MixedBag Blog

Italian game studio, makers of Futuridium EP Deluxe (PS4, PSVita), working on forma.8 (PS4, PSVita, Wii U, iOS, PC, Mac, Linux)

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forma.8 enemy animation

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Teasing some forma.8 music...

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Futuridium EP Deluxe flies to Wii U, New 3DS version announced!

Today Futuridium EP Deluxe makes its debut on Nintendo Wii U eShop, bringing its old school action to Nintendo fans. The game is priced 9.99$ / 9.99€ / 7.99£, with a 20% launch discount for the first week: so 7.99$ / 7.99 € / 5.99£!

Futuridium EP Deluxe is a psychedelic retro inspired shoot'em up with a modern twist, that blends together frantic action, puzzle elements, a vibrant low poly aesthetic and an heart pumping electronic soundtrack. As a lone starship pilot lost in a dimensional loop just before a big space battle, with a limited and constantly depleting energy tank, your only hope is to fly as fast as possible over enormous space dreadnoughts, destroying their defenses and the cyan power cubes to get some energy back.

To get a review code, please follow the link: https://mixedbagsrl.promoterapp.com/pub/press

On a related note, we can confirm that the game will come out also on Nintendo New 3DS at a later date, and will be fully cross-buy with the Wii U version. So you buy once, you get both!

http://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/New-Nintendo-3DS-Download-Software/Futuridium-EP-Deluxe-1108674.html 

 The N3DS version will run at 60fps with full stereoscopic 3D support. Here are some N3DS screenshots:

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How a forma.8 level is made, layer to layer #indiedev #indiegame

Vine by MixedBagGames

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forma.8 dev diary #2 : 3D Assets

Welcome to our second entry in the forma.8 Dev Diary!

 You can find the first entry here:

- forma.8 dev diary #1 : scene composition

Last time we mentioned the choice of using of 3D assets to portray creatures, enemies and interactive structures, as well as forma.8 itself.

There is one concept that helps understanding this choice: Shadow Play.

The ortographic camera framing the game doesn't allow any changes in perspective, and almost every background element is made of ‘flat’ polygons. While this is an interesting style regarding still obects, it can be quite limitating the moment you want something to rotate on its Y and X axis.

We wanted fully animated assets, and after some flat polygonal testing we weren't satisfied with the results, so we tried to exploit the ortographic projection to "flatten" 3D objects.

We already said that the background layer where the action takes place is completely black. The 3D assets are mainly used on the same level, so we had to use a full-black material on the meshes. Nice and cheap: it’s just a simple shader that applies a black color to the mesh!

There is an exeption to this black-only material choice though, but to explain it we need to analyze the basic art direction of the game.

The color palette we are using is mainly composed by pastels level of saturation, and in many cases the layers tend to get lighter the further they are from the camera.

As soon as we started working on the first big bosses, we realized that those huge shapes looked way too heavy on the eye if colored entirely black, so we tried to apply the rule " further/lighter" on them as well. Some of the 3D assets are big enough to justify a second color, slightly lighter than black and tinted depending on the scene context. This also helped highlighting some more details on their silhouettes.

Here you can see part of the very first boss of the game, whose mouth's inside is a dark shade of grey while the rest of the body is pure black:

So, this way we menaged to have flat-looking ortographic projections of the 3D assets that blended perfectly with the 2D backgrounds, while maintaining full-3D animations and rotations giving a good sense of mass.

Just like in the shadow play example, a flat projection of a moving/rotating three dimensional object tends to keep an idea of its shapes while actually appearing 2D.

This video explains how one of our assets is seen in-game  and how it actually is done 3D-side, with a synced animation:

Actually, the first 3D asset we implemented in the game was our small hero: forma.8.

Being forma.8 a flying round-ish probe, it was essential it looked in the propelled vector given by the player. This gives an instant feedback of direction and intensity of the analog input, and as the game movement's physics are heavily momentum-based, visual feedback becomes a very important gameplay feature.

In this case, the flashlight on forma.8 "eyes" is a simple texture applied to a quad linked to the main mesh.

Regarding software and formats, we used Modo and 3D Studio Max for modelling, rigging and animation. In both cases, the final assets are exported to Unity in the .fbx format.

Fun fact: We're using a metric system for everything, and the forma.8 character is actually 2 meters in diameter!

Thank you for following our diary and see you soon for the next entry!

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5th International A MAZE. Awards 2016 - the nominees are…

210 games from 31 countries have been submitted over the last 6 months - After weeks of playing, close to 150 experts, professionals and journalists selected the nominees.Now, we present you the 20 nominated games. An international jury will decide the winners of the four award categories: The Most Amazing Game Award, Human Human Machine Award, WTF! Award and Other Dimensions Award.

The award show is on April 22, 2016, 19:00 at Haubentaucher, Music by TinTin. (Entrance only for ticket holders)

The nominees of the A MAZE. Awards at A MAZE. / Berlin 2016 - 5th International Independent Videogames Festival are: 

Killbox (US/UK) - http://www.killbox.info

Killbox is an online game and interactive installation that critically explores the nature of drone warfare, its complexities and consequences. It is an experience which explores the use of technology to transform and extend political and military power, and the abstraction of killing through virtualisation. Killbox involves audiences in a fictionalized interactive experience in virtual environments based on documented drones strikes in Northern Pakistan. The work is an international collaboration between U.S. based artist/activist, Joseph DeLappe and Scotland-based artists and game developers, Malath Abbas, Tom Demajo and Albert Elwin.

Cosmic Top Secret (DK)

A unique documentary adventure game about family secrets. You play T who wants to know what her father did for the Danish intelligence during the cold war.By flicking T through an authentic Cold War flotsam and playful mechanics, you ask yourself: Who am I? Did I inherit anything important from my parents that I’m not aware of?You will help T master her fragile paper existence by training military disciplines like spy flying and code breaking and T will gradually move closer to the heart of the story and her personal revelation. The work is a collaboration between Trine Laier, Mads Lyngvig Jespersen, Lise Saxtrup and Bjørn Svin.  

DYO (DE)  - https://waterman7.itch.io/dyo

A co-op puzzle platformer for two players. Play as minotaurs trying to escape their maze. Merge your screens to rearrange the level’s structure and form a new path to the exit.

Land’s End (UK) - http://www.landsendgame.com

Land’s End is a Virtual Reality adventure from the creators of Monument Valley. Set against spectacular landscapes, the player is tasked with awakening an ancient civilization using the powers of their mind. Land’s End combines Ustwo Games’ award-winning approach to interactive storytelling with Samsung Gear VR, creating an incredible virtual reality experience that you can take anywhere.

NORTH (DE) - http://www.outlands-games.com Apply for asylum in a city filled with strange creatures. This game is made by Tristan Neu and Gabriel Helfenstein from Outlands Games.

Vignettes (FR) - http://vignettesga.me

A toyish surprise-o-rama without text nor characters, where an object shapeshifts as the player spins it around, revealing the underlying story. A game by Pol Clarissou and Armel Gibson.

W.U.R.M: Escape From _A_ Dying Star (ES) - http://www.escapefromadyingstar.com

2 player immersive space survival game that takes place in a future where the Sun is dying. Custom wearable electronics, a life-size space pod, and a generative audio-visuals place each player inside a psychedelic, interactive experience based around the transfer of information between the two participants. This experimental game is created by Mónica Rikić, Jessica Blanchet, Grayson Earle, Dawn Hang Yue Wong and Peter van Haaften.

Diorama No. 3 - The Marchland (NL) - http://www.theshoeboxdiorama.com/themarchland.htm

The Marchland is the third installment in Dutch artist Daniël Ernst’s ongoing Diorama series. For Marchland Ernst puts the viewer inside a toll booth where the unseen passes by. Using motion controllers the viewer can interact with the beautifully handpainted environment. Spectres of cars only visible by drops of rain drive through the toll barrier. Are these apparitions, or has the viewer become a ghost?

Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist (UK/DE) - http://crowscrowscrows.com

A 15 minute heist game by Crows Crows Crows & Directed by William Pugh (The Stanley Parable). Slip into the soft-soled shoes of the mastermind responsible for the greatest heist- oh god I can’t do this any more, i’m joining the strike. good luck writing the game description.

Wheels of Aurelia (IT) - http://www.wheelsofaurelia.com

Wheels of Aurelia is a narrative road trip game set in the roaring Italian 70s. Half racing game, half interactive fiction, it tells the story of Lella, a restless woman driving on the roads of the western coast of Italy, the famous Via Aurelia. A game by Santa Ragione.

Codex Bash (UK) - http://www.alistairaitcheson.com

One physical space, four big buttons and codes to be cracked! Decipher the on-screen clues and run around to bash the buttons in the hidden sequence. You may have to decrypt symbols, unpick circuit diagrams or rifle through spy photos, but one thing’s for sure: the best codebreakers work as a team!  A game by Alistair Aitcheson.

Lucid Trips - Whateverland (DE) - http://www.lucidtrips.com

Lucid Trips is a virtual reality project which takes place in planetary dreamworlds. Every planet will be an individual “trip” in the constantly expanding universe of dreams. All interaction and navigation like walking, jumping, climbing, swimming and flying is possible through our handwalking character controller. On the first Dreamplanet Whateverland it´s all about Art Exploration. A vr game by VR Nerds, which includes Nico Uthe, Sara Lisa Vogl and Sebastian Hinz. 

GNOG (CA) - http://www.gnoggame.com

GNOG is a puzzle game set across a universe of playfully interactive monster heads. Explore a myriad of unique interconnected heads and the worlds they carry within, as you try to decipher each one’s quirks and advance to the next. Game is created by KO_OP.

Lieve Oma (FR) - http://lieveoma.tumblr.com

My grandmother is probably the most important person ever to me, as she provided me with the stability and care a child needs growing up. We all have or have had people helping us become a responsible and caring person, and this short narrative game is an ode to these people, and more specifically, to my grandmother. The game is developed by Florian Veltmann.

Genital Jousting: A MAZE. Grand Prize Winning Game (SA/ NO)

A (slightly) adult themed competitive local multiplayer game for up to 8 players.The game is up to 8 dicks playing around in an actual rumpus. Add 8 dildoshaped Joy-s-dicks, friends and alcohol, and it will be a fun event in itself! Game is created by Evan Greenwood and Martin Kvale.

Esper 2 (UK) - http://coatsink.com

You will become an agent of the enigmatic ESPR organisation. ESPR was set up to deal with the outbreak of telekinetic abilities among ‘special’ citizens and consequences of the event. You’ll venture to exotic locations, including the outer reaches of your mind, as you attempt to thwart a villain’s quest to obtain a mysterious artefact. Created by Coatsink Software.

A Normal Lost Phone (FR) - http://gamejolt.com/games/a-normal-lost-phone/123864

You’ve just found a smartphone. Find out the truth. This game is made by Accidental Queens.

DYG (US) - http://www.brgss.com

Labor in the field. Art piece by Burgess Voshell.

Antioch (FR) - http://antiochgame.com

Antioch is an online cooperative interactive fiction game. You’ll play as one of two detectives working together to solve a intriguing crime. The adventure will bring you to the city of Antioch, a dark metropolis surrounded by moutains and sea. A game by Mi-Clos Studio.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (CA) - http://www.keeptalkinggame.com

One player is trapped in a virtual room with a ticking time bomb they must defuse. The other players are the “Experts” who must give the instructions to defuse the bomb by deciphering the information found in the bomb defusal manual. But there’s a catch: the experts can’t see the bomb, so everyone will need to talk it out – fast! A game by Steel Crate Games.

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forma.8 dev diary 1:  scenes composition

Hi all!

Starting today, we're going to publish a forma.8 dev diary that will accompany you through the final stages of developement up until the game release later this year.

Our aim is not only to keep you informed on the project progress, but also (and mostly) to share some of the technical and artistic procedures we are using during production.

As you will see, forma.8 is a kind of a strange beast...

Ok, here's the first entry in our diary, about how we design the backgrounds in forma.8: it’s quite a convoluted process!

forma.8 scenes composition

forma.8 started as a peculiar and, in its own way, quite ambitious project.

Maybe the most unusual link in its production chain is how the scenes are designed, created and then imported and managed in Unity.

We wanted to achieve a very clean look for the game, aiming to keep everything super crisp and with the ability to zoom in and zoom out on the scenes without blurring everythin. We also had a very strict memory budget (the initial target platform was the first iPad, with less than 100MB of RAM available for the whole game!), and we didn’t want to use tiles since we really wanted to have extremely different backgrounds and paths for the player.

At the same time we wanted to use a very unusual tool to design all the graphic: Illustrator and SVGs! Why you ask? Because it provided great flexibility to our artists while using a very small memory footprint at runtime.

So we can say that the forma.8 graphics is all vectors, that get ‘transformed’ in 3D ‘flat’ polygons once imported in Unity. 

That’s how the game looks:

And before going more into the details, here's a schematic representation of a typical forma.8 scene:

As you can see, everything but characters, mobs and props is made of ‘flat’ polygons.

forma.8 itself, all the enemies and interactive structures are actually 3D assets made in 3D Studio Max and Modo, but we'll cover this topic in another diary entry soon :) 

Every scene is essentially composed of:  - A "black" layer which represents the actual gameplay level of the world. Everything black is what forma.8 can physically touch and collide with

- A "front" layer. This is a purely cosmetic element, the only one to exist between the camera point of view and the black world.

- The 3D assets layer. This time we'll only say that this one is in the same level of the black one.

- The parallax layers. The number of these varies on the scene.

- The background.

And now the fun part!

The whole game (or not? hmmm...) is framed by an ortographic camera. What does this mean?

An ortographic camera projection is completely oblivious of any kind of perspective. Every depth line is depicted as parallel and distances are perceived in a very different way.

Here's an image to clear this up: 

The ortographic camera choice was dictated by the art direction of the game and on how the visual design of the levels work from a technical point of view. And this comes with a downside the moment you decide to have parallax scrolling layers.

Being all layers "seen" as on the same level of depth, they will move relatively to the camera at the same speed. This means that if you want to have different scrolling speeds for different layers, you have to move each layer by code.

Now, if you know a bit about traditional 2D cell animation compositing, you already got a glimpse of the fact that forma.8 is based on a not-too-different workflow.

Just like in the case of traditional animation, this inability to have automatic parallax scrolling opens up some nice creative opportunities. In more than one case, we decided to "fake" unrealistic relative layer movements that really match forma.8 abstract artistic style. Reality detours like these are what make working on non-realistic projects so interesting, from a creative point of view. Going back to the workflow behind the vector assets, it comes down to these steps: - Level design: every zone is thought out, and the black layer is roughed in Unity. We start testing the levels in this phase, and the game looks like this:

- This rough is imported as a bitmap in Photoshop.

- The background artist paints a 2D representation of the scene as a whole, already considering each layer's behaviour.

- Once approved, each layer is re-created on Illustrator using vectors. This step is an incredibly demanding one, as many precautions have to be taken before exporting the resulting svg file to Unity.

- The svg file is then imported in Unity, where all the background levels and details are arranged in their respective depth positions, tweaked, and extra elements and effects get added. 

  From this point on, it's all a matter of mixing stuff, shaking a bit... and the game is ready! Well... sorta...

The whole process is very time consuming, but now our assets pipeline is very streamlined and it let us accomplish two main goals:

- Get a very clean visual look and extremely varied levels, with full control and using very little memory.

- The ability to start testing the levels very soon and keep playing and tweaking the gameplay during the whole process.

As a bonus, here’s an extra image from a late (and HUGE!) area of the game, so you can see how the different background layers appears in Illustrator.

We really hope you’ve enjoyed our first dev diary, if you have any question please just leave a comment!

And see you soon for a detailed explanation of why and how we decided to use actual 3D assets for many of the elements of the world of forma.8.

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Futuridium EP Deluxe launches on Apple TV!

We’re proud to announce that Futuridium EP Deluxe will be part of the Apple TV launch lineup and is available on the App Store... now!

Futuridium EP Deluxe is the ultimate version of Futuridium EP, it was launched last year on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita and is now arriving on Apple TV.

The game is a psychedelic retro inspired shoot’em up with a modern twist, that blends together frantic action, puzzle elements, a vibrant low poly aesthetic and an heart pumping electronic soundtrack. As a lone starship pilot lost in a dimensional loop just before a big space battle, with a limited and constantly depleting energy tank, your only hope is to fly as fast as possible over enormous space dreadnoughts, destroying their defenses and the cyan power cubes to get some energy back.

Futuridium EP Deluxe offers a huge amount of content:

50 new levels, with Bonus Stages and 5 bosses

Lots of unlockable extras: game modes, skins and a crazy mini game

A 60 minutes original electronic soundtrack

A new control system tailor made for the Siri Remote

Full support for third party game controllers for the ultimate action experience!

“We’re thrilled to be part of the Apple TV launch lineup. It was a crazy ride to bring the game up and running on the hardware in so little time but we’ve made it! A huge thank you to Unity: their support was unparalled!” - Mauro Fanelli, MixedBag Co-founder.

Futuridium EP Deluxe will launch with a promotional price of 4.99$ / 4.99€ / 3.99£, a 15% discount for the first ten days (full price will be 5.99$ / 5.99€).

To celebrate the launch we’re also dropping the price of Futuridium EP for iPhone / iPad to 0.99€ / 0.99$ and we’re readying a patch with full support for third party controllers.

Futuridium EP Deluxe will also launch soon on iPhone, iPad and will be available on Steam for PC and Mac in the near future.

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That’s what we are working on today! New Futuridium VR stuff for PS4 Project Morpheus...

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Flappyridium

“Flappyridium” by mixedbaggames & Luca Gasperoni.

“Our space elegy for Flappy Bird! Fly to the outer space!!“

Another fast-paced “Flappy Bird”-like with amazingly smooth controls and a great retro art style. I like how the lines show the movements of some former, failed plays. Sweet aesthetics! >>PLAY

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Today’s mood

[santaragione]

We are announcing our new game: Wheels of Aurelia –  a narrative road trip game set in the roaring Italian 70s. Half racing game, half interactive fiction, it tells the story of Lella, a restless woman driving on the roads of the western coast of Italy, the famous Via Aurelia.

Wheels of Aurelia is going to debut at this year’s Fantastic Fest - Fantastic Arcade, check out the full festival lineup!

Very special thanks to Wiley Wiggins, Joshua Fields, the full Fantastic Fest and Fantastic Fest staffs, Juegos Rancheros, and Humble Bundle.

You can keep track of the game development and updates here: http://www.santaragione.com/wheelsofaurelia/

Artwork by: Matteo Berton

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What about some new forma.8 screenshots?

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“On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.” - Satoru Iwata 

Sit tibi terra levis Iwata-san. 

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We have a Project Morpheus game at E3 2015...

Yes it’s true, we have a playable Project Morpheus game at E3 2015! We’ll unveil it next week and if you are in LA you’ll be able to try it out on the E3 showfloor!

See you in LA!

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Announcing Gemini_X

Around three years ago, while on the first stages of Futuridium development, we were discussing an idea arised from various dual-stick gaming sessions.

What if instead of direction and shooting, we tried to give the player indipendent control over two distinct entities simultaneously?

Doubts about the actual playability emerged as soon as we tried to imagine this mechanic contextualized in a scrolling shooter. Moreover, our schedules on both Futuridium and forma.8 left us very little time to develop any kind of playable prototype, so the project was shelved.

Then, Starbreeze Studios' Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons was released. We played the game to death (loving it) and although it didn't share much in common with ours, the basic mechanic was there. Someone had the courage to try something new and it worked like a charm!

Doubts remained as if a fast-paced, top-down, old-school shooter could actually work using the independent sticks method, so we finally decided to begin working on a basic prototype: well, not only the gameplay worked, but it was fun as hell!

Internally named "Stick Dancing", the system allows the player to control 2 spaceships at the same time, piloted by the genetically created twins Akai and Aoi, in a mission to liberate Earth from an alien invasion.

Here’s a teaser trailer to give you a better idea...

 So, now that the basic structure was there, we needed to visually dress the game with a style that could do justice to it.

At Mixed Bag we are huge fans of the late 90's japanese arcade games, especially Sega's Model 2 and 3 classics (those glorious skies!!!). We feel a bit sad seeing that flashy approach to graphics less and less used, so this was the perfect chance to try revisiting it with a modern treatment that aims at preserving the basic charm.

Our experimentations with the new shaders features in Unity 5 finally gave us an idea at how far we could go considering this goal.

What we really would like to achieve with Gemini_X is a tribute to the classic vertical scrolling shooter genre, mixing appealling arcade graphics and an innovative gameplay mechanic. Gemini_X is currently in prototype stage: the basic mechanics for the game are set and, trust us, it’s fun. We’re now fully focused on shipping forma.8 and on another, still unannounced, VR project for E3, but we’ll keep you informed on our progress.

We have no platform set for the game now but it runs in Unity 5 so... take your guesses!