Bringing in the goods!
Simon's pixels has been jumping off his screen all week, as he's been drawing every item, powerups and pickups into the game. He's also working on bringing the first Dungeon's boss to life for the GDC playable demo.
I'll upload some screens from the menu system tomorrow
Meanwhile, I've been adding powerup effects, menu screens and layed many a bugs to waste with my keyboard.
We've added a Owlboy Development thread on TIGSource.com, be sure to check it out, as the TIGSource forum is one of the biggest communities of indie developers. If they think your stuff looks great, everyone does!
21.1.11
GDC here we come!!!
Why GDC?
Because it's the single most greatest convention in the world! That's why!
Not only are we going to print up some Owlboyish T-Shirts, some amazing Owl buttons and try to bring the whole team, we're also working on getting a playable Owlboy Demo on CD finished for hand-outs!
Short on GDC San Francisco: It's Hollywood for gamers! Fans gather here, developers gather here, but most importantly, my own bloodline, the Indies gather here! We're hoping to meet as many as possible, and share our gaming visions and ideas.
I'm also hoping to catch a glimps of my all-time favorite big kahuna devs, like Peter Moleneux(Black & White, Fable) and Will Wright(Spore, Sims).
More on the development of the Owlboy demo next time.
Also, check out this incredible pixel-art music video I saw this week:
13.1.11
Norwegian Mastership 2011 Result
Possession!
The Championship is over, and the winner announced! We did not win the competition, but it was a hell-o-alot of fun! This is the trailer for our entry:
The winning game was Kesper's Keep, by a small norwegian indieteam called Moondrop.
Moondrop
Kesper's Keep is a platforming game, where you control a monk-like figure, who needs to manuipulate lights sources inorder to traverse through the game. Blocks dissapear/appear according to what color of lightsource hits it, which opens up to some interesting puzzles.
The Moondrop team consists of Kenneth, Andreas and Stig-Owe who I hope has entered the Norwegian gaming biz to stay, we need all the men/women we can get!
I don't know what the Moondrop team is going to use their reward for, but whether they build further on Kesper's Keep, or start an entierly new project, atleast my country can add one more indieteam to it's roster.
16.12.10
Super Meat Boy Finally Defeated
Difficultest, yet coolest game ever?
I've spent long frustrating hours trying to complete Super Meat Boy on my Xbox, sparks flying as I tried to defeat the last boss. My salvation was promising Simon some pizza and handing him the controller, thinking he couldn't possibly do it. After 3 hours of ruthless controller mashing, a big Mincemeat Pizza was his for the eating.
Super Meat Boy was one of the Indie titles that was nominated and present at IGF 2010, right next to Owlboy's stand, and it's fantastic to see how awesome the game turned out! Here is a video trailer of Meat Boy:
What inspires me most about Meatboy is it's super fast gameplay, and the feel you get when doing an awesome dodge. It's also good for when you need to frustrate those around you. For a game with finger-lickingly good controls, it's still not an easy course to get through. It's the hardest meal I've ever had, one I didn't manage to finish myself at that-.
New Official Minecraft Trailer
The Minecraft mainsite got updated this week, and is featuring a video trailer created by a fellow Norwegian, Vareide, who's previously created alot of brilliant trailers for Minecraft, my favorite being Life of Schrauben. This is the new trailer, lookit:
Minecraft inspires me because of it's openess and it's effective use of graphics. I'm a huge fan of open game-worlds, and Minecraft is the prime example of such games. Others include Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout, etc. and even these huge game-worlds, can't compare to the hugeness of Minecraft.
If I'm ever going to do an entierly open game-world in one of my projects, I'd follow Minecraft's example.
9.12.10
Lava Monkey!!!
New Owlboy Enemy
Simon has started animating a new enemy, and it's in need of a name, but for now, let's call him Lava Monkey!
Over at D-PadStudio.com you can participate in giving the small furrie a name of it's own. Here are a few of the enemies we've aleady introduced:
The flying 'Gawk', the grumpy 'Torque' and the firebreathing 'Molt'
2.12.10
Announcing Vinter In Hollywood(ViH) Game Project
Musical Inspiration
Aleksander Vinter has been acting like a source of inspiration for me, for the past few years, and listening to his music usually fuels my mind with visual images, like gameplay videos playing out inside my eyelids.
Most of my games contain his music, but some time ago, we started to draw up concepts for a Vinter's own game, Vinter In Hollywood. Here's some early art from the project:
Character Design
Vinter is quite particular of which style the project is going to have, and we've spent quite some time figuring out the appearence of the character.
Short pixly, 'Disgaea' type, and 'Bananas in Pyjamas'
are among the styles we've experimented with
What type of game is it?
It's going to be a fast paced action game, that is all I can say. I'll have more details on gameplay later, including a video trailer. It's gonna have classic ViH beats in it. Here is the recently released official music video for Ride Like The Wind, inspiered from the ViH universe.
This video is animated by Oscar Johansson, known for the Castle series running at Newgrounds.com
Norwegian Game Awards Kick-off appearence
Me and Simon made an appearance as this-years winners at NGA last week, hoping to inspire upcoming game-designers to start creating games at their heart's content, be it small or huge! Our task was to talk about Owlboy and the team's future, and our payment was free beer in the bar!
Hard work simply pays off!
So, what is the team's future?
A miserable pile of secrets! We've got so many secret projects on our minds, that we've decided to start giving away some of their premises. We'll soon announce a few projects we've been working on, so stay tuned for more meat on the massive bone of gaming!
