As some of you may know, many in Mojang and the whole lot of them Oxeye went to GDC/IGF this year. For me (thewreck) it was mostly to visit enchanting San Francisco and meet (hug) other developers, while for others – like notch who had speaking obligations – things were a bit less casual. Even while engorging myself in all the casual fun I managed to fit a bunch of work on Cobalt, alas I managed to catch the flu and was knocked out for the better part of the weekend following gdc.

After the gdc, me, kinten and another friend moved our cobalt development operations to an apartment in San Francisco for two weeks. Armed with our laptops we went exploring the breakfast offerings during the morning

the office cafés during the day

the night life during the night

and the sights during the weekends.

We managed to snap a lot of reference photos and recorded a bunch of sounds for the future. In regards to direct Cobalt development, I worked mostly on improvements to the editor, which is why many of the changes we have made will not be appearing in the v103 change-log. For example, the tiles browser has been remade, now supporting selecting multiple tiles (randomly picking between them after each placement) as well as rather advanced free text filtering.

The last week in USA, we went on a road trip along highway 1, through Santa Cruz, San Diego, through the Mojave desert to Los Angeles and finally flew home from Las Vegas proudly sporting my minecraft t-shirt. Now, it is time to get v103 ready for upload. We have no current estimate, but our current goal is to simply wrap it up, test it, and upload it.

Development is sometimes painful and hard but most of the time it is pure fun! The past couple of days we’ve been hard at work with getting the demo up to date in time for our GDC appearance.

There’s been some major changes to the core concept of the game and for the first time in a while it feels like we’re making some great progress!

I’ll try to set aside some time for a write up of the current state of the game, but for now you’ll have to make do with a play testing video.

We’re speaking Swedish in the video, but hopefully our reactions are sufficient to understand what’s happening!

/Kinten

The soundscape in Oxeye’s Cobalt was also praised for “giving it the amount of life it has”, with “immersive sound effect work that absolutely sells the atmosphere,” and a soundtrack that “stays away from melodic motifs to let the overall ambience take center stage.”

Cobalt also received honorable mentions in Excellence in Technology and Excellence in Visual Art!

Read all about it here: igf.com

// jeb

A lot of people commented that they couldn’t really see what was going on in the teaser, so we thought it might be nice to really introduce Cobalt in this video.
For people who’ve played a lot of platformers before it might be a bit too detailed, but hopefully you can get a feel for the awesome platform flow we’re striving for.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

Edit:Should have looked at it before uploading. I promise, it’s not as dark ingame

So what have we learned?
First and foremost we discovered that our main character’s name is Cobalt and not Blueface or Shitface or Metalface or whatever we’ve been calling him/her in the past.
We’ve established a direct line of communication to Cobalt (who is currently stationed at Trunkopia) to avoid further confusion.

We’ve also discovered a new talent amongst us! Actually he’s not new, he’s pretty old (member of Oxeye), but when it comes to words the only ones Jens have been cranking out have either been code related or hasty words of affection jotted down on postcards .
Until now that is.
Surveys show that since he took over the editing department of the Galactipedia Encyclopedia Profundus customer satisfaction has gone up exponentially.
Confusion remains unchanged.
A sample of his latest creative outburst can be viewed below.
In fact, he’s writings have been so popular at the company HQ that he’s taken the prodigious Mattias (aka Anosou) as his writing apprentice.

Speaking of Mattias, another thing we’ve learned during these past few weeks is that his musical genius spreads beyond human comprehension. He’s fast to. You only have to hint the idea of a new tune and before you’ve uttered the last words explaining the song you’ll have it blasting through your headphones.

We’ve also been tinkering with co-op. Cobalt has been nagging us about it for some time now. I guess loneliness knows no decency.

Last but not least, I, Pontus (Kinten), have had to slowly accept the fact that I no longer sport a fantastic beard. I accidentally shaved it all off using a rogue trimmer.
Support mails concerning this are appreciated.

Until next time, swim calmly (Swedish expression).
/Kinten

One of the biggest indie events every year is the Independent Games Festival at the game developer conference in San Francisco. It’s a competition that awards cash prizes to a number of outstanding indie games. Many of these games are still work in progress, hoping to gain some attention and maybe distribution deals. Monaco by Pocketwatch Games is one of these games, and it happened to grab both the awards for best game design and the Seumas Grand Prize.

Monaco is a 4-player cooperative stealth game taking place in… uuh… Monaco. You choose one of four characters (eight characters are planned), each with its own special abilities and skills and attempt to steal money and other stuff from various locations. These locations (banks, casinos, yachts, etc) are protected by alarms and armed guards, which makes things a bit tricky. This is Monaco’s IGF trailer:

Now, as I’ve written earlier, I was one of the judges who were evaluating the games for the awards. I was very pleased to see that Monaco won, since I had voted for it in the final round. There are two reasons for this,

First, Monaco feels like what indie is all about, at least for me. It’s the kind of game that can’t be produced with multi-million dollars. It’s too risky. Weirder games, such as Scribblenauts, seem to be exclusive to portable devices and usually don’t have multiplayer. Also big budget games need big budget content, and I can’t imagine what Monaco would play like if it was, for example, in 3D.

Secondly, Monaco is a really fun game, at least when you play it with a friend or two (as it was intended). The cooperative element works very well. Shutting down an alarm or opening a door will help everybody, and players are able to revive those that have fallen. It’s especially exciting when only one player is left alive, trying to dodge guards and revive the others. I like this sense of giving everybody in the team the chance to be a hero. And even if you should fail you get a sense of progress because the map will remain revealed when you start over. It’s like, “alright that didn’t go so well, but now I know how we should do it!”

These things put together: originality, good design, and pure entertainment, made it easy for me to pick Monaco for the IGF grand prize. Of course, there were like 160 judges voting, so I’m not alone.

/jeb

I have had the privelege to take part of the Independent Games Festival as a judge this year, and when I saw (the legendary) Tim W of the IndieGames blog post his ten picks for IGF, I thought that I should do the same! And, like Tim pointed out, this wont affect the results since the first round of judging has already been completed, so no worries!

A small disclaimer, though… I did not try ALL of the 300+ games, so I may have missed some really nice ones in there. For example I wasn’t able to test Limbo (as Tim picked for his list), becase I don’t have a 360 controller.

1. Don’t Look Back – IGF Page

I think this game has put a spell on me, but I keep coming back to it and it still brings me a lot of pleasure. It’s very simple and uses only four colors, but still manages to portray an epic story with great precision. I’m looking forward to meet Terry Cavanagh in January (who also happens to be a The Strategist fan)!

You can play Don’t Look Back for free at his site.

2. The Blackwell Convergence – IGF Page

There were surprisingly many adventure games this year, and like Tim said, most of them were really good. This game caught me a little by surprise, because I hadn’t played any of the games in the series (this is the third one). The dialogue was nice and the characters felt refreshing.

3.  Super Meat Boy – IGF Page

I didn’t enjoy the flash version that much, but this is slick. And bloody.

Extra props to Danny B for the music!

4. VVVVVV – IGF Page

Terry Cavanagh’s second appearance on my list! I loved this game, but I found it a little bit too punishing at times. Terry told me he had tried different control settings, and I respect his decision, but god damn you, “The Villi People!”

5. Vessel - IGF Page

I’m not sure if I should love or hate this game, but it has at least made a mark in my memory. A physics puzzle platformer with some nice effects. I think this game could have great potential if they just worked a little more on the artwork and made some of the puzzles less tedious.

6. Broken Brothers – IGF Page

An RTS by Michael Todd. I found this game “by mistake” in the long IGF list and realized that I enjoyed very much (yeah, I’m an RTS sucker). The game is in an early prototype stage so far, though.

8. Tuning – IGF Page

Jonatan Söderströms entry in this year’s IGF. I had the opportunity to have this game presented by Jonatan himself, and I really liked it. He’s a master at adding style with simple elements, and each new level felt fresh and interesting!

/jeb

During my trip to San Francisco and Game Developer’s Conference, I recorded a bunch of clips and put them on YouTube as a video blog. You can see them all here:

• Day 1 – Travelling to SF
• Day 2 – Visiting Mission and Castro with Erik, Kian, Nils and Bernhard
• Day 3 – First day of Independent Games Summit
• Day 4 – Second day of IGS
• Day 5 – Independent Games Festival pavilion and award ceremony
• Day 6+7 – More from IGF and various parties

/ jeb

If you are looking for information about Agatha Ragatha, you can look further down this page, or click these links:

• Agatha Ragata story introduction
• Game-play Preview

/jeb