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Bounden, Fingle studio closes its doors in April
Game Oven Studios, the independent Dutch team behind body-morphing mobile games Bounden, Bam fu, Fingle and Friendstrap, will be disbanded in April, studio co-founder Adriaan de Jongh announced in a blog post today. Game Oven will release its final game, Jelly Reef, in March on iOS and Android. Game Oven developers de Jongh and Bojan Endrovski will continue to support Bounden, Fingle, Bam fu and Jelly Reef, but they will remove Friendstrap from stores on February 1. De Jongh and Endrovski founded Game Oven in November 2011 with their first game, Fingle, which was nominated for an IGF Nuovo award. Bounden, a two-player dancing game for mobile, is nominated this year for an IGF Nuovo prize and a GDC Innovation Award. Game Oven received financial support for Bounden from the Dutch grant program, Game Fund, and worked with the Dutch National Ballet to create the choreography. And, despite Game Oven's closure, Bounden is doing "really well," de Jongh told me today. "We're not making millions, no, but Bounden's profit is larger than the development costs, so maybe awards are not that disconnected from the financial success of the game," he said. "With Fingle, IGF helped us build an audience, helped us reach that critical mass, and even though we no longer do any marketing effort for Fingle, we still make one minimum wage from the game every month. The way things look now, it seems like Bounden is on that same road."
Bounden brings its dancing charm to Android next week
Following a short delay, developer Game Oven has revealed that Bounden will dance its way onto Android devices on July 3. Though Bounden prompts players to dance, it can't properly be described as a traditional rhythm game. Game Oven has worked in collaboration with dancers from the Dutch National Ballet to create a game which asks players to move their Android gadget up, down, and all around in a swirl of kinetic motion that either translates into graceful, fluid dance steps or hilariously off-tempo flailing. Text doesn't really do Bounden justice, so instead watch the above video from this year's Game Developer's Conference where our own Jess Conditt attempts to keep in step alongside designer Adriaan de Jongh. The Android incarnation of Bounden has yet to receive an official price point, but if Game Oven follows the same pricing scheme it used with the game's iOS counterpart, expect to pay $4 for your virtual dance card. [Image: Game Oven]
Bounden is an iPhone dancing game that gets better when you hold hands
You met on Tinder, you romanced on Snapchat, and now your smartphone can also help you to get physical. (No, not in that way, pervert.) An iPhone game called Bounden has just arrived at the App Store and it's designed (in partnership with a ballet company, no less) to instruct you on how to make beautiful shapes with another person. As demonstrated in the video below, you both hold onto the phone and then try to move some gyro-responsive dots around the screen. Get it right, and you end up with some nice twirls, a high score and a partner for life. All for $4.
Bounden delayed on Android, but you can help it arrive faster
Game Oven planned on simultaneously releasing the dance-supplementing Bounden (demonstrated here by our own Jess Conditt) on May 16 for iOS and Android, but there's been a stumble in the development's routine. The sheer number of Android devices on the market has made Bounden's Android version difficult to finish - after all, how do you release a gyroscope-based game across dozens of devices when they can't all agree on which way is north? With additional testing of the Android pool, Game Oven has found that some devices use gyroscopes that don't work on all axes, while others are faking gyroscopic data with accelerometers. Of course, there's also the devices that don't have a gyroscope in the first place. Game Oven has settled on whitelisting Android devices individually, stalling Bounden's Android release until the developer feels it has cleared a sufficient amount of devices. You can help make that happen a bit sooner, though - Game Oven has asked for Android users that are willing to test Bounden on their devices to send an email to eline at gameovenstudios dot com. If you decide to help, be sure to specify your device's brand and model in your email. [Image: Game Oven]
Two-player ballet with iOS, Android game Bounden
This is "the most elegant" Bounden dance routine that took place at GDC, according to Game Oven designer Adriaan de Jongh and producer Eline Muijres. Sure, they may say that to every person who grabs the other half of de Jongh's iPhone, but it still feels special. Bounden is a two-player game that uses a smartphone gyroscope to make players dance together. A reticle takes center stage on the phone screen, perched on top of a sphere. That sphere spins, bringing around lines of circles that have to match up with the reticle – with two players holding opposite ends of the phone, that means moving together in smooth, complex ballet moves. Bounden is made in collaboration with the Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet – actual, professional dancers helped craft its moves, and it shows in the game's inherent grace. Take a look at some making-of videos here. Game Oven is committed to building mobile games that encourage physical interaction, as its previous titles (Fingle, Bam fu) demonstrate. The studio describes Bounden as a mix of Twister and ballet. Bounden is due out on May 21 for iOS and Android phones (not tablets, because that would be terribly inelegant). [Images: Joystiq, Game Oven]
Do ballet like the Dutch pros with mobile game Bounden
Indie developer Game Oven has a knack for making people do odd things with their mobile devices, starting with its first game, Fingle, which makes two players intertwine their fingers in weird ways, or its third game, Friendstrap, which asks two players to hold onto one iPhone for as long as possible, providing talking points and a timer – if you let go, you lose. Bounden is Game Oven's fourth mobile game, and it asks two players to dance together, each holding onto the ends of an smart phone and twisting their bodies to make the cursor hit a series of intended bullseyes. "Bounden's initial idea was simply to make two players dance together, but after a dozen of prototypes we noticed that we were not able to make the dances ourself," Game Over designer Adriaan de Jongh tells Joystiq. "Choreography is something people do for a living, so we figured we needed one. I scanned the internet for Dutch choreographers for about 10 minutes, only to find that the people at the Dutch National Ballet were the coolest guys in the field. I called them, a week later I met them, and two weeks later they agreed on helping us."
