Trail Challenge is a time-challenge for a single player. Their task is to fly through a course as fast as possible while hitting the triangle-shaped gates to score points and receive time bonuses. The round ends, when the timer reaches zero.
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Posted on November 10, 2012 Filed under Chasing Aurora
Tags Chasing Aurora, multiplayer, Nintendo, single player, trail challenge, wii u
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 tune a waterfall.
While refocusing Chasing Aurora we also changed the way we discuss and decide at Broken Rules. As you know we are a small studio with 7 people and a hierarchy as flat as it can get. This means that everyone has a say in important matters. When we were smaller this simply worked, but the more we grew the more we got lost in heated discussions. Discussions where people with less rhetoric self-esteem couldn’t get through and Chasing Aurora lost valuable input, ideas and feedback.
We structured our conversations with the following simple steps:
- There’s a speaking ball (or tangerine if nothing else is around). You can only speak if you hold it in your hands. Everyone else should be listening. Quick questions that increase comprehension are allowed.
- There’s a mediator, who makes sure everyone who has something to say gets the chance to do so. The mediator should keep himself out of the discussion. Everyone can be the mediator of a discussion, but it has to be decided beforehand.
- If possible, split up in groups. The group can present its findings to everyone when finished.
This discussion structure allowed us to refocus Chasing Aurora in less than a week. Way more efficient than we used to be!
Posted on January 25, 2012
Filed under Chasing Aurora, development
Tags brainstorming, discussion, mediator, speaking ball, structure
Filed under Chasing Aurora, development
Tags brainstorming, discussion, mediator, speaking ball, structure
The games I love all have one thing in common: while playing them I can sense a vision. A vision that every part of the game is trying to convey. I don’t need to immediately understand what this vision is about, I only need to feel it. A central theme, a leitmotif, that is running through its veins. If the vision is strong, the gesamtkunstwerk (holistic art) every game is – that is its totality of game play, visual, acoustic and narrative – can reach its full potential and be bigger than the sum of its parts.
When it comes to vision there’s one person in the game industry I absolutely trust: Fumito Ueda. Ten years ago he gave a talk at GDC about the design process for ICO.
His process became known as “Design by Subtraction” and can be summed up with these two guidelines:
“Actively reducing/removing the number of elements included to improve the overall quality of the game.”
and
“Less elements, but more care to each that remain.”
Rereading this helped a lot in refocusing the single-player mode of Chasing Aurora, which we’ve been working on for the last three months. The more we worked on it the more we noticed that everyone had something different in mind. Our vision was too vague and too broad, which resulted in inconsistencies across the team. Ultimately it culminated in lackluster game play. We loathe lackluster game play, so we knew it was time for some radical changes.
With Ueda’s words ringing in our heads we took a hard look at our vision and reduced it to three sentences, each one representing one pillar of the emotional reality we want to convey. We call our vision the “Triforce” and we use it as a requirement tool. Everything that we put in the game has to at least strengthen one of these three pillars. The more the better. If it doesn’t it wont get in. It’s like a bouncer in front of the doors to Chasing Aurora :)
It didn’t take long until one of the main game mechanics – one that we ported from the multi-player to the single-player – fell victim to our vision triforce and is now gone. Although this was a hard cut, it lifted a heavy weight from our shoulders and made room for a better game. A game where you will feel its vision running through its veins.
Posted on January 18, 2012
Filed under Chasing Aurora, development, game design
Tags Chasing Aurora, design by subtraction, fumito ueda, gesamtkunstwerk, refocusing
Filed under Chasing Aurora, development, game design
Tags Chasing Aurora, design by subtraction, fumito ueda, gesamtkunstwerk, refocusing
Last week we’ve announced the name of our next game: Chasing Aurora. The game is still in an early stage of development, but we want to get you guys involved as early as possible. That’s why we will show Chasing Aurora at PAX Prime 2011. It’s the perfect event for debuting our new game, isn’t it?
PAX Prime is known as the event that brings gamers from around the world together to play, hang out and celebrate gaming! It’s a 3 day nerdgasm lasting from August 26th to 28th, 2011. In the middle of this crazy festival you will find the Indie Alley, a hotspot for indie gaming. We’ve rented a booth in the Indie Alley and you will have the chance to be among the first players to check out Chasing Aurora in the world! This is as exciting for us as it is for you.
Jan and Clemens will fly to Seattle to show you the game. They will bring Chasing Aurora t-shirts and other merchandise and will be more than happy to show you our latest creation! If you are attending PAX Prime 2011, make sure to visit them in the Indie Alley and play Chasing Aurora!
Here at Broken Rules we are still using Subversion as our versioning system. Personally I use Versions as my Mac client for accessing all our repositories, and I really like using it. It has a clear user interface and a helpful structure. My favourite feature is the Changed View, which only shows you the files that have been changed since your last commit/update. This view has really helped me remember to add new files to the repository, which is a common thing to forget when dealing with versioning systems. So props to Sofa for a great Subversion client!
But the way Versions deals with conflicts has always been a sore spot. It shows you the conflict, but there is no way of quickly resolving it using the .mine file or the newest .r file. And there isn’t even an easy way of correctly passing the conflicted files to FileMerge (or whatever comparing app you are using). Until now I have always manually draged the files to FileMerge. Luckily Versions allows for custom comparison scripts, so I finally found the time to write a script that does exactly that: correctly passing the conflicted files to FileMerge.
Last week I’ve visited Berlin to give a short presentation at the Deutsche Games Tage 2011. If you know DGT, you might be surprised, as it’s a conference with a strong focus on online game business à la Bigpoint. So what are a bunch of indies doing there? The reason was the first A MAZE Indie Connect, organized by Thorsten Wiedemann. The idea was to give an overview of the German-speaking indie scene and bring people together to form a community. On top of that we discussed what the future may bring. Thorsten wants to grow this panel into a full blown indie event in the coming years. Naturally, a big part of the panel was to talk about what an event like this could look like.
After returning home I talked about the potential of another indie event with the rest of the team, because I think the more input Thorsten can get, the better it will be. So, what would Broken Rules like to see at the A MAZE Indie Connect?
Nintendo has announced new WiiWare demos and And Yet It Moves will be in the first wave. Yeah!
Download the free demo starting today, 11/22/2010, in North America!
Be sure to rate And Yet It Moves in Everyone’s Recommendations on the Nintendo Channel! Because the better the rating the longer the demo will be on the Wii Shop.
Our research labs recently found out that it’s possible to gift demos. It’s free, so why not share it with your friends?
PS: Europe, we have not forgotten you! We’ll announce the European release date as soon as we know it!
On Friday we launched a rising sale at Yawma. It started with a day of Pay What You Want for our game And Yet It Moves. Seems like Yawma was taken by surprise for your interest in getting our game. For a long time it’s servers were at max capacity and kept crashing. While I know this was quite annoying for some of you, I have to say it feels quite awesome too :)
Anyway, Yawma decided to move to a new server infrastructure, and are live again since today. To make up for your troubles we will relaunch the whole rising sale on Wednesday with another time of Pay What You Want! So get ready and tell everyone they’ll have another shot at getting And Yet It Moves for whatever they think it’s worth. And while you’re at it, you can also try to raise the Friday average of 0,60$ to some nicer amount :)
PS: While you wait (and if you live in North America) you can go to the Wii Shop and download the demo of And Yet It moves WiiWare!
Update: the sale will be live again next Wednesday with another time of Pay What You Want!
We are doing a rising sale at YAWMA. Which means that today you’ll get And Yet It Moves for whatever you want to pay for it!
Tomorrow it’s 75% off, then 63% and so on… So quit reading this, go grab it NOW and tell your friends about it!
http://yawma.net/games/25-and-yet-it-moves
If you’re still reading this, I guess you’re wondering what YAWMA is. Well, it’s this strange store based on Facebook, where you get money when your friends buy stuff. Or to let them speak for themselves:
“The online community that allows you to discover and share indie music & games while earning Cash Rewards for your participation.”
Read the FAQ to find out how it works.
If you look at the name for some time you’ll find out where the concept comes from…