IGN made And Yet It Moves its WiiWare Game of the Month: “WiiWare has been getting a lot of cool indie PC game ports lately, and while And Yet it Moves is one of those, it’s also a game that is perfectly suited to the Wii. Using the tilt controls of the Wii remote, players rotate the entire world so they can climb mountains and cross huge chasms, and even defeat murderous horned toads with laser eyes. It’s a unique, fresh, and challenging platformer with a bizarre art style and a weird sense of humor. Credit goes to developer Broken Rules for breathing life into a stale genre.”

Wii’s World gave And Yet It Moves a B+ and tells you: “If you wish for a game which miraculously breathes new life into an already 25 year old genre and proves itself to be immensely creative and fun, look no further.”

From GameFancier, And Yet It Moves received 4/5 stars, and they especially enjoyed the controls: “For once the transition to Wii has enhanced the controls, especially if you use Wii remote and Nunchuck as I did”

And Yet It Moves received the Editor’s Choice Award from Popzara (and take a look at that URL!), who also tell you: “Its vertigo-inducing 360-degree rotation mechanic makes the platformer exasperatingly fun to learn all over again and, unlike the majority of celebrated indie-releases, the developers at Broken Rules had the audacity to craft a genuinely innovative experience that’s the rarest of all things – fun to play”

Video Game Talk tells you: “If you like a game with real imagination and unique gameplay, you owe it to yourself to pick this game up”

MTV Multiplayer loves And Yet It Moves, and sees it as “one of the best WiiWare games ever, and puts “And Yet It Moves” in the running to be one of the best Wii titles of 2010″

GamesRadar gave And Yet It Moves a 9/10 rating: “Wonderfully designed and lovingly executed, And Yet It Moves is the WiiWare game of our dreams”

And last but not least, No Added Sugar took the maybe most in-depth look at And Yet It Moves, summarizing: “And Yet It Moves is still more confirmation of the vibrancy of the indie development scene, and it shows yet again, for many developers, the second dimension remains the final- and the most exciting- frontier”

Seriously, we’re going to show your favorite world changing platformer And Yet It Moves at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo, PAX 2010 aka PAX Prime. That means that two of our rocket scientists will travel to the distant Seattle, WA tomorrow. In their bags, they’ll bring And Yet It Moves goodies – t-shirts, buttons, and a Wii to play the game on. And they’ll take with them the upside down glasses you see above to turn your world upside down. You’ll find Broken Rules sharing a booth with our fellow Indie game makers Drinkbox studios right behind the behemoth of an EA booth.

So in case you’re in Seattle on September 3rd to 5th, be sure to drop by at our booth and give our game a spin.

In order to wet your mouth I’d like to point to some of the reviews we’ve got so far. So far, the reviewers are really enjoying the game. Get it while it’s hot:

“Whether bat-shepherding, banana-rolling or bee-fleeing, each task is obscure enough to warrant a eureka moment and physically exerting enough to serve as a decent twitch challenge.” EDGE 218 [8/10]

“It’s fun, unique looking and well worth ten bucks.” John Artest, RunDLC [4/5]

“If you only download one WiiWare title in your Wii-owning lifetime, this week’s release of indie PC game And Yet It Moves from developer Broken Rules would be a damn fine choice.” Michael Fahey, Kotaku

“In this game, you don’t jump between ledges, you bring the ledges to you.” Justin Haywald, 1UP [B+]

“If you haven’t done so before, get it. If you have, consider double-dipping.” Jonathan Wahlgreen, Nintendo Life [9/10]

And Yet It Moves was not only ported to the Wii, the whole experience was custom tuned to the Wii’s unique features. Turning the world with the Wii Remote feels mighty (and snappy). The new levels are so hardcore that even the game designers have trouble finishing them without getting torn apart. The new game modes will make your head explode (which does not matter since it’s made of paper). We are proud of our game because it is awesome. Period.

What exactly is so awesomely good about this game, you ask? Let me tell you:

• The game is unique! You run around in a world made of torn paper. A flick with the WiiMote sends the world pivoting around you. You overcome obstacles and solve puzzles by rotating gravity.
• There are monkeys in this game! Creatures such as bats, bees and monkeys populate the game world. They react to the changing gravity. Use the power of the graviton to your advantage. The renown computer game EDGE said about And Yet It Moves on Wii: “Whether bat-shepherding, banana-rolling or bee-fleeing, each task is obscure enough to warrant a eureka moment and physically exerting enough to serve as a decent twitch challenge” (EDGE 218).
• It is huge & full of colors! You travel through four different environments and 20 levels as the puzzles get more and more challenging. And there’s an incident with snake venom.
• Play it again, Sam! There are achievements and unlockables. The latter contain access to new game modes and so-called “modifications” that change the way the whole game is played. Beat your best score in a Speed Run. Try to make it through a level with only a handful of rotations. Stay below Time Trial’s time limit and make it through Survival with just three lives. One game can be four games.

The US launch of And Yet It Moves is today (August 23rd), and the European will follow in suite (August 27th). The game will set you back 1000 Wii Points and it will make you happy.

Why would I talk this much about myself when writing about game length? Because if a game has the right length depends on two things: If the duration fits the story/gameplay and if it fits to you, the player. A well written game review can tell you whether a game is 2 hours long or 200 hours. But it will rarely tell you if the game length fits to your personal preferences – if the game has the right duration for you. And it’ll never tell you if the game fits perfectly to one of your habits. A lot of game journalists think that size matters and a game’s value can be measured in hours per dollar***. Yet there are enough examples of games where less proved to be best.

In other words:

by Martin Pichlmair

* Estimated total play time.
** I could never tell which of the above games has most value to me.
*** Which is just one aspect of the urge to rationalize gut judgements that is prevalent in games journalism.

PS: This article is part of a series about how long a game should be. Be sure to check out the other blog posts:

Ron Carmel of 2DBoy

Chris Hecker

Jonathan Blow

Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games

Cliff Harris of Positech Games

Matt Gilgenbach of 24 Caret Games

Noel Llopis

Martin Pichlmair of Broken Rules

Scott Macmillan of Macguffin Games

Peter Jones of Retro Affect

Lau Korsgaard

Eitan Glinert of Fire Hose Games

Chris DeLeon

Greg Wohlwend of Intuition Games

Jeffrey Rosen of Wolfire

Alex of TunaHQ

Webs compiled the game in several flavors. You can go and grab the Debian or RPM package or fuck up your installation with an un-package-managed tarball. All of the three are available compiled for 32 and 64 bit systems. And don’t fear to change the distro or the computer: You can always come back and download a different version later, even one for a different OS.

At this point I want to thank Eddy Boxerman of Hemisphere Games (Osmos!!!) for lending me a hand at developing a strategy to get the word about the game out. We’ll do as he’s done and post a report on the Linux sales as soon as we’ve gathered enough data. And we’ll also post a post-mortem about the Linux port which will mostly outline technical aspects. Before we come to that I’d like to quote a few And Yet It Moves for Linux players from the Ubuntu forum:

“Wow, top game! Brilliant demo, and a must have for me.” – Naiki Muliaina

“This is why I love the indie scene on Linux. It’s where you find the unusual and exciting new ideas. This is particularly nice because, like World of Goo, not only is it quite unique, but it’s lots of fun to play too.” – BigSilly

“After having had a bit more time with this game. The Main game is good with some nice puzzles but where I have found the game to really shine for me, Is the speed-run element of the game. You are able to either replay a ghost of your best time, or access someone else’s via the game over the internet to compete against, and likewise other people can download your best ghost times. This makes the game competitive an very addictive and is definitely worth the low asking price.” – Rustybolts

“Played through it and loved it. It’s right up with a fairly recent spat of awesome indie games like Osmos and World of Goo.” – Modplanman

“This game hits the indie sweet spot: appealing visuals, great music that really complements the games character, and a unique game mechanic that creates new puzzles. Really happy this game came to linux.” – proteusmoteus

The surprising thing for me was how genuinely grateful Linux users are for getting good games. If you spend some time on the iPhone games market you have to develop an apathy towards a lot of the publicly voiced comments about your games. Not so with Linux. As a game maker I’m happy about good reviews but have no problem with professional criticism. After all, some of my radiolaris games had pretty serious gameplay and/or game design problems (not so the one I made with Broken Rules and And Yet It Moves). Yet a big part of why I am in this industry is that I want to give players a good time and nothing beats that moment where someone you’ve never met tells you that you succeeded and made him/her happy. In the end, our goal is to bring you a fulfilling, meaningful, entertaining and rewarding experience.

PS: I’ve made a little contest on the Ubuntu forum, where users would tell me a name for the protagonist of And Yet It Move. The best name they came up with was “Torn Turner” by Rustybolts.

PPS: Those Linux people are really educated. One of them (KIAaze) even dug out an ancient ancestor of And Yet It Moves that we’ve not been aware of yet. The game’s called “Korkoro Postnin” and I think it’s about delivering mail.

Of course we never stated that we invented gravity in the first place. Newton did. He and his apple.

PPPS: You’ve seen Inception, have you? Puts our game into a whole new perspective, doesn’t it? … Gravitational Shifts.

PPPPS: Before I got my Mac, I was a Linux-only user for about 3 years. All my desktops and servers and even my laptop – which was a pain, 8 years ago – ran on Debian and Gentoo. There was no Ubuntu back then. I’ve had my deal of kernel patching and compiling.

A game release always means that we have to turn from making games to marketing games. We’ve sent out preview copies to all major magazines and websites. EDGE magazine was the first to print a review of the full game, favorably comparing us to Nintendo themselves:”Broken Rules shares Nintendo’s eye for new ideas” … “Whether bat-shepherding, banana-rolling or bee-fleeing, each task is obscure enough to warrant a eureka moment and physically exerting enough to serve as a decent twitch challenge.” [EDGE 218], print

Follow our twitter feed to get infected by our excitement. We’ll keep you posted on all things And Yet It Moves.

One more thing:

The first prototype of And Yet It Moves was built in Autumn 2007. The PC and Mac version went online in April 2009. Porting And Yet It Moves to WiiWare took us 9 months. Felix was so occupied with working on the game that he forgot to shave for the whole period. Until today.

PS: Those of you who followed LOST will hear a familiar clicking noise when the numbers 23 and 8, that mark our release date, are mentioned. Yet don’t mistake coincidence for fate.

Well, he’s not the only one, and I guess they all have a point.

You might want to know why And Yet It Moves will be out on WiiWare then.
Basically there are three reasons:

Nintendo asked us

Actually one guy at Nintendo of America, who is responsible for the selection of WiiWare games, asked us. This guy is passionate about games! You can see him at GDC listening to the Indie Games Summit or you can meet him at festivals like IndieCade. This is where he saw And Yet It Moves in 2008 and decided to ask us if we want to bring it to WiiWare.

Of course we were flattered, but that’s not the only reason why we said yes. I think it’s great that there is this one humble guy that actually listens to developers and meets them on their level. He is on the same wavelength like us, and that’s more than you can normally ask for in a business partner.

Motion Control

Ever since we released And Yet It Moves, we got feedback that this game would be great with motion controls. Everyone could imagine, that rotating the world feels way better when you actually tilt the controller. Everyone except us. Although we also liked the idea, we were always skeptical if it could really work. We designed the game for digital button input and we know that simply replacing the press of a button with a motion threshold won’t work. But we like challenges and personally I was always intrigued by motion control.

After months of work, controlling And Yet It Moves using motions makes sense; and actually feels better than with buttons. (More on this in another following blog post). Now I always feel crippled playing And Yet It Moves the old-school way and that gives me a warm, cozy feeling of success

Gameplay Technology before Graphics Technology

I still admire Nintendo for the bold step they took with the Wii. Three years ago they did something nobody expected and nobody else dared to do. Instead of focusing on graphics technology, they actually focused on what’s important: gameplay!

Their design changed the way we play games today. Even if you don’t play on the Wii and feel a cold shiver down your spine when you hear “shake your wii remote”, you have felt that influence. In almost any game today, you can see a focus on more analog control, more gestures, more natural mapping of buttons.  (See, I didn’t even mention Playstation Move or Kinect….well now I did)

I think that’s great and I thank Nintendo for pushing our industry in this direction.

Of course I know that there are tons of games that are ruined by poor and uninspired motion control implementations, and I hate them as much as you do. Probably even more! I wish that developers all around would work more carefully, and think in new ways to use motion control. I wish there were more experimental games on Wii and especially on WiiWare. But you know what, sooner or later, I think it will happen. And Yet It Moves on WiiWare is our contribution to this.

So, what will we do?

We all heard a lot about how nobody buys games on the Wii anymore, how slow the Wii Shop is, etc. We’ve seen other indies being thoroughly disappointed – even though they made awesome games with great reviews -  and turning their backs on the system. And that if you want to make money in the Wii Shop, you got to build fishes in a tank. So, yes, we are anxious as well, but we are still optimistic!

We know that And Yet It Moves can sell on the Wii, provided that everyone knows about it. This is where our focus was the last few weeks, and what we will work on in the coming weeks. We will work together with professionals and try to reach the indie scene, the Nintendo clique and the mainstream press as well. We will drive up to GamesCom and even fly all the way to PAX to show our game around.

But you know what can help us most? You! If you like And Yet It Moves, spread the word! Tell everyone that they should blow the dust of their Wii, or finally pop out that disc of Wii Sports, and check out our little game, which will be out soon.

So get your Wii Points ready and tell your friends there’s a little gem in a slaugtherhouse called And Yet It Moves!

PS: While you’re waiting, why not check out some of the other cool stuff that is on WiiWare: any game of the fabulous Bit.Trip Series, Cave Story, Swords & Soldiers, Lost Winds, or Max & the Magic Marker to name a few.

PPS: If you like helping out, indies check this out and help Bit.Trip Runner beat that fish in a tank. So that it can be a great 2nd Place to And Yet It Moves once it hits the charts

Hi everyone,

I’m Martin and I’m going to talk a little bit about myself in this narcissistic blog post. Becoming a member of the fabulous Indie developer Broken Rules is the result of my own company, studio radiolaris, merging with Broken Rules. We were a small iPhone/iPad games developer dedicated to bringing music games to that platform. As a company run by two people we felt the need to expand. We’ve done our projects in project-wise teams of 5-8 people and the organizational overhead grew enormous. Since we were sharing an office space with Broken Rules and were friends and colleagues for years, it was a logical step to unite. So here I am, former Jack of all trades of studio radiolaris, excited to work with a new team.

My past is a quite complicated story – who’s isn’t – that has to do with video games now and then. Maybe I can just drop a few short fragments about me and you’ll get a picture. I built a pinball game on a holiday in Italy when I was about 6. Of course it was only fun for me. My first experience with video games was playing the game Phoenix on an Atari 2600 when I was about 7. When I was a teenager I tried to sing in a band but we disbanded before our first concert, which was a good decision given my lack of talent. I had my first exhibition when I was about 22. Pencil drawings. I’ve built a pair of talking boots, a musical pinball machine and other weird devices when I called myself a New Media Artist. I got my infection with New Media Art during working at the Ars Electronica Futurelab. My first international exhibition was in Hong Kong, my last one in Italy. I received a doctoral degree in computer science and I’ve worked at the uni for a few years, teaching and researching games and interaction design. I’ve been there when And Yet It Moves was born. I dropped out of my well paid job as an assistant professor in order to pursue my life-long dream: making games.

So here I am, wearing the many hats of indie development. Ready to break some rules.

Martin

The trip started off quite frantic as we arrived a bit late at the airport and failed at the malfunctioning self check-in machine. After fondling with it’s terrible software for about 20 minutes, we only needed to confirm our seat numbers when the machine suddenly shut down with the message: Check-in closed. Noo!
For a second we thought the trip was over before it even had begun, but luckily a lady at the information desk smuggled us in, passing most of the security checks unnoticed and getting us on the plane just in time.

On the flight we had the chance to play around with our new DSi XL we got from Nintendo to do some WarioWare Do-It-Yourself games. Unfortunately the game/tool features an unskippable, three-hour tutorial made for seven to ten year old kids. We decided to play around with its camera instead:

Let us tell you something about game development...

Approaching Madrid you could already see the four phallic sky-scrapers jutting out of the city scape and we couldn’t help the infantile jokes about how every larger city seems to need at least one of those. Little did we know about our accommodation, but when we got picked up from the airport it seemed like the towers could be seen from every curve on the highway. We hardly could believe our eyes when the driver dropped us off right in front the 5-star hotel ‘Eurostar’. Feeling a little bit out of place at the check-in, our amazement was doubled as the view from our room appeared:

Up above!

After getting accommodated, we decided to check out Madrid a little bit and (naturally) headed to the district ‘Madrid de los Austrias’. It’s a busy touristic area, but we enjoyed the vibe and had some ice cream.

Madrid de los Austrias

When we got back, attendees of the conference filled the lobby and after some handshakes and introductions we went out for dinner at a splendid Tapas restaurant. The food just kept on coming and when the dessert was put on the table we were ready to be rolled home on our tummies.

The next morning we got on the bus to the head for the conference. After some hit’n'run action by the bus driver we safely arrived, set up our stuff and tried out some of the other games. I had the chance to play Cave Story, LaMulana, Night Sky, Zombie Panic in Wonderland, Toribash and the audience magnet Bit.Trip Runner as well as many other neat titles like Dive and Robox.

I enjoyed exchanging experiences with developers as well as talking to students and newcomers who were eager to get into game development. Meanwhile Jan gave numerous interviews and revealed details on the development of And Yet It Moves.

Jan telling the truths and rights of AYIM.

We returned to the tower of splendor in the evening, where we freshened up a little and then went downtown for some food and mochitos. After a couple of beers the emotions surged and Tyrone and I engaged in a bloody fight of who could produce the best Meat Boy meme out of Chorizo. We’ll leave it up to the meat hungry public to decide who did a better job at it:

Super Chorizo Boy! Mine is left, Tyrones' version is right.

A little later, Hampas, Tyrone and Alex got into some sexy elevator action!

The next day there were some more talks and interviews while Alex and I almost managed to beat Bit.Trip Runner. Unfortunately we ran out of time and had to leave in a rush to catch the flight back to Vienna! If we had known that the plane was delayed for four hours we’d have kicked some final boss butts instead – Commander Video style!

Waiting for the plane, missing out on iDÉAME action...

Still, all in all it was an awesome trip. At this point we would like to shout out a special thanks to Pepe and Omar for the invitation! Everything was extraordinarily well organized and we felt tremendously taken care of. It was great to be there!

If you would like to get more impressions of the conference, make sure to check out our photoset on Flickr!

Thanks guys!