#simogo games

[sewerdraws]

for the 4 people who are being as autistic as me about this game, you get the first draft of the last illustration, as a treat.

i thought it was too boring and i'm glad i thought that cause the new vers is so much better. also fun fact yes i modeled one of the maze rooms accurately to in game (i think it's the center one ?) just to show a tiny fraction of it in the glasses.

[sewerdraws]

I am an old woman

i'm yesterday's news

i dream in black and white

see it all through laser eyes

Remember folks, Reblogs > Likes ! 💖

[orchidelegance]

review - device 6

app store, $5.99 playtime: ~.5-1hrs rating: 6/10 replayability: 4/10

creative, eery, and immersive, i loved it but definitely expected more out of this one. device 6 by simogo, the company that brought us sayonara wild hearts and year walk, is an innovative side, up, down, and diagonal scroller that reimagines the way we interact with text. paired with an at-times classy, haunting, and beautiful soundtrack by daniel olsén featuring jonathan eng, device 6 has an ambiance completely unrivaled by any other text-based game (except maybe Maginary...)

the genre of device 6 somewhere between cultish spy conspiracies, scifi, 1920's jazz club, and a secret garden... whatever that means. similar experiences include the company and the bradwell conspiracy, but add in some hats and a lot of text. the game only makes sense after you finish it, and boy does it not take long to finish. my only complaint was how quickly i was done with it - i expected something a little more based on the setup. the puzzles were fairly simple and i figured the vast majority out on my own, excepting where i got lost in the text. can't reiterate enough how much of a fascinating medium and mechanic the devs chose for this story. definitely got the wheels in my head turning.

the text-based game is absolutely worth a try if you're interested in new ways of interaction and immersion - the game 100% brings you into its world (and if you've played it, you'll know i mean more than just the gameplay itself). i've never experienced anything quite like it, and i think Maginary is the only game that comes close as far as i know to having a similar mechanic. i'm also super obsessed with the graphic design (design in general), and i KNOW someone has written a medium article or something on it... i'll definitely be rewatching the intro video, not only for daniel olsén's music (i had the sayonara wild hearts soundtrack looping for months) but also the stunning animation and design.

rating a 6/10, would be an 8/10 if it wasn't so short and so sparse despite such a rich setup and plot. for $6, only a half hour to an hour of playtime...? nevertheless, an extremely innovative way of storytelling and gaming, and a premise i like very much. 4/10 replayability because it was so short that it feels like i already know everything and wouldn't really gain much by replaying it, but i would love to experience it again.

spoilers below

gosh, what an ending. i knew what was going to happen as it was happening, but the final blood splatter didn't scare me any less. i hope that final cigarette was good, anna. i want to replay it and see what would happen if i checked i agree and submitted to the device - would player249 be experiencing it the same way? i think there are a lot of missed opportunities with this game - the summary mentioned the doll as a key player, but it only appears once (twice if you count the shop at the end.) it was quite pretty. i liked the inclusion of all the art and edits, especially the venetian mask. again, the mechanics were amazing and really drew me in. having to constantly rotate my phone to read was a little annoying at times but mostly the novelty meant it was exciting rather than tedious. the mama/papa/baby bears was a little hard to figure out even with a guide, and another gripe i have is the sometime intelligible voices. i do like all the references that the devs threw in, and that they explained them in a blog post! if this was $2 or $3 i would be recommending it to everyone, but $6 is a little steep for what it is. nevertheless, i really enjoyed playing it, and the end is going to haunt me for a while. didn't think a 45minute game would trigger my psychosis but we'll see. i'll keep an eye out on my mail. good thing i have a roommate...

[writingronin]

This is Where Your Sound Comes From: Talking with Composer Daniel Olsén

One of the secret sauces in any video game is the sound design. If you think back to your favorite games, from the chanting Simlish from The Sims to the oh-so-specific sounds of Halo’s numerous guns, you’ll recognize that the acoustics of these games can be as important as the visual elements. Sound design in games does some of the same job as visual design–just like silhouettes and color schemes can help you quickly identify players or objects you interact with, audio cues can clue you in on what’s happening in your gameplay environment. And just as vast skyboxes or moody landscapes can help set the emotional context for your game, a background score won’t just set the mood, but it also can become a legendary piece of music unto itself.

But where does all this audio goodness come from? When you’re reading the previews or checkout out the E3 coverage, you rarely get any insight into the process behind the sound design. So to peek in the life of those who build our soundscapes and spend as much time listening to games as they do playing them, I talked to Daniel Olsén, sound designer and composer for Simogo Games‘ Year Walk and Device 6, two games that grabbed attention and received praise for their techniques in establishing atmosphere and pushing the boundaries of storytelling. based out of San Francisco, began his career as a 3D artist, but as a child, he explains how music was part of his life growing up in Sweden.

“My dad was a DJ—he used to buy me keyboards and stuff when I was a little kid. And I learned to play the flute in school, but that was about it. That was the musical schooling I had. But as soon as I got my hands on my first computer, an Amiga, I would start writing music on a tracker, and then because I didn’t have any songs, I would load images and text files as sounds, and then I’d just make these crazy noises, and I’d cut those noses up and make rhythms and stuff.” Olsén started in the gaming industry as a 3D Artist at Southend Interactive, but got caught up in the typical challenge of a small development team–since they couldn’t afford one person for each individual job, Olsén was asked to put his musical background to work in developing sound and music for games as well. After working on R-Type Dimensions, Olsén was promoted to Music and Sound Director on the 2010 XBLA title IloMilo, a game he refers to repeatedly when we talk about the nature of working in the gaming audio world.

For starters, Olsén—and other sound designers–don’t even necessarily start their work on a game with the start of the project. “When I worked at Southbend, I was an employee at the company, so I was there from the start. On Alpha Zero—I came in when the game was halfway finished, and they wanted some music, and they’d had placeholders and everything. And for Year Walk and Device 6, it took a while before I could try the games, so I had to start writing without knowing on how the game would [play] at all.”

We talked about the process of sound design and composition for these games—Olsén’s mostly worked on iOS and XBLA Arcade titles, but even without a massive recording studio at his fingertips, he’s found interesting workflows that feel reminiscent of those old images he’d convert to sound on the Amiga. ” [For composition], how I always start is that I try to find some reference music, and for Year Walk and Device 6, we just created these playlists together to try and find what kind of direction we wanted and then I just sit down and start writing.It helps a lot to have that–if you can’t put the music in the game right away, you’d want a movie of the gameplay right away or something, so you can try to play your music while looking at the game.”

“Some things work awesome when you’re listening to it, but when you try it with the gameplay it might not work at all.”

When it comes to designing sound effects, Olsén recalls a particularly tricky bit of work on IloMilo, and explains that even the simplest sound can take hours and hours of work and iteration. “For IloMilo, there were these cute characters that walked around cubes in a puzzle game, and when you walked over a corner, I made a little sound for flipping over to the other side of the cube. It took a long time for me to find the right sound–I used a pitched up Cello going “weeeet!” and it was perfect. But it took a long time for me to find it.”

Our conversation drifts over toward some of the thematic uses for sound–what Olsén tries to do whenever he picks up his instruments and goes to work on a game. When discussing Year Walk–a moody game based on Swedish folklore—he talks about the need to balance out the mood generated by gameplay.

“For me it’s all about delivering different types of emotions and melodies and rhythms and sound. And the challenge is to find the right type of emotions to give to the game that you’re writing music for. For me, every game I write has a different voice. And different emotions that I want to emphasize.”

“I thought that the game without sound was extremely scary. First I thought I was going to write like, horror music, but because the game was so frightening by itself, I tried to make the game less scary within the music. I also drew inspiration from where I grew up in Sweden, with the old folk music and stuff, ‘cause that was the theme of the game.”

Those old Swedish folk songs bring us to talking about how much of Olsén’s work echoes back from his days as a kid—and how many sounds he feels like he’s heard before somewhere in his head. I tried to press on if he could remember any of the specific songs, but he couldn’t on the spot–the memories only seemed to trigger while he’s composing.

“That happens all the time. I mean, one way or another, whatever I’m going to play, someone has played it before. Maybe faster or slower or in a different context, but I think at least for myself, when I write music, it’s little pieces of feelings that I felt during my life and a few notes will make me feel something from 10 years ago.

“And when I sit down and I play it, and I have a similar sound, and I play those notes, it’s–I recognize it. And it’s something that I like. So I continue to evolve that.”

Olsén admits that when it comes to getting into sound design, his strange path doesn't leave him with room for advice on anyone else who wants to enter the field. But when asked for some insight on why someone would choose sound design and composition over–say, being in a band, he talked about how his work in games feels much more personal than working with his bandmates. “I think the hard part about being in a band is that in my case, 4 people, that means 4 ideas on what the final product will be like. When I’ve been writing music for the games, it feels like I own themusic, it’s my own, even if I get a lot of feedback on it.”

To see Olsén’s work in action, you can check out Device 6 and Year Walk, or check out his site here.

(Originally published at www.jacehallshow.com)

[pointclicking]

Just in time for the holidays, I put up my two Simogo Game prints, for Year Walk and Device 6. Both start off at the low price of $20, for a small sized print. Merry Christmas!

[pointclicking]

Mama Bear, Papa Bear, Baby Bear, Man with a HAT, Automaton Monkey & a Priest with a Gramophone for a head - Device 6 (2013)

Which animal best describes this illustration?

a. a giraffe

b. a zebra

c. a praying mantis

This is available on print over here!