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!