The Töchtertag happened at the end of April, which allows young girls between 11 and 16 to spend a day at a technically focused company and get a first impression on what they’re doing, what a work day consists of and what’s required to work there. Five curious girls joined us at the Töchtertag and were introduced to the different departments of game development. After that we decided to skip the highly theoretical approach and get to the good stuff – designing and building levels!

All the feedback we’ve received during the last multiplayer test session caused us to re-work some of the elements, change a few others and polish the mode like maniacs. Fiercely, we dove right into the next iteration of the multiplayer and improved the hell out of it.

At the beginning of this week we conducted a few more single player tests, which mainly focused on the tutorial levels we’d created a few weeks ago, as well as the level transits. Five highly motivated testers came to our office to play through the first few levels. This test proved to be highly informative. We made daily changes to test out if a different approach for some of the tutorials would be more fruitful and have finally arrived at a state that is a lot more understandable and intuitive.

To create a more understandable environment and visual language, a few changes in appearance were necessary. Clemens sat down and created new visuals and effects to better communicate with the player. The level transitions have greatly improved, as well as other crucial elements that were previously a mystery to the player.

Meanwhile, Husky, worked hard and relentlessly to make the UI resolution independent. He’s now working on a new UI-related task. Again, relentlessly. He has no pity whatsoever with the UI. Rightfully so.

Educational Trip to our office

Yesterday evening we stopped our hard work to open our doors to the special Subotron event. We’ve invited the young and the curious to come by our office and find out more about the development of Chasing Aurora, how the multiplayer looks now, as well as have a few beers, Manner Schnitten and a good time. We’ve had an awesome evening and would like to thank all the people who dropped by as well as Jogi (from Subotron), who organized the event and provided us with food and incredible amounts of beer for this exciting evening.

After yesterday’s event we noticed an unexpected addition to our SCRUM board – the scribble of a duck. We do not take requests lightly and immediately sat down to make our visitor’s wish come true. In under an hour we were able to successfully implement the requested duck. What do you think?

Implementing the duck

“Oh goodness. Chasing Aurora, the latest from And Yet It Moves developer Broken Rules, looks like it’s really shaping up to be something special”
-Nathan Grayson, Rock Paper Shotgun

“It looks lovely.”
-Luke Plunkett, Kotaku

“… this game is already oozing atmosphere.”
-Mike Gnade, IndieGameMagazine

“Unsurprisingly, Chasing Aurora is also a beautiful game and, based on the clip below, it has at least one terrific song in its soundtrack”
-Andrew Webster, The Verge

“We can’t wait to play Chasing Aurora sometime later in 2012.”
-Chris Priestman, DIYgamer

We are delighted, surprised and absolutely happy about all the feedback we’ve received so far. In various languages. We’d like to thank all of you!

Watch this video on YouTube.

Chasing Aurora is one of the 10 nominees for the most amazing game at the A MAZE. Clemens is our man of the moment and is presenting Chasing Aurora (the multiplayer mode) at the A MAZE. as well as, brace yourselves, our brand-new teaser trailer !

Watch this video on YouTube.

The official website was updated as well. We’ve added some Chasing Aurora-themed wallpapers for you to download and use!

One of the main things this week was our first multi-player test. So far, we’ve been doing tests for the single player mode, which are relatively easy to conduct. Three days, several time slots, our test software and willing test subjects are relatively easy to handle. A whole new difficulty is bringing more people together, on the same day, at the same time and place and have them play together a game mode, that heavily relies on communication.

This is a screenshot from the game Portal 2. The copyright for it is held by Valve Corporation, who created the software.

For this test we couldn’t fall back on Silverback, our trusted Guerilla usability test software, to tape the test persons and their actions and comments. We had to go back to analogue testing. Two of us were constantly watching the group of 5 people, while one of us grabbed one of the players not playing to interview them. We had to made sure that everyone plays everything, tries everything and sees everything to be able to give us the best feedback possible.

For the first time, we’ve had to give out NDAs to our testers. We’ve now entered the super-secretive phase in which we need to make sure that nothing leaks out before we can gladly and proudly announce all the amazing things we’re working on. So we had to shove some legal papers in our tester’s faces before they could dive into the full Chasing Aurora Multiplayer Exerience. We do feel a little bad for this but can’t be too careful at this stage. Since two of our testers added a few tasks to our SCRUM board, when we weren’t looking, we were assured that we’re not overdoing it with our NDAs.

What else was done? We took a look at the results from the test and interviews and already worked out some changes to improve some of the points that weren’t working correctly or simply needed improvement. We’ve also worked on more single player levels, some more multi player levels and a few other things that are strongly connected to the secret platform we are yet to announce.

This week’s achievements:

• Conducted multi player test with 14 test subjects
• Analyzed test feedback
• Improved multi player mode
• Secret platform things

As announced, we’ll conduct our first multi-player test session next week. To test the shit out of all the new levels that have been added this week, we’ve tweaked the game modes a little, to ensure a raise in excitement and fun. You’ve heard right – game modes. Plural. While we were adding new levels we came up with more and more exciting ideas for multi-player game modes. And then we’ve added one of those ideas, to test them in the upcoming week.

Clemens, our artist, has been creating more wildlife critters for the game. This week, he managed to add another one. Complete with animations. And, as usual, we promise to lift the veil which critters were added to the game soon.

Martin has been re-constructing and tweaking the main menu and its functionality since last week. It looks better and better and the functionality is just beautiful.

We’ve also sat down together for a big level design session to discuss, brainstorm and sketch all the levels for the first area in the game. In detail, we brainstormed and designed levels, situations and how everything is connected. All the gameplay situations have been decided upon and added. Josef, Andy and Felix had a lot of fun putting scenes together and sketching the levels. Some of the sketches have already found their way to the fridge door. That’s how awesome they are!

The player characters were also newly animated. Their movements and transitions of different positions are a lot more fluid now. The new animations compliment the beautiful and breathtaking flight behavior. And while we’re at it, the wind behavior was also tweaked. New visuals and behaviors were also added. And now it’s time to tweak, improve, enhance!

What we’re especially excited about is all the progress we’ve made on our secret platform, that we’re yet to announce. Not one day goes by that we’re not thrilled at all the crazy quantum leaps were making. The secret platform is still secret but, as with the wildlife, we’ll soon be able to tell you more.

This week’s achievements:

• New multi-player game modes added
• New multi-player levels and maps added
• New wildlife critters added and animated
• Improvement of the main menu
• Detailed plan of all the gameplay situations for the first area
• Player animations are more fluid
• Wind improved
• Quantum leaps made on secret platform

We’ve decided to postpone the single player user test and fill the slot with a multi-player user test. So we’re not only looking for quite a big group of willing test players, but are also immensely busy with working on a new multi-player mode. As we’ve mentioned last week, the new mode is inspired by a children’s game classic. Josef and Clemens are already working on building new levels for it. Felix is making sure that the new multi-player mode is playable, bug free and fun to play. We’ll find out more during the user tests. If you in Vienna between the 16th and 18th (of April) and want to participate in the test – let us know! A few spots are still available.

Felix and Clemens have also been working on new wind visuals and wind behavior. The first sneak peak looks quite beautiful. The new visuals and mechanics are also used for new levels, which can hopefully be tested in the postponed single-player test sessions.

Clemens also found some time to work on even more environmental props that are used to create more vivid and lively scenes and levels. He’s also been quite occupied with creating more effects and visuals for already existing game elements. Meanwhile, Felix focused on improving the physics of the game.

The menu for the multi-player, where the player can pick their preferred bird, has undergone quite some changes. Martin re-built the menu as well as the logistics behind it to enable a smoother and quicker selection of player characters.

This week’s achievements:

• Organization of the upcoming multi-player user test
• New Multi-player game mode implemented
• Improved wind behavior
• New wind visuals
• Added more environmental props
• Improved physics
• New levels built for single and multi-player mode
• Improved character-select menu

To add a bit more atmosphere as well as gameplay elements, we brainstormed a bit more and came up with a few enchanting, exciting and extreme weather situations. Most of them have already found their way into the game. Some of them need a bit more tweaking. All of them add atmosphere to the levels and have become essential parts of the level design and game mechanics.

We’ve also returned to the multiplayer modes. While they were already fun to begin with, we added one more mode during this week. Interesting enough, all of those game modes are more or less based on traditional children’s games. We observed that most multiplayer modes in video games are reinterpretations of classic children’s games.

While we’re at it, we’ve also modernized and improved our rendering system. The material system we have put in place was not capable of keeping pace with Clemens’ creative energy. So we replaced it with a simpler system that provides more freedom. And the shaders got more unified along the way.

Furthermore, we’ve also had the youngest intern ever this week. Bernhard contacted us to spend a few days at our office to learn more about what it means to be a game developer. We hope we were able to show him as much as possible about game development and the different processes and encouraged him a little to continue with the quest for making great games!

This week’s achievements:

• Wildlife and more crazy critters added
• Dynamic weather added
• Multiplayer modes re-invented and new modes added
• Rendering system modernized
• Let our intern in on a few game dev secrets

Image source and author information.

Clemens put life and animation into a bit more wildlife. The animation cycles are amazing and some of the wildlife critters are amazingly cute.

Steffen was busy with building various different weather situations that can occur in the levels. We’re quite excited about various climatic situations he’s put in there. Best part – they’re not only in the game to create atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Jan worked on and implemented the interactive music system, which allows the game music to react directly to the events that happen in the game. Loops can be added and dynamically and, if necessary, also removed from a soundscape. Collision sounds have also found their way into the game, as well as a few other nifty things we shall not speak of at this point.

Felix concentrated on creating several different wind situations to implement into levels and scenes. Amazing, how many different kinds of wind there are and how much work needs to go into creating a functioning and somewhat realistic environmental feature.

Also added were lots of really cool, really impressive rendering… things. We won’t go into too much technical mumbo-jumbo but assure you that what we’ve put in is quite impressive and the shit!

This week’s achievements:

• Wildlife critter animations added
• Climatic situations and variations added
• Interactive music system implemented
• Created wind situations
• Rendering stuff

Let’s get into the updates!

We’ve got together, brainstormed and came up with a bunch of tutorial levels that explain mechanics and buttons without using any words. Or kabuki.

Josef also sat down and started working on a few new levels. If we’re lucky, they’ll be finished just in time for our next user test, which will be conducted in the next few weeks.

Christof Dienz, our composer, surprised us with a new iteration of the soundtrack and in-game sounds. We’re very excited about the soundscapes he’s delivered and, inspired by an amazing GDC talk by Austin Wintory, we have a better overview on how to create a more organic soundtrack for Chasing Aurora.

Clemens has been busy creating and animating new wildlife critters, which will roam the beautiful world of Chasing Aurora. Hopefully, we can show you a few of the critters soon. They’re rather shy. He’s also improved the wind animations and added some amazing particle effects to add more atmosphere.

The critters couldn’t have been animated without the not so new but awesomely improved animation editor by Peter. Rumor has it that a few creepy critters were animated as well but didn’t make it into the game.

We’ve also got our engine running on Linux!

We’re currently busy with multi-player design session and next week we will dive right into another round of single player design sessions. More brainstorming, more tinkering, more Chasing Aurora!

We’ve also grown! Two new members have joined our team – Steffen and Peter (yes, another Peter) are now part of the crew and are helping us with improving Chasing Aurora in the next months.

This week’s achievements:

• Returned from GDC
• Built Tutorial and additional levels
• Functioning Linux build
• Soundtrack and In-Game music
• Added new critters and animations
• Improved the animation editor
• Multi-player design sessions
• Single-player design sessions
• Improved wind animations and added particle effects
• Two new team members joined us

If you’ve always wanted to work on a project like Chasing Aurora as well, this might be your chance. We’re currently looking for a helping hand that knows C/C++, is already experienced in coding for consoles and wants to spend about two months on our team! Only one drawback (besides the rather short project time) – no remote work possible. We’ll need you right here with us at the office. For better communication and the occasional table soccer session. Contact us if you’re interested.

Six more passionate and patient testers came by for further user tests. We prepared eight new game mechanics, each in its own level, to find out a few interesting things. And interesting they were! With every new test we not only learn more about our game but also about the testing process itself. One thing we need to keep in mind is to find “fresh minds” for our tests. We’ve noticed that players who have already played a previous version of the game or know someone who has played them, already have certain expectations, which heavily influence the test results. Other than that, the test results this time were very informative.

The game test was a perfect excuse to build a few more levels and come up with fresh ideas. More woodland creatures came into existence, as well and Clemens, our amazing artist, is working on even more, as we speak. Beware the colorful boar! On the technical side, Martin started generalizing our graphics system to work on even more platforms and Peter is nearly finished with the animation editor. At the same time, Jan added several layers of sound to the game and Christof Dienz, our sound designer, provided us with even more sound samples, which are finding their way into the game as we speak. There’s still a lot to be done, but the atmosphere is finally there. We can now feel the final game, and so can our players.

Clemens is also currently working on a new demo video and is outdoing himself. We’re quite excited about what he’s created so far and can’t wait to share the final video with you!

We’ve also promised you an AYiM update in last week’s blog post! A quick reminder of what we’ve promised last week:

Modifications that were Wii-only before are now also available for PC and Mac. The Speed modification, which enables you to slow down and raise the game speed is one of them. The other modification stops the environment from turning. Whenever you try and turn the environment, Andy, the player character, will turn instead. Mindfucking the mindfuck here. We’ve also fixed the cheater and crazy achievement, which were broken for a while now.

Make sure to update your game as the update just landed on most distribution platforms, like Steam and the Mac App Store.

Martin, Jan and Andy will be going to San Francisco next week to attend GDC. If you want to meet up, please drop us a note!

This week’s achievements:

• We’re looking for a C/C++ coder
• Conducted another user test round
• Build more levels and challenges
• Added more woodland creatures
• AYiM update available Steam and the Mac App Store
• Added sounds and music
• Editing a new demo video
• Meet us at GDC 2012!