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!

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"! ;)

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!

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!

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!

About putting one's Heart on display...

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. :)