, and checking our fellow entries on 2012 IGF! (we’ll post a list of the Brazilian ones very soon!)
I’ll post some sort of Art Director’s Production Diary ++ very soon! Stay in the loop!

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.

4 years have passed since that original idea. A single project transformed into an entrepreneurship that would make projects, several of them. The team perceived together, learning from their mistakes as making games turned out to be a little bit more complicated than it seemed.

Now, after a few projects and one release soon to come, we thank everyone that supported us in this walk that is, still, only in the beginning.

=]

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!

It’s a new project. You may be able to recognize a pattern in our naming for projects, this is Qasir Project, there is a Tsar Project. If you did make the connection you’re in the right trail: this game is basically a prologue for the Tsar Project. In the same way the Tsar Project is driven by the concepts of Aloneness and Patience it’s prologue deals with Gambit. With this in mind one can expect a game based in exchanges, high risks for high rewards.

As for the setting in this chapter we are aiming more on fantasy than on historical fiction, which has a central role in the Tsar Project. Some real world places and persons will be mentioned, but more in a tangential way. For instance instead of the Golden Palace of the Moscow Kremlin this time the story will unveil in Qasir al-Hayr fiy al-Wasat, a fictional palace that may, or may not, be located near the ancient city of Palmyra on 12th century Syria.

And this is it, expect more news and production updates soon. Happy easter, everyone!

So, as you can see we have “finished” two projects in this last trimester. But we have to use the quotes here because there is still one last step so we can call a project finished: make it avaliable in a game portal so that you, our beloved player, can invest into our future games while playing the current ones. (i.e: to buy ; )

For several strategic reasons thoroughly discussed by our team, we decided to make available the current versions of Semblante and Mnemons for free here in the website. Nevertheless, we have implemented this fantastic PayPal’s donation button (just by your side, if you are viewing this post in owr website). It is quite fast to create an account and contribute with the ammount that you feel it’s fair enough!

If you enjoyed our games, or if you like Aduge, and wanna see more results sooner: just click it! x ) Many thanks, pal!

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!

While you three stand out there, boldly conceiving the next episodes, preparing for storms after pointing the worst flaws we as industry and public do and what we could be doing for a better future, while you are there, know you have our love, respect and gratitude.

The Adugans

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.