Oceanhorn - The Adventure Game

Oceanhorn in Kotaku!

2012-01-30T04:21:00.000-08:00

Wonderful Luke Plunkett of Kotaku made news of Oceanhorn Secret video in Kotaku! Check it out!

Kotaku: The iPad's Unofficial Take on Wind Waker is Looking Great!

So far the article has had 10 000 views and counting! Thanks a ton! All the publicity for an indie game is needed! ^_^

About the controls. Battles are one of the key ingredients of Oceanhorn, but so is interacting with your environment. We aim to keep the number of on-screen buttons minimal. In fact, you will do various things with that same "A" button. You can talk to people, push boulders, throw rocks etc.

Controls are one of the drawbacks of the iOS platform. I know there are games with slew of buttons for your right thumb, but many times they can make gameplay just a little bit confusing and sometimes frustrating. We try to minimize confusion, but it is likely that we will add a "B" button at some point, but first we try to live without it. The less a player has to worry about where to press, the more fun he has with the game.

I find it kind of funny how Oceanhorn is constantly compared to Wind Waker. It's ok, but I would like to state that we are not making a copy of any existing game. Instead, we try to capture the feeling of our favourite console adventure / RPG games, where you can discover the world, find treasures and roam through lands and seas.

Thanks for your interest in Oceanhorn everyone!

Oceanhorn: Secret developer video Part I

2012-01-28T00:02:00.000-08:00

Someone uploaded secret Oceanhorn stuff to youtube! ;) The game is still very much work in progress, but we are proud to give you this small sneak peak of its gameplay. By the way it is secret, so tell everyone!

Details of some progress that can be seen here:

We are developing a "story engine" at the moment. We can add NPCs and have them say proper things at the right phase of the quest. The game is going to be story based, but very similar to old action RPGs. Actually, I would like to use this chance to name one of my favourites: Seiken Densetsu (FFA / Mystic Quest) for Gameboy! That game is a perfect example of how to give you a giant quest with simple ingredients!

Oceanhorn is coming to iPhone and iPad some time in 2012!

2012 - Year of the Sea monster!

2012-01-01T08:59:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! Sorry for the long silence. Developing Death Rally: Road Wars took most of our time during November and December of 2011 so we had to scrape all the time we had between submission days and days Death Rally was out being tested to develop our adventure game Oceanhorn.

I thought I would give a quick update of how things are going with Oceanhorn. We just finished our First Playable milestone before holidays, which we simply dubbed as Christmas build.

Most of it has been basic gameplay features, something that doesn't sound much yet, but is the basis of all things to come. Our Nameless Hero can slash down bushes, collect coins, hearts and artifacts, explore the world and fight with enemies with his sword.

Soon after we came back from holidays, we continued from First Playable milestone and made Hero collect keys and open gates, pickup and throw small rocks and push large boulders. What this means is, we can soon start designing dungeons!

I previously introduced the Ocean map editor to you. Well, we decided to change its name so that editor assets and code would not get confused with all the Oceanhorn-related stuff. So the new name for our editor is ROC, after the mythic bird. Wikipedia: Roc (mythology)

Why ROC you ask? We wanted a short name. Roc sounds cool and if you know the meaning behind it, you can imagine mighty and powerful bird soaring in the skies. Well, our editor is becoming a mighty tool used from birds eye perspective ;) - We can make maps very efficiently and creating the lanscape is adventure in itself! ROC is developed together with Mountain Sheep and it works in iPad! I hope I can show you more of it later.

You got to believe me, there has been times I wanted to post videos or more screenshots of Oceanhorn, but then I thought you deserve a good showcase when the time comes. Some of the game engine features has to be fine-tuned before that happens. But it will be soon nevertheless!

Happy new year 2012!

Coming up in this blog:
- Presenting composer of Oceanhorn, Kalle Ylitalo and some of his music!

About putting one's Heart on display...

2011-11-10T04:27:00.000-08:00

I promised earlier to shed some light on the production of Oceanhorn. So, here I go and present the people behind this game!

Jukka and Antti Viljamaa are the brothers of Cornfox & Bros. They still work as Lead Programmers in the Death Rally iOS project and are busy working both updating Death Rally Multiplayer and coding new features for Oceanhorn. Their creative talent combined with their university doctorate diplomas make them unstoppable forces of nature when it comes to game development, and they are also nice guys! :) Previously they worked on games such as Star Wars: Force Unleashed (Mobile) and de Blob Revolution (iOS).

I (Heikki Repo, Fox of Cornfox & Bros.) work as a Lead Artist and Lead Game Designer in Death Rally, but since my work is somewhat finished at the moment I can concentrate on creating art and game design for Oceanhorn. I've made my career as a Lead Artist, Artist, and Animator in multiple iOS and Mobile games, such as SW: Force Unleashed (Mobile), Star Wars: Cantina, and de Blob Revolution.

One of the most important aspects of Oceanhorn is a 3D tile map editor, called "OCEAN: Tile-Based Worlds", developed together with Mountain Sheep, creators of Minigore and Bike Baron. Together with their wonderful coders (e.g. Tim Wiren and Erik Hakala) we have been able to create a fun and efficient world editor that can be used for all our upcoming games. Editor is still work in progress and it will be developed at the same time with Oceanhorn. It runs on iPad, so we can immediately test controls and gameplay in the maps we create. Because of the 3D tile map approach, we can efficiently create lots of level content with a small team.


Unsuccesful troll...

Why are we making a retro-adventure game for today's market? We just loved those games back in the day and we feel like action adventure genre should take a look back and learn something from its past. Too many good ideas have been forgotten and left untouched for years now. What happened to worlds were you can travel to all four winds? What happened to the interactivity in those worlds? Back in the day, you could spend time exploring one screen full of bushes and grass with your sword - or bomb through walls or just test all your equipment with your environment. Maybe you found a coin there, or a secret seashell, but certainly you found depth from the game's world. There are still games that value these traditions, especially one very big game series we all love, but other than that the evolution of console style adventure games has grown thin, or stopped even.

PS. We put hearts in that heads-up display because we think numbers are a very unintuitive way of communicating one's health and other such things. It's good for counting ammunition or money, but other than that - let's leave numbers for programmers and their ilk. :)

Thank you for such a warm welcome!

2011-11-08T05:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we announced our new adventure title Oceanhorn: Monster of the Uncharted Seas through toucharcade.com's wildly active forums. None of us could have predicted the tremendous amount of positive feedback we got for our game! I think we hit the sweetspot here: people want adventure games to balance their gaming diet on iOS.

This looks really fantastic! Everything from the gorgeous art style to the adventurous premise hits all the right notes. Can't wait to see more of Oceanhorn. :D

- Pacificsun0481, forums.toucharcade.com

People have been asking questions, so I'm going to give out some answers. First of all, the game is going to be Universal, so one purchase will make it work on all of your iOS devices. Previously we released Death Rally as Universal and it was received well among the players and media alike.

We are not ready to give this game a specific release date just yet; it will be released when it is ready. :) - Don't worry though, we are working hard on this! More information about characters, controls and game mechanics will be revealed soon.

Cornfox also has a twitter account and we would be thrilled to get more followers!

Oceanhorn - New adventure game from the developers of Death Rally!

2011-11-04T05:37:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the development blog of Oceanhorn, a new adventure game from Cornfox & Brothers, the developers of the iOS hit game Death Rally! On this blog we will follow the game development of our new adventure title and hopefully, this space will be constantly updated with art, screenshots and gameplay videos.

Development of Oceanhorn began from our love towards old console adventure games, where instead of looting dungeons and grinding XP you explored the world and solved puzzles and followed dusty maps to find treasures from the remains of old temples and castles. We want to deliver that experience, where instead of taking care of boring chores you can have an adventure of your lifetime on a fantasy land.

Oceanhorn is an ancient sea monster that terrorizes the World of Uncharted Seas. The game puts you in the boots of a nameless hero who, in order to save his sister, must slay this monster for good. In this game, the world is open for exploration by foot or by boat, but beware - the sea monster can attack at any time and ill-prepared travelers will meet their early demise.

Equip your boat with new sails, hulls or even with forgotten technology like Smog Engine to outwit Oceanhorn in battle. Roam the lands and explore ancient ruins to find the legendary Coral Harpoon. Learn the history of the Uncharted Seas. What happened to the civilization whose cities now lay in ruins?

Experience the adventure in 2012!