Casual Games Association has announced the winners of the Indie Prize showcase. The honorees were revealed during a awards ceremony at Casual Connect Europe in Berlin.
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, a tactical stealth game set in Japan’s Edo period by Mimimi Productions, won Best Game Design. Anshar Wars 2, a VR space shooter game by Ozwe Games, won Best VR Game. FRU, a puzzle platformer that that uses Kinect to make the player’s silhouette into a “portal” between two worlds by Through Games, won Most Innovative Game. Blink and Die, a VR rhythm title where the music defines the level by Sureksu, won Best Game Audio and Best Kids & Family Game
“Indie Prize is becoming bigger and bigger year by year – it is amazing and overwhelming to see indie talent and spirit growing so very strong all over the world,” says Yuliya Moshkaryova, Director of Indie Prize. “On behalf of Casual Connect and Indie Prize, we cordially congratulate all the finalists, nominees and winners, and are looking forward to seeing more games in the future.”
Photo by Lera Polska
Other winners include Figment, a 3D isometric action-adventure where players fight against the anxieties of a 40-year old man by Bedtime Digital Games, won Best Game Art. Empathy, an adventure game where you explore the memories from people of the path by Pixel Night, won Best Game Narrative. Lightfield, an omnidirectional racing game described as parkour with a space ship by Lost in the Garden, won Best Multiplayer Game. Super Pet Hero, a voxel game about dodging traffic and pet saving by Amused Sloth, won Best Mobile Game. Lastly CoverFire by 1MBand had the honor to win the Best in Show award which was voted for at the event.
Indie Prize has partnered with many local game contests from around the world. This grants the opportunity for various regional winners to showcase their games at Casual Connect. All told, developers from 63 countries submitted 470 games for the international Indie Prize scholarship, an increase of 20 percent compared to last year’s Indie Prize Europe 2016. Forty-two judges selected the 130 indie games to be showcased in the Indie Prize area during Casual Connect Europe in Berlin.
Celebrating a well earned moment of triumph, photo by Lera Polsky
Fantastic Nominees:
BEST GAME AUDIO
Blink and Die developed by Sureksu
Guns, Gore and Cannoli 2 developed by Crazy Monkey Studios
The Long Reach developed by TLR Team
Beat the Game developed by Worm Animation
BEST GAME DESIGN
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun developed by Mimimi Productions
FRU developed by Through Games
The Adventure Pals developed by Massive Monster
Okhlos developed by The Adventure Pals
BEST GAME ART
Figment developed by Bedtime Digital Games
Vive le Roi developed by Seccia
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun developed by Mimimi Productions
Anshar Wars 2 developed by Ozwe Games
BEST GAME NARRATIVE
Empathy by Pixel Night
Lost Words developed by Fourth State
Code 7 developed by Good Wolf Studios
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun developed by Mimimi Productions
BEST MULTIPLAYER GAME
LIGHTFIELD developed by Lost in the Garden
Super Rocket Shootout developed by Oddly Shaped Pixels
Panoptic developed by Team Panoptes
Akuto: Mad World developed by Hut 90
BEST KIDS AND FAMILY GAME
Blink and Die developed by Sureksu
House of Languages developed by Fox3D Entertainment OU
Figment developed by Bedtime Digital Games
Trains VR developed by The House of Fables
BEST MOBILE GAME
Super Pet Hero developed by Amused Sloth
VOI developed by Yunus AYYILDIZ (gamebra.in)
unWorded developed by bento
Euclidean Lands developed by Miro Straka
BEST VR GAME
Anshar Wars 2 developed by Ozwe Games
Panoptic developed by Team Panoptes
The Biumbis developed by 3OGS
Wrath of Loki VR Adventure developed by The House of Fables
MOST INNOVATIVE GAME
FRU developed by Through Games
Lost Words developed by Fourth State
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun developed by Mimimi Productions
Panoptic developed by Team Panoptes
You can find the full list of Indie Prize Berlin 2016 finalists at indieprize.org.
Photo taken by Lera Polska
Join Indie Prize Facebook community to stay updated about Indie Prize https://www.facebook.com/groups/870174783048528/
The winners are supported by Unity (Platinum sponsor), Korean Game Developers Association (Gold sponsor) and the prizes for winners are provided by: Tenjin, Photon, Amazon Appstore, Appodeal, SpeedLink, ironSource and IBM.
One game represents Croatia, two games Greece and Portugal, four games Italy and seven games Spain at the international Indie Prize showcase in Berlin during Casual Connect Europe 2017! Among them, two games were nominated by Game Nation Nomination Partners in Italy: Milan Games Week and Codemotion.
GAME: Light&Dark DEVELOPER: Under the Stairs PLATFORM: Desktop Win COUNTRY: Croatia
Light&Dark is a 2D roguelike platformer with random level generation. Light is your primary resource which you spend to uncover levels, kill monsters and progress through the game. Every death is permanent and every run is different.
Awards: Best gameplay and Best artstyle at Reboot Infogamer.
The international Indie Prize showcase for independent developers will take place on Nov 1-3, 2016 in Tel Aviv. Sixty games from 21 countries were provided with Indie Prize scholarship by Casual Connect and will be showcased at Habima Square during 3 days from 9 AM to 5 PM.
We are happy to introduce to you games from Belarus, Latvia and Spain that were selected by Indie Prize judges to be showcased at the international Indie Prize showcase.
Vicens Martí is the President of Tangelo Games. Tangelo Games was formed through the acquisition of Diwip and Akamon Entertainment and was formerly Imperus Technologies Corporation. While their time in the gaming industry includes being the Managing Director at Cirsa Gaming Corporation, Vicens has also been CMO at Vueling (a Spanish low-cost airline) and CEO of Custo Barcelona (a fashion label).
Vicens Martí is President of Tangelo Games.
Cirsa is a notable casino company in Spain, Italy, and Latin America, helping to operate table games and casino slot machines. Vicens says that the experience in real money gambling was beneficial. “I did so much at Cirsa… You learn by doing,” they said.
While Vicens says they had the childhood dream of being an astronaut, they have no difficultly imagining what they’d be doing if they weren’t at their current position. “Oh, that’s easy. I am a simultaneous entrepreneur,” they described. “I have invested in a company called Appeth. I have interest in electronic music. Fintech is another company that I have going too. I have many projects going at once so if I wasn’t in the industry, I have plenty else I could be doing.”
Skara, The Blade Remains is a versus-style multiplayer hack’n’slash with the soul of an RPG. Developed by a small team of 12 crazy indie developers in the UK and Spain using Unreal Engine, Skara is set on a post-cataclysmic fantasy world where only the strong can survive. Teams and individuals of up to 16 will battle it out for supremacy in Skara’s full game mode, becoming the protagonists of an unfolding story. Until then, players can play quick versus fights, longer free-for-all brawls and six-person Team Deathmatches in dangerous environments.
Tama Games’ recently released iOS game Escape from the Pyramid brings some of the world’s oldest designs to modern gameplay, challenging players to avoid the afterlife in an ancient tomb. Graphically, the game goes for a simplified, silhouette style that draws inspiration from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The gameplay mashes up platformer and runner styles to lend a little excitement to a casual puzzle game. Breaking with the free-to-play trend, the studio decided to skip in-game purchases, offering the entire experience for $1.99 in the U.S. App Store. Read on for an interview with Tama Games Director Alan Crane on the game’s retro roots, its struggles as an indie title, and Tama’s solution to an argument as old as touchscreen games: If we have buttons, where should they go?
Carlos Molina del Rio is a Madrid-based games developer and founder of independent studio 89bits. After years of working at Telefonica creating mobile infrastructure for one of Spain’s most important telecom companies, he decided to start his own games and entertainment company to combine gaming and live sporting events with the mobile experience. Read about his experience in launching a new entertainment category in fantasy sports management.
DragonJam Studios was founded in Madrid in 2013. They’re working on their first title, Wincars Racer, with which the company hopes to bring an updated take on kart racing to the PC.
Abylight is a Barcelona-based independent video game development studio founded in 2004 by Nacho Garcia, Alberto Gonzalez, Daniel Lopez and Ricardo Fernandez and based in Barcelona. The studio has been developing titles since 1990, resulting in more than 60 titles for various platforms, such as the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Wii, and Sony Playstation Portable. Abylight has also released games for digital distribution platforms such as WiiWare, DSiWare, PSN, and iOS.
After the initial development and publishing of Fish’em All! and Stop Stress for WiiWare in 2009, Abylight sadly found itself depleted of resources. Only a very tight core team survived and no financial room was left to invest in any kind of independent development. Around the same time, the Nintendo DSi was released and the DSiWare digital store was launched. Earlier, in 2008, Abylight developed Elite Forces: Unit 77 for Nintendo DS, which meant that we had several development kits and all the legal authorizations necessary ready to develop for the platform. Although technically a DS is different from a DSi (i.e. camera-wise), we sorted it out easily, just ignoring those differences in our first productions. Moving from WiiWare to DSiWare was not an issue at all. The decision to focus on the DSi platform would eventually lead to the creation of our first iOS project: AfterZoom.
An idea is born
Looking into what kind of games had been published on the DSiWare service, our studio head Nacho Garcia realized that there are only a couple of games on the marketplace using the camera as a game play feature. How can we play with the camera? What fun can we have with this feature? Hot topics at that moment were augmented reality, hidden objects, collecting and time management. This got Nacho thinking and one day, walking through a park and looking at the fallen autumn leaves laying on the ground in heaps, he imagined what would be seen if one was to use a microscope: there would be lots of tiny creatures.
And so the initial concept for AfterZoom was born: turn the camera into a microscope to capture microbes, collect them and exchange them with other friends. But how could we easily implement such advanced features into a limited console like the Nintendo DSi? The first challenge would be funding. A first draft was prepared to attract local investors, but with no success. So we decided to let the idea rest for a while (as so many ideas do), until a better moment would arise. The idea fell in the good-but-not-possible-yet drawer and Abylight concentrated on developing and releasing the Music On series for Nintendo DSiWare.
Looking for funding
The work we got from various services and developing the Music On-series did wonders for Abylight
The work we got from various services and developing the Music On-series did wonders for Abylight. Money was finally coming in again. Moreover, the Spanish Ministry of Culture set up a grant where a videogame can be submitted for funding. Long story short, on July 2010 we received a small grant from the Ministry to develop a game. The grant, however, required the game to have an educational side. So the game, at that time, was simply titled Microscope. In the summer of 2010, we produced an evolved concept of the game and pitched it to publishers in order to get the rest of the sum needed to complete the development. However, with no success.
In order to apply for the grant, the game needed an educational side.
Because of the grant requisites, we had to develop the game within 2010. Adding some income from other games we had released on the DSiWare service, we were able to finance the rest of the development of AfterZoom. The decision was made to downscale the game to concentrate on the three key gameplay features and develop it independently.
Finally, developing AfterZoom
Development started on September 2010. We cut down the planned collection of micro-organisms from 300 to 50 species, limited the A.I. (as originally the game should have been played more Pokemon-like) and disregarded the multiplayer feature, both from the technical and the gameplay point of view. Basically, we thought of the project as a prototype of what it could really be. Still, some issues did arise.
Issue #1: the gyroscope
We weren’t going to break because of this big issue, we faced the situation with perseverance
The Nintendo DSi is a console that doesn’t have a gyroscope, which is quite essential for an Augmented Reality game. This meant that we had to develop an optical flow algorithm to establish how the console is moving based on the captured image of the camera. The original Optical Flow Algorithm was developed on a desktop with a webcam, Intel i7 processor and using floating point numbers: everything worked just fine. The DSi, however, has a slow ARM Processor and uses fixed point arithmetic. So when we ported the optical flow algorithm the entire process was very slow, not even reaching 3 frames per second. Moreover, the quality of the captured image was very low, especially in bad lighting situations (i.e. indoors). These issues brought the team to the brink of desperation and almost capitulation. After all, this main feature didn’t work as planned, meaning we might had to cancel the project.
However, we weren’t going to break because of this big issue. We faced the situation with perseverance. We proceeded to optimize the optical flow algorithm: making endless image contrast tests, reducing the analyzed area captured, interpolating frames and assisting the player (when in a situation the game gets two ambiguous readings, it will always produce the expected result). In situations with bad lighting we added keyboard control to avoid errors. This way, we managed to overcome the issues and continue development on AfterZoom.
Issue #2: colourful landscapes
The camera would sometimes capture red as a dominant colour, when an object was clearly orange.
Surface detection is basically done by determining the dominant colour captured by the camera. The problem that arises is that depending on the illumination while playing, the camera of the console changes the captured colour.
In order to solve this and harmonize the game experience, we did two things. First, we reduced the range of playable colours, eliminating colours that could be easily confused, like orange to red. So when the camera captured orange produce the gameplay destined for red. Second, the game would assist the player, generating the required element at each moment in order to avoid ambiguities.
Unfortunately, after overcoming these and more issues the project was delayed. Besides, we weren’t sure if we would receive a worthy return from our investment. But at least we were finally working on our game.
Publishing, on our own
We couldn’t succumb to the inevitable need to leave a project behind after so many hardships
Several times we felt like the pressure was too much and we thought about just finishing the project and be over with it. But we couldn’t succumb to the inevitable need to leave a project behind after so many hardships and we really took the time to polish it. As a result, the development officially ended on April 2011. At the time, we already had 10 published games on the Nintendo DSiWare service. This meant we knew what we were doing and we knew some tricks. The first thing was giving the project a commercial name. The original one, Microscope, wasn’t good enough. We wanted a new title and we had a couple of requisites: it needed to start with an “A” and it needed to be a self-explanatory. We settled on AfterZoom.
After coming up with a title, we produced a trailer for the game, to be released on the DSiWare service. Actors, voice-overs, cameras… everything! We knew we needed to communicate our game as good as possible. Because we were directly talking to the final consumer - the kids – there was no mention of the educational side effects. The trailer focused just on the fun part.
The game was released in America on July 14th 2011 for a price of around $5. In Europe, the game was released on July 21st 2011 for 5€. As it turned out, we couldn’t have been more expectant with the performance of a game that we thought would not be able to turn into a profit. Sales numbers weren’t that impressive at first. But then, what normally would be a downfall turned out into an unexpected rollercoaster that we had never seen before.
Some time after the game was published, the sales were good, kids loved the game and Nintendo’s digital distribution channel was very supportive. On October 26th 2011, we published the game in Japan as well through Kawamoto Industrial. Albeit with a change in price: our partners felt that ¥200 yen games did better, which turned out to be true because the game immediately became a number one success in Japan.
Multi-platform, what else?
In order to optimize our developments and processes, we created an engine that allowed us to simultaneously work for several platforms
After the success of the game worldwide, we decided to adapt the game to the thriving platform of Apple: iOS and its AppStore. Because of this, in order to optimize our developments and processes, we created an engine that allowed us to simultaneously work for several platforms, such as iOS and Nintendo consoles. This way, while building this engine, we were able to also port AfterZoom to iOS.
Developing for iOS, we made several bad assumptions, like the iPhone being a lot more powerful than it really was. Graphically, we picked OpenGL 2, which worked fine on the iPhone 4S. However, the game had to work on older models too, so we had to optimize the engine and remove graphical features and replace them with fakes. Besides, the iPhone 3G lacks gyroscope, so we had to implement similar tricks as we did with the DSi. These issues only seemed minor when we were faced with the next issue: the business model.
From premium to freemium
Porting AfterZoom to iOS, we expected to release a fuller version under the premium model. We worked on an improved design, 3D graphics and smoother presentation. However, while pitching the project to publishers it was made clear that, even if the game was very well received, the premium model was not interesting at all. iOS was a platform that was dominated by freemium releases. Freemium, free-to-play, that was the way to go.
But, what did we know about freemium games? Next to nothing, we played some of them on Facebook, we had some colleagues explain it to us over coffee and we had gathered some knowledge from conferences on the subject. All in all, not much.
First option: freemium
We started toying with the possibility of releasing the game exactly as it was. Instead of selling it as a premium game, we would present it as a freemium. This way the game could be released almost immediately (summer 2012), and we could start monetizing to lower any financial risks, while at the same time keep developing the game. The problem was that turning a premium game into a freemium one does not only involve adding features, elements and shopping opportunities. It is about a certain coherence and goal, which can be adapted, expanded and evolved later on.
Second option: free-to-play
Top-selling games are simple and easy, usually a copy of a copy of a copy
The second option, the one we believe is the better one, was releasing the game free-to-play from the start. To do so, we delved deep into all the information available and took a good look at our game. From the start, AfterZoom used elements that were popular and easily found in F2Ps, such as collecting, time management, missions, et cetera. So we focused on each element and researched the most successful games in the Apple AppStore: how did they get popular? How did the games work? How did they monetize?
After seeing a couple of games, we realized a couple of important things: top-selling games are simple and easy, usually a copy of a copy of a copy. We either had an opportunity or damnation with our original and unique game.
The people behind Abylight
Changing the design
Console games are closed, there’s no adding features to a physical disk. On iOS you keep developing and improving after the release. The first major decision was to turn AfterZoom into a more tycoon-like game. To do so in economic terms, we also had to change how the microorganisms would be developed; instead of creating original forms we used texture settings. We prepare a schedule of how the game could grow and evolve: which features would be implemented, when and how to entice the players to keep playing after the first try, week or month. This way we tried to make Afterzoom iOS-proof.
Currently, AfterZoom for iOS is still in development. However, you can still check out AfterZoom for DSiWare. Abylight is currently working on a work for hire project and the improvement of its own multi-platform engine Afrodita V.
GAME: Light&Dark
