Mattia-Traverso
Latest
Your body is a wonderland in Kinect platformer 'Fru'
Fru is two platformers in one game, with one layer of the world shown clearly on the screen, and another layer uncovered within the silhouette of a player's body as it moves in front of the Kinect camera, in real-time. The silhouette world offers new platforms, enabling players to reach the exit door in each level (with a little hopping, ducking and contortion). Fru comes from a collection of indies during Global Game Jam 2014, which prompted developers to create games with the theme "We don't see things as they are, but as we are." The team had 48 hours to create the game, and Fru ended up winning the judge and audience awards in the NHTV Breda Global Game Jam competition. If you have a Kinect hooked up to your PC, you can download Fru right here. Game Designer Mattia Traverso – previously of indie documentary game Riot and IGF 2012 student finalist One and One Story – tells Joystiq that he hopes Microsoft notices Fru so the team can expand on the idea. "We definitely have plans to bring this to the next level," Traverso says. "We are starting to work on it to make it an actual, full game and I am contacting Microsoft right now to see what we can do .... Right now we are trying to give it some visibility, to show the big M that this project is actually something interesting that people like."
Riot in the streets, at a desk, in your hand: An indie documentary game
"Riots are powerful. They are moments in which lots of different people blend into a unique and cohesive mass to fight for their freedom. It is something that you cannot pursue for yourself, but only for a greater good. How can that not be incredibly emotive?"Designer Mattia Traverso approaches rioting as an intense, human experience, from both sides of the kevlar: Rioters take to the streets for freedom and glory, while the authorities fight back in an equally fervid attempt to retain order. Riots are masses of thousands of stories about people, and Riot is a game about humanity.Traverso, creator Leonard Menchiari and programmer Ugur Ister's Riot has raised almost triple its $10,000 funding goal on Indiegogo, and it still has 10 days to pull in more money. Money that the Italian trio will use to travel the globe, seeking out and documenting riots in Italy, Greece, Egypt, Russia and other countries, interviewing rioters and law enforcement officers, gathering videos, photos and eyewitness accounts – then throwing all of that into the game."Phisically visiting these places and joining the live riots is fundamental," Traverso tells me. "One cannot describe something he does not know, and that is something that the 'serious' movie industry knows very well: You need research. How could we even claim to describe such an important topic without having lived it multiple times or having talked with the rioters or the police?"
'What's it like to have your indie game stolen?'
No journalist, friend or decent human being wants to ask that question, especially not to an 18-year-old first-time developer who recently saw success as a student finalist in IGF 2012. Unfortunately, today we asked Mattia Traverso that very thing about his game One and One Story, after the events unfolded live on his Twitter feed: Traverso alerted the community that One and One Story had been counterfieted with "THEY STOLE MY GAME" and a succession of five tweets that included seven capitalized f-bombs.One and One Story hadn't been cloned or copied, but it was completely stolen -- code, graphics and all. The group that stole it implemented a few unused assets that were hidden in the game file, Traverso told Joystiq, and its version has completely broken animations and stretched graphics."It's kind of hilarious," Traverso said hours after his initial discovery. But when he first got the Google Alert and tracked down the stolen game to the App Store this morning, Traverso didn't find anything about the situation amusing."I panicked. I didn't know what to do, so I screamed on Twitter," he said.His screaming didn't go unnoticed and it drew the attention of other indies, including Canabalt's Adam Saltsman. Saltsman instructed Traverso to fill out a DMCA takedown, and two hours after his discovery Traverso was able to breathe a little easier.
