Boingo was recently mentioned by Bytejacker, as one of their Gamerdrome picks of the week (fast forward to the 5:30 mark). The Gamerdrome is Bytejacker’s own game specific video community, where you can upload any game related videos that you might want to share with the world.
This week we started working on the third big iteration of Boingo, which we will tell you more about in the weeks to come. Those of you who have followed the project since the beginning might be wondering what’s been taking so long, so I thought I’d try to shed some light on the whole thing. In order to do that I need to back up about 15 months, to the end of February 2008.
I (Peter) had just gotten back from GDC in San Francisco, where I had presented a prototype of our first game concept Bacteria. The prototype had been made in about six weeks, and I can readily admit that it wasn’t that much fun to play. It was met with an overall cool response, but I at least received some useful feedback which I took home with me. Back at the office I sat down with the team and we discussed our options. Based on the feedback that we had received we decided to can the project, but only if we managed to come up with a new, better concept that same day.
The pitch document submission deadline for the Swedish Game Awards was just 24 hours away, so we needed to put something together sooner rather than later if we were to be able to participate. We started discussing some ideas, whipped up some sketches on the whiteboard, and presto! The original Boingo concept was born. I then went on to create a pitch document for the Swedish Game Awards and managed to get it delivered on time. During the following twelve weeks or so we developed the first prototype, which went on to win the award for Best Execution as well as the Gamer’s Choice award at the Swedish Game Awards. Below you can watch a trailer that was released previous to the awards ceremony, showing the game as it was then. We went under a different name at the time, which is why the logo in the beginning doesn’t say Black Drop Studios.
We are just about to board the train to Stockholm and the Swedish Game Awards ‘09, which takes place tomorrow on Försvarshögskolan. Since Boingo was one of the games to receive awards last year, we have been invited to participate in the event. When we get back we will tell you what happened with Boingo after last year’s event, leading up to where we are today.
So what have we been up to these past months? Well as some of you may know, we were granted development funding for Boingo from the Nordic Game Program this past december. We began working on the new prototype in January, and in March we showed the prototype at GDC in San Francisco. We now feel that is time to show you some footage of this prototype and see what you think of it! Feel free to post your feedback as a comment, we greatly appreciate it.
So here it comes, the new Boingo prototype footage, enjoy!
Since we released the images of our new character design, old Boingo has been behaving quite erratic. This might also have something to do with the fact that we have begun calling him Bingo.
Today he went so far as to attack Elvis Stitch and then plant himself atop the Swedish Game Awards trophy where he proceeded to shout out his defiance across the office. Although we are quite understanding when it comes to an identity crisis of this magnitude, we have to draw the line somewhere.
In the end we had to send in Cloud to take care of things, Advent Children style, which resulted in a tiny little mess with orange tufts splayed across it. Though a bit shaken up, we think Bingo has learned his place for the time being. Time will tell if he can start leading a normal life in the office, or if we will have to send him back to the jungle.
We are still at the office, polishing the GDC demo of Boingo and writing gibberish on the blog. The new version is beginning to take on solid form, and it feels good to be able to show it off in just a couple of weeks.
Pete & Nimble signing off…
We recently showed you the design process behind the main character used in our initial Boingo prototype. If you missed it you can check out Part 1 - The Missing links (opens in a new window), and if not you can just jump ahead to Part 2!
The initial Boingo prototype was developed from scratch during a period of about ten weeks and has since then participated in a couple of competitions and won a couple of awards. During the prototype’s lifespan we have received lots of feedback and criticism from many different people, including publishers and other industry people.
With the completely new version of Boingo that we are currently working on, we are aiming to make the most of that feedback by addressing some of the issues that has come to our attention. We are also striving to enhance almost every aspect of the game, technically, visually and gameplay-wise. One of the things that we have been working on is an enhanced look for our main character, and we are now going to show you how we went about doing just that.
Here’s an interview from the Gameplayer/Paradox event we posted about a few weeks back. It’s from Swedish (Scandinavian) free gaming magazine Game Reactor, and it gives you the first glimpses of our new art style and character design. The folks over at the Game Reactor did a great job putting this one together, so kudos to them!
We will be posting Part 2 of our Character Design walkthrough in a couple of days, so be sure to check that out! If you want to see Part 1 of the design walkthrough, you can find it here.
Following up this week’s press update we also have a video from the finale of the Gameplayer and Paradox Interactive game development competition. It is in swedish, but since we are in such a good mood today we have translated a section of the video for your leisure. The part in question is the interview with us and the creators of A Wikiped’s Story, and the translation can be found below.
We just wanted to share a few things that has been written about Boingo with you guys. First up is an article from Super PLAY about the games that has received support from the Nordic Game Program. Super PLAY is one of Sweden’s largest gaming magazines, so that it’s of course nice to be featured in it! We have taken the liberty to highlight the part that mentions Black Drop and Boingo in the scan, which you can find here. Since it is in swedish we have translated that particular part for your convenience:
Boingo is described as a two dimensional platform/racing game and is being developed by Black Drop Studios. Boingo has previously been awarded to prizes at the Swedish Game Awards 2008 (Best Execution and Gamer’s Choice). When we get in contact with Peter Lübeck at Black Drop Studios he tells us what the recieved development grant means for the continued development of the game.
- With this development grant, and the feedback that we have received during the last year, we will do thorough upgrades of all the parts of the game.
Black Drop Studios, who is aiming for a broad demographic and the development of ‘interesting games’, is currently looking for a publishing partner to be able to finally release their Boingo.
As we mentioned in our previous post we recently showed the first glimpses of the redesign of our Boingo character during a press event. We will reveal the new character here on the blog in the near future, but before we do that though we would like to show you how the character has evolved from the first sketch to the current version. The first batch will take us from the first ever sketch to the design we used in our first prototype.
Yesterday was quite a hectic day. We arrived in Stockholm around lunch time and went straight to Hotell Hellsten where the Paradox press event was taking place. After a number of announcements by the respective developers regarding the Paradox 2009 line-up it was our turn to talk about Boingo. During the brief presentation we showed some concepts of our main character redesign for the first time, with good reception. We will present the new look on the blog in the near future so that everyone else gets to see it.
After the event it was time for interviews so we went up to the bar to try and sort out the chaos caused by everyone trying to talk to each other at once. First up was radio show [gejm] by Uppsala Studentradio, quickly followed by norwegian gaming site Gamer.no. During the following hour we were interview by danish site Pixel TV, Gamespot UK, swedish site Gamereactor and british magazine PC Zone.
After the interviews we went from the hotel to Restaurang EGO for the Paradox Game Pub with food and drinks galore. After a couple of hours of mingling and talking to assorted industry people and press it was time for the announcement of the winner of the Gameplayer.se and Paradox Interactive game development competition.
Congratulations Flipside of the Divive!
We hope this will prove to be a great opportunity for you guys!
After the announcement we we’re interviewed by Gameplayer.se and they have said that they will publish videos from the event on monday, so be sure to check that out. Also if there is anyone reading this who has their own game project that they’re working on, don’t forget to enter the next cycle of the competition (Sweden only). Information regarding this should be made available on Gameplayer.se during next month.
We will be posting links to any interviews or articles regarding the event as we find them, so don’t forget to check back or subscribe to our RSS-feed.
Now for a stroll around the streets of Stockholm before going back to Karlshamn. So long!
