Thursday, December 13, 2012

Oceanhorn of 2013 will be big and beautiful!



Oh man, how time flies. It has been a hectic year here at our studio. Oceanhorn project has grown from a 3D-tile tech demo into a full-blown adventure engine and the stuff that comes from the other end gives me goose bumps - of excitement. A year ago when we announced Oceanhorn, we never guessed how many people a simple announcement would attract. We learned that people wanted, no they needed an Action RPG like this for their iOS devices.

Because of your high expectations, we have worked hard and given all the time on our hands for the game. Everyday our adventure grows bigger, everyday the game becomes better, and everyday I'm more confident that this is what you players want. And that is what we are going to give for Oceanhorn - more time.

Oceanhorn that will be released in 2013 is a better game than the one that was initially planned for 2012.

After we released our last gameplay video, we got contacted by so many wonderful people who wanted to help us! One party stood out from the crowd. They were fans of the genre, they had played and loved the games that inspired Oceanhorn, and they had their best intentions to help us to give Oceanhorn all the polish it needs.

Now, Cornfox & Brothers are happy to announce that as an outcome of fruitful negotiations, we have begun cooperation with FDG Entertainment to bring you the best adventure game of 2013.

*** *** *** ***
Fantastic items and spells help you on your adventure

Cornfox is a three man team, so FDG comes in at perfect time to give us the privilege to concentrate on the game itself. Here is a summary of the things that we've worked on lately:

ITEMS
- Shield incoming attacks, bomb your way through walls, snipe down enemies with a bow, dodge roll and jump over ledges with trencher boots.

SPELLS
- We have implemented exciting interactive spells! Line up enemies for perfect FIRE shot. Throw items at enemies with FORCE spell.


Last arrow - make it count



UPGRADES
- Use your hard earned money to improve your Items and Spells. You get more arrows and bombs, your sword deals more damage and you get new properties for your items.

CONTROLS
- Floating Directional Controls: People have spoken and we listened. Big virtual stick is now gone. Game will include control options for all tastes.

BATTLE
- We are very pleased how items and spells gave much needed depth to the combat. There is nothing more pleasing than shooting down a Crapybara (that red insect thing) from a ledge, or performing an perfect dodge roll before Ogre hits you with a hammer and counterattacking him from behind.

Old Fortress hides a secret
ADVENTURE
- Switches, spikes, arrow traps, raising blocks, laser turrets and intelligent enemy respawning gives you hard time in dungeons and temples, but you will love every puzzling minute of it.

VISUALS
- Project started in 2010, so the character model in all its 800 polygon glory started to show its age. Well, we have a new higher polygon main character model now - better suited for adventures played in 2013!

CINEMATICS and STORY
- Epic adventure needs epic storytelling, starring Ray Chase as hero's father's voice.

SOCIAL
- Compare your BRAVE RANK together with your friends. Are you a Rookie Adventurer, Treasure Hunter or simply a Legend. Brave Rank tracks your every kill, discovered treasure chest and completed challenge to give you bragging rights.

*** *** *** *** 
Graveyard Island - one of the many small islands with side quests

See?! A lot of great stuff is coming up and our cooperation with FDG Entertainment is going to provide Oceanhorn something even more amazing, but we will tell you more about that later! :)

Have a great holidays and see you in 2013. Remember, we might be silent, but it only means we are working. Constantly. All the time. Until it's out.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Oceanhorn Secret developer video Part II



Finally, it is here! Oceanhorn Secret gameplay Part 2! As you can see, game has progressed tremendously since the last gameplay video. Check out 3 minutes of adventure as nameless hero lands on Chronicler's Island to seek information about Oceanhorn.

More stuff coming up!

Thursday, September 20, 2012

World comes alive!




You can carry tens of objects. World also reacts to thrown objects!

World of Uncharted Seas is filled with caves and ruins of old civilization.

Here's some fresh screenshots for our followers!

Making a game as an artist is both fun and rewarding. You get to see a world that was in your head growing richer and richer everyday and after some time you get past the point where your world is no longer collection of symbols (Here is a tree, ok it's a forest. Stone walls, that must mean it's a cave.) but an actual place inside a game. Over 100 objects are modeled so far, along with 3D maptiles, enemies and characters. We hope you enjoy these screenshots!

Monday, July 2, 2012

So long, crane! It's your limelight now fox!





What you see up there is our new company logo! Motivation behind our face lift is that our old (but still semi-cool) logo was hard to interpret in small size, like say in mobile phone screen.

We built in achievement system for ourselves inside the logo. That star you see there means that people have downloaded over 10 million copies of our games. All that is coming from Death Rally at the moment, but we are sure we will earn another star after the Oceanhorn is released, right? ;)


First game carrying our new company logo is Death Rally's PC version that is to be released in 3rd of August in Steam!

In fact, this is the game that was holding our attention this spring. It was a great project and we worked really hard on it. Design wise, we went through the whole package and designed balance and progression from scratch - there's no dead weight left from iOS game, everything is re-thought a PC gamer in mind. Game uses high-end graphic shaders, like reflections, normal maps and specular maps. I went through all the cars and weapons to make use of the extra tricks available. Sugarcoated with stunning new menus, re-drawn comics by comic artist Jarno Kantelinen and a new level to play (called Savo) Death Rally's PC version is a must have!

We're getting our fare share from the sales and we run our company with that money, so if you want to support us - go ahead and get the game on 3rd of August! :) - Thanks!

Monday, May 28, 2012

Oceanhorn on Gametrailers!


"Most anticipated iPhone and iPad games"

Fantastic news came to our attention! Chris Buffa from Gametrailers featured Oceanhorn in Gametrailers' Side Mission article of "Most Anticipated iPhone and iPad Games".

I personally refresh Gametrailers.com many times a day and finding your own game from there felt fantastic. Chris had also noted we hadn't updated for a while, we are glad he picked our game on that list nevertheless!

Fear not, it's coming up nicely!

Sorry for the long radio silence everyone.

There is a good reason for that, we just can't talk about it yet! :) We had to focus on another project to give a glorious finish to a work we started years ago. It was also a mean to secure our company's and Oceanhorn's future, so I hope people who are waiting for Oceanhorn won't be mad at us. We were able to make a great game and we are quite excited about it and the possibilities it gives us in the future!

Game development can be such an treasure hunt!


"We hired some help from our old friends so we can speed up the development"


Oceanhorn is coming up nicely! In fact, we hired some help from our old friends at Frogmind so we can speed up the development. They are super talented and we are glad we got them working with the menus and map mode!

We worked together on games such as Star Wars: Force Unleashed Mobile, DeBlob and DeBlob: Revolution for iOS, until THQ decided to shut down our old studio. Well, I'm sure none of us complains about that anymore. Establishing your own company is the best thing you can do for your career, if you have the right people at your side!

So what's going on with Oceanhorn, you ask? Even though we haven't been able to develop with our full potential because of the unannounced project, a ton of things has happened since we showed our Secret Gameplay Video.

- New enemies!
- Water shader!
- New battle effects and animations!
- Menus!
- Worldmap!
- Story is nailed down and script is written!

Thanks for following us and stay tuned for more video leaks from our "marketing department"! ;)

Monday, January 30, 2012

Oceanhorn in Kotaku!


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!

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Oceanhorn: Secret developer video Part I


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!

Sunday, January 1, 2012

2012 - Year of the Sea monster!

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!