Fink on a Shirt, available at Level Up Studios
Christmas might be over, but there are plenty of opportunities and reasons to buy a new shirt – especially when it has Chasing Aurora’s Fink on it!
The shirt can be ordered directly from Level Up Studios for ¢17.99. So don’t hesitate, go to Level Up Studios and get your very own shirt. Or, a shirt for a friend. Also, Valentine’s Day is right around the corner.
Our beloved BroMii wasn’t human enough to function as an official developer’s Mii, so we had to make a tough decision and let him go. We are sad to announce that he’s departed the MiiVerse. We are very sorry about our loss and will miss him greatly.
May you live on in MiiVerse heaven.
RIP BroMii (2012-2013)
We’ve been polishing Chasing Aurora for the last weeks. I did a few screencasts while working in the level editor, to show you guys how we work. This time you can watch me polish the wind in Ginkgo.
Fex is a man of nature. He can be rather intimidating with his large beak and strong wings. Fex loves to climb a mountain all by himself, drop from a cliff and sail from peak to peak. He lives in a remote village hidden deep in the Alps. He is a healer and a sage. Some people travel for weeks to seek out his wisdom and knowledge. Others claim,though, he has spent too many hours alone with the wind.
Download Fex’ icons here:
We’ve been working on Chasing Aurora since October 2010. We’ve kicked off the project by making dozens of prototypes loosely tied together by the fact that they were all concerned with flight. After a few months, a couple of concepts remained and we set in stone that they will form the foundation of Chasing Aurora: The thrill of flight, the hostile nature of the Alps and the coming of age of an individual. We call this the Triforce of Chasing Aurora.
Chasing Aurora Prototype Early 2011
We tested most of the early prototypes at parties. One of them, which was a racing game at heart, turned out pretty good. It was a competitive two player game. We kept some parts of it and threw away the rest. Then we extended the game, and added a fun multiplayer mode for four players. We showed this game around quite a lot, even brought it to PAX and revealed it to the public. The game was planned to be a long single player game with a few multiplayer modes thrown in for good measure. In other words, we were overambitious. Our next step was to create the single player content. Months went by and the game became bigger and bigger. Also, it became better and better. It provided hours and hours of gameplay, but only because it was not well-balanced yet. Instead, it was an unforgiving game. And it was already beautiful, so we released a mood teaser trailer.
Then we learned the approximate deadline for our Wii U release. We had to make a decision. There was no way that we could finish the whole project before the deadline. So we had to decide which part to cut. We did not want to throw away any of the two half-finished, but promising games. We decided to cut the game into its two parts again and create an explorative single player action game and a party-compatible multiplayer game. Given the fact that the multiplayer was so much fun during play-tests we figured it would be better to work on the multiplayer game first and release the single player subsequently. From that moment on all our energy went into making the most awesome and fun multiplayer game we could. We invented a few new multiplayer modes, threw away a number of them and, sometimes, kept the one or other idea. We ended up with three game modes. After showing the multiplayer game to even more people and being asked for single player gameplay we realised we had to add solo gameplay to the multiplayer game.
Chasing Aurora Prototype Mid 2011
In a way we went back to the beginning of the project to pick our new single player gameplay. The time when Chasing Aurora was a racing game. Peter implemented a single player racing mode over the weekend and all of the team immediately enjoyed it. So we ran with it. We added course after course to level after level. We added special effects and tuned the timing. We compared our high scores to learn who’s racing fastest on which track. We added a special wind layer that is only active during a race. I’ve personally played the mode for hours.
In a few weeks, we will continue to work on the exploration game that was once called Chasing Aurora.
If you are playing the single player mode, you race against the clock. Your goal is to fly through the gates of a course for as long as possible. Every gate slightly increases the time you can spend racing and adds a point to your score. Every 20 gates, a multiplier gate gives you a larger time bonus and also raises your multiplier, which makes each gate count more. Also, you become faster with a higher multiplier. Every 20 multiplier gates there’s a special multiplier gate. This one triggers a special multiplier mode for a limited duration. During special multiplier mode, every gate counts five times its normal value. That includes multiplier gates. If you pass a gate that would normally net you 20 points with multiplier 20, it nets you 100 points during the special multiplier mode. If you pass a multiplier that would normally raise your multiplier by 1 it now adds 5 to your multiplier. The special multiplier mode only lasts for a few seconds.
At the end of the race you get rated. The maximum rating is three stars. 500 points net you one star. Race to 5000 points to unlock the second star. If you manage to make more than 50000 points you unlock the third and last star. You need at least one star to unlock the next level.
There are 20 tracks set in over 10 levels in Chasing Aurora. From simple round courses to devilishly difficult rides through thunderstorms. Can you unlock them all?
Fink is the cheery one, always sporting a smile, or whistling a cheerful tune. Only his wife sees the bitter side of him, when he remembers his mother, the Queen. She always expected an heiress to the throne, a daughter, who would take her place and rule her people. Instead, Fink was born. A boy, a jester, too light-hearted to rule. Cynicism and trickery have become the cover for his bitterness.
Download Fink’s icons here:
Storm is the oldest, with his 58 years of age, and the most experienced. He’s not only seen many battles, but fought many of them as well. He is a veteran now – shunned by most of the tribe. His life wasn’t always that bleak, but filled with love and laughter by his loving wife and son. He’ll always blame himself for what happened – now his son is dead and his wife no longer at his side. Most of the time, Storm is moody and grumpy, but when he thinks back to his wife and son’s laughter, one can catch a glimpse of a smile on his face, before it turns to stone again, when he remembers everything.
Download Storm’s icons here:
Slowly, we’re rolling out short videos on gameplay. Our first video shows how to play the Freeze Tag mode.
Felix presents our in-house game engine Ginkgo and how he’s changing the features of a peak from tricky obstacle to a frictionless mountain top.
