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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!

 



Hey everyone!
This is the result of our Global Game Jam 48 hour effort: Mnemons! This year’s GGJ theme was Extinction.

Mnemons is a top-down 2 player co-op game taking place in a childish memoryscape. Players controls toys that must retrieve important objects from the memoryscape in order to avoid the complete extinction of that memory.

The players are, however, suffering from a condition similar to neurological extinction, where two identical, symmetrical, inputs makes them inoperable or inefficient.

You can download the game at it’s Global Game Jam page

Hello again! January is turning out to be a busy month for us adugans. We began this month full throttle preparing the release of Semblante (Anniversary Edition) which is the definitive version of Semblante (we promise).

Also, last Saturday we made a workshop at PUC-PR at a warm up event for the Global Game Jam 2011. We showcased the Scirra Construct game creator, teaching the basics of how to create quick prototypes and games. We believe that Construct is an ideal software for events like Global Game Jam due to it’s ease of use and the speed in which anyone can build a solid prototype.

Well, next Friday it is the Global Game Jam 2011. Aduge will be present at PUC-PR Jam Site (one of the biggest in the world!) and by next week expect tons of good news from us.

See you soon.



Semblante posted on Play This Thing!

Even though our priority is the Tsar Project, we didn’t left Semblante behind. We’re sitll working on it to improve the gameplay and sharpen the game concept, looking forward to achieve a more complet experience on what’s been proposed for the game.
We just got extra motivation! =)

We are finally back from the Global Game Jam and we’d like to produdly present the result of our 48 hour effort: Semblante.

Before I start, a brief clarification. “Semblante” is a portuguese word that means “visage”. A good reason for the choice of this particular name was because it is a phonetically pleasing word (when spoken in native portuguese at least) the other reasons are pretty much subjective and we leave to each one his own to think about it or not.

The game is still a little incomplete as of now, even if it has a beginning and an end, as we need to work out some of the mechanics, asset implementations and general level design. Semblante is also quite simple, you control Jung inside its own mind as it searches for its own identity (represented as a mask) while avoiding the shadows that lurks within. The metaphor is obvious and I will not linger on it anymore.

The mechanics are pretty simple. Jung has 4 mechanics. It can move, jump, shine and scream. To shine, the character needs to stay in light spots to charge its body. Jung glows for a limited amount of time and while it is glowing, shadows are repelled by it. Jung can also use its remaining glow to scream and attract shadows to itself. We have a lot of bugs to work out still but the core mechanics are all there.

The guys at PUCPR jam site (we are at the right, with “uniforms”)

Aside from the game itself and talking about the Jam itself. It was a pleasing (and exhausting) experience to participate on a Global Game Jam. The extra hands were crucial for the game to come into fruition. In the name of the team I’d like to thank, Flor, Santo, Paulo and Rossato for their effort and dedication during the Jam. We also want to thank Bruno Campagnolo for organizing the Jam Site and the free sodas and sfihas. We’d like to do it again next year!

Here we are, Adugans and friend developers, at Global Game Jam.

We had a hard time defining the game concept. That happened not because we found it hard to fit a game concept to the theme proposed, but because we always have a creative boom and we end up having so much options that it’s difficult to pick up one way to go.

Even so, our sub-teams managed to make substantial advances. Game design defined the game mechanics and challange pallet; having the game concept the screenwriting team could work out the plot and main character; graphics develped some tilesets, props, and some animations fo the main character and enemies.

The prototype is almost with all mechanics and features implemented. By the time it’s all done, game design will start composing the level design.

Considering it all, we have a nice optmistic feel!

Later on we’ll talk more about the game itself.
Stay tuned! =)

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