Q42 Games

[q42games]

Meet Quento, A New Type Of Puzzle Game

Hi. We've been hard at work to get Quento out in the open. And today this has become a fact. Quento has just been released for FREE on the App Store and pretty soon it will become available on Android devices, the Windows 8 store and Chrome Web Store. If you like puzzle games like Sudoku, Quento is definitely for you!

For more information, visit quento.com or download it directly from the App Store.

[q42games]

Carrrds! Almost ready for print!

What do you think? Looks good, doesn't it? Feels a bit like an old 1993 DOS game that's being sold on eBay. Check the back:

We're gearing up to that big moment where we send our beloved game to be printed, so we can wait in agony until the delivery boy rings the bell.

Interested in some of the cards that made it to the deck? Read on...

This sneaky bandit has trained his parrots to steal your cards. And when he sends his flying devil your way, this happens:

Got a pistol? Good, don't forget to shoot!

And what do you think of Dragon Island?

Or Turtle Island?

We hope you're as excited to this game as we are. Interested in obtaining a copy when we get it delivered? Send an e-mail to [email protected]

If you have any ideas, comments or something else you want to say, please leave a comment.

[q42games]

Carrrds! The Gun And The Gunslinger

So, we're Designing a Pirate-themed card game. Yes, a genuine card game for pirates of all ages. The name of the game is...

Carrrds!

Today we'll be starting the first of a series of blogposts to shed some light on character design, art choices, influences and rules.

First up: the Gun and the Gunslinger.

An introduction to the rules of Carrrds!

The game Carrds! is about loot, and finding more than your opponents do. To achieve that, players need to acquire treasure maps that have been torn apart into smaller map pieces, presented each by a single card. An example of such a complete treasure map is this:

When a player is asked to hand over a map piece, he or she can refuse to do so by challenging the other in a battle of melee combat. This combat happens through playing sword cards against eachother, or - more powerful - a gun card.

The Gun

Pirate guns are usually portrayed as flintlock pistols and we wanted to go for a recognizable, cliché and a bit of an exaggerated look. The outline of the card started like this:

All cards have an icon on the top left to always provide players with a quick reference of their hand.

Then color and a bit of a context were applied:

But that's hardly an "action card". It's a passive card with the gun lying there, and it doesn't have the impact we're looking for. So what could the problem be? Is it the angle of the gun? Could it be the background?

Maybe a pirate needs to hold the gun as if it's being fired.

No, definitely not. The arm and hand need to go, and the background is far to bright and happy for the action taking place when gun is fired.

Ah, that's right - it needs to be fired. We should've taken the "as if" out of "as if it'is being fired".

Next version:

Okay, we're getting there. This angle works better, the explosion and smoke are a good touch, and the background doesn't take the attention from the gun. 

Perhaps we could take it a small step further and make it a true action card that makes you say "BAM!" when you lay it out on the table...

Perhaps Richard overdid this one :) Let's take the explosion down a notch:

Okay, we're happy! That's the gun card, first of four. When all test decks are printed and sent out to playtesters we'll probably make four different gun cards (with the same icon) for diversity, but for now this will do more than fine.

The Gunslinger

Each action card has a character card to go along with it, resulting in six character cards that each player randomly draws a card from at the start of the game. This card is kept blind until the appropriate time is there during the game to play his or her special ability.

The ability of the gunslinger is - of course - to fire a gun in battle. Richard's initial sketch was this one:

She's a great diversion to the common male set of pirates found in many movies and games, but Richard found her pose a bit too inviting or sexy. So he drew her like this:

There she is: a badass girl - indeed still sexy too - slinging two guns and facing the player with an attitude of "don't mess with me". Cool.

To emphasize the relation between the gun action card and this gun character card we tried to use the pistol's background explosion here as well:

It brings the same impact to the card, but somehow it has her standing in a void surreal surrounding. 

Then Richard said something along the lines of

"She needs to walk out of a burning city".

And so he brushed the following background:

The difference between the quickly brushed background and details character really felt perfect, and even though the colortone of the fire could've been a bit warmer, this was the setting that felt right. 

Richard did just one more iteration:

Spot on. The flames in the background rising to the top of the card while the flames cast a shadow of our gunslinging heroine towards the player really made this character card stand out as an example of what we're trying to achieve in quality and consideratios for every single card if the final deck.

So, what do you think of the Gun and the Gunslinger?

Are you excited about this card game as much as we are? Don't hesitate to leave a comment, send us an e-mail or let your friends know on twitter and facebook about this game of Carrrds! coming up.

And here's a sneak preview of what set of cards we'll be presenting soon...

[q42games]

Designing A Pirate Themed Card Game

Every year during my summer holiday my mind wonders off to games not yet created. I love scratching down thoughts on paper and from time to time I come up with a new game concept that can either be played with dice, pen and paper or in this case... cards.

Inspired by my kids' wild enthousiasm for a pirate-themed treasure hunt set out on the camping in France I wanted to create a simple yet exciting game with rules simple enough for youngsters to engage playing, yet allow for pure strategists to be able and plot a course to victory. Yarr!

I had a simple set of rules in mind, and needed to sketch some ideas to get into the "pirate" theme and try and get a feeling for what I wanted. I had my iPad with me, with FiftyThree's Paper app installed - the perfect tool for sketching out ideas in combination with a stylus: the Wacom Bamboo.

I started out with simply drawing a few treasure maps, which were the base of the card game. I didn't started drawing anything card-specific - just a common treasure map.

I then went to sketching individual cards. The first image in this post is from the initial concept idea I had for the game. In the local supermarket (the Super U) I bought a set of paper thick enough to cut a set of cards from, together with a proper pen. Luckily my kids had more than enough coloring pens for me to confiscate and claim as Pirate's loot! ;-)

The first actual paper deck of cards became a reality and quickly after playing it a few times I was very unhappy with it. But more ideas had come to me, and I foresaw a few changes that would make the game much more playable, approachable and probably more fun.

So I went sketching again with Paper:

I sketched many more treasure maps and specific cards, and next up were the card details.

Then everything started to fall in to place, and I knew what I needed for the extra cards that made up the remainder of the playing rules:

In the meantime my 7 year old boy Zias was also designing his own pirate-themed card game and he was using Paper to draw sketches as well:

We went on and played his paper deck when it was finished, and we played mine too. Zias got so excited about my game that he wanted to play it over and over again, and I didn't see any reason to change the rules I had created then so we played the game as is.

The days that followed we tested the game with the kids from the camping, and they tested it with their parents and I got loads of feedback, mostly requiring hardly no change of the rules - the game seemed to work really well as it was and offer a lot of fun. The rules were simple, to the point and "logic".

Next to our tent was an 11 year old English boy whom we played the game with a lot. It seems he also got his father to play it - who seemed skeptic all along. When he had finally played the game with his two sons while I was away with my kids, it turns out he liked the game a lot and told me to really pursuit publishing of it.

Back at Q42 Richard started sketching. His first result:

Now we're trying a more 3-d approach similar to the Monkey Island 2 maps. One problem we're now facing is that the cards are becoming too awesome and the map path is actually ruining it... 

But that's a luxury problem :D

This is where we currently are: designing the cards. When we have a full deck of cards designed we're going to have a few decks profesionally printed for further playtesting.

At the moment we have a LOT of playtesters, as several at Q42 have kids and most at Q42 love to play a game of cards and some friends of mine already volunteered to join in as soon as there's a deck ready for testing. But in case you're interested too, just shoot me an e-mail ([email protected]).

Designing the card game (conceptually) was really cool. Getting the real artwork done is freaking awesome and getting this thing published and physically in stores is one big adventure. But that's what is so cool about it.

We'll post more info when it's there.

Yarrrrr!

- Martin

[q42games]

Our iPad game has a name!

We have a winner! Rahul Choudhury suggested the name "Qwerty", which is just spot on because:

It sounds cuddly

It's a nerdy name

And as a bonus - starts with a Q!

We love the new title "Cat Quest" as it...

Is short and simple

Captures the concept of the game

Has a nice old reference to Space Quest and other old "Quest" adventure games that we have so much affinity with

So there you have it!

[q42games]

Our Alien Avatar in Lego

Q42 sponsored the study trip for a tech student at the TU Delft. In return we received our little alien guy designed in Lego. WE LIKE! :D

Download the Lego Designer file here: Alien.lxf

We'll post the paper cut-out instructions soon too. So you can have this:

Nerds FTW!

PS the alien dude still needs a name. Care to help us out?

[q42games]

Name This Game

Meet our little alien guy.

And check out his high-tech-fancy-pants spaceship (dice included).

But what about those cats? Well, here's the introduction trailer to learn more:

(note: this video is a very early build and the game is far from finished) 

But here's the problem: Our little one-eyed bugger doesn't have a name yet, and neither does the game he stars in. So we're asking for your help:

Come up with a cute and fitting name for our alien and suggest a title for the game he stars in.

Just tweet your suggestion like this

Meet "[DUDE NAME]" starring in "[GAME NAME]" on the iPad. http://bit.ly/NGppsp @Q42games #NameThisGame

... and we'll pick our favorite!

What's in it for you?

You'll get the game for free. Or actually, everybody does. We're making this game free for all. Not just you, but for everyone. Free. As in... $0. No ads, no in-app-purchase to unlock a virtual limitation, no strings attached. Just the full game, free. Why? That's something we'll cover in a future blogpost.

If you want to read more about what the game is, check out this previous post.

Stay tuned for more more info about how the game will be playable for all ages, about the built-in level editor, and why we're building this game in the first place.

[q42games]

Gameplay, And The Importance Of Intrinsic Motivation

A few days per week we are now working on a new game for iOS and the Chrome Web Store with a small team. We know what direction we're heading, and we take our time to experiment with artistic twists, new gameplay elements, unlockables, collectible items and different approaches in terms of storyline and the protagonist's motivations.

These experiments are fun, but we keep asking ourselves:

"Is the game still fun when we add [...]?"

That core, that gameplay should be fun. 

Because playing is about getting an intrinsic reward for undertaking the activity. Wikipedia has a pretty good definition:

"Play is a term employed in psychology and ethology to describe a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with recreational pleasure and enjoyment"

When you're building a platform game, it's not about the satisfaction of getting all the coins, it's about running around and jumping. A solid shooter doesn't need to offer loads of guns and gear to be satisfactory; the fun is in pulling the trigger and blasting those zombies to another dimension. Angry birds in space? Well you're still shooting stuff with real physics. 

Our game? It's sokoban.

Nothing more, nothing less. The protagonist needs to shove tiles around and make sure he doesn't get stuck. That, is it. 

Sure, it will be about a one-eyed alien traveling back to a stylish Back-to-the-Future-like 1955 Hill-Valey-ish world to kidnap kittens and zap them to his home planet with his big freaking gun in order to overcome his lonelyness. And there might even be unlockables, collectibles and more level-creation and social sharing options than you can throw a stick at.

But at its core it is still a sokoban game that is challenging and fun to play.

So if you are building a game, take a moment and think about the inner core of your game and ask yourself if that core is fun to play, or if you got lost in tweaking the leaderboard-ranking system and balancing out the currency/shop item pricing...

- Martin

[q42games]

Donkey Kong II on iPad in HTML5

A tribute to the Nintendo classic Game & Watch device, optimized for iPad play through HTML5. Also playable in other browsers. 

[q42games]

The RGB Game

Fix your tv by adjusting the colors. An award-winning and highly praised game in the Chrome Web Store. 

[q42games]

Sarien.net

A retro game portal officially supported by Activision that allows you to play Sierra adventure games such as Police Quest and Space Quest in your browser, multiplayer. Some on iPad.