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.
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!
Hello everyone! Peter from Black Drop here, and I am going to try to summarize the experiences amassed during the week, meaning GDC. It has been non stop action from the beginning, with meetings, lectures, parties and other things taking up all available time. That’s what’s caused the lack of updates on the site, ergo massive summary post.
It’s now less than 36 hours until we’re leaving Karlshamn for San Francisco and GDC. As usual there’s a lot of stuff that needs doing before the event, so the last week or so has been quite intense.
One of the things we have been working on are the materials that we’re bringing with us, like one-pages, portfolios, business cards and last but not least posters. We just came from the print-shop where we picked up all of the stuff, some of which you can see in the image above (click for somewhat larger image).
We also picked up the brand spanking new Boingo poster (below). As a treat we have provided you with a nice high resolution version of the poster. Just click the image to see it! Or if you prefer you can right click on this link and select Save as to download it directly.
Stay tuned during next week for updates from the show!
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.
