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If you love adult coloring books, you'll enjoy 'Hidden Folks'
Hidden Folks is a deceptive game. It appears simplistic, featuring black-and-white line drawings of industrial plants, dense cities, and forests populated by campers and critters. But, its black lines hide multitudes of secrets: It's an interactive hidden-object game with intricate, animated environments that players on iOS, Apple TV and Steam will soon be able to explore. Players interact with certain aspects of these scenes, tapping to open a garage door and reveal a hidden person inside, or discovering secret words in a tiny letter factory. The stark aesthetic of Hidden Folks makes it seem like a giant, digital, adult coloring book. Because of this association, it seems like an inherently soothing experience. That's on purpose, according to veteran independent game designer Adriaan de Jongh.
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."
Guide a jellyfish swarm under the sea in Jelly Reef
How do you guide a bloom of jellyfish to the ocean floor if you can't actually speak their language? You inherit the power to guide oceanic currents and push them to safety using the water around them. The thought of a life-defining force bending to the finger swipes of an onmiprescent higher power may terrify some, but that doesn't seem to be the case in Game Oven's Jelly Reef. Look at their peppy little faces – they're just happy to be here! In Game Oven's stark departure from its ballet-supplementing Bounden, players will dodge hazards, dive into secret paths and gather jelly eggs spread through 26 levels. Their jellyfish swarm will cross paths with non-aggressive forms of sealife as well, with creatures like a crab, starfish and manta ray awaiting help with their own mini-stories. Jelly Reef is due to take a dip on Windows Phones by the end of 2014, with a release on iOS and Android following sometime next year. [Image: Game Oven]
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 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."
Bam Fu taps into the iOS, Android markets for free
Bam fu, the next game from Fingle developer Game Oven Studios, is available right now for free on iOS and Android devices. It's a fast-paced multiplayer game where each player tries to out-tap his rivals and secure the most pebbles. It's simple, but could settle some pretty major arguments. Game Oven is already at work on a side project, which the team aims to spend just one week developing. It's a minimalistic, two-player-only game that Game Oven founder Adriaan de Jongh teases with the following image: two circle icons with fancy hats and the prompt, "hold longest to win." Again, simple – but absurdly intriguing.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Bam fu
It's not that there are too many indie games; it's that there aren't enough hours in a day to play all of them. The Joystiq Indie Pitch curates the best indies to play now and watch out for in the future. What's your game called and what's it about? Bam fu is a two-, three- or four-player game on one device where you tap on pebbles – a fancy word for the buttons in this game – as quickly as you can to make them your color. Other players are trying to do the same and the colors change in a cycle, so the pebbles will definitely not stay on your color for long. The game goes on with you trying to reclaim your pebbles as fast as you can, until all, or almost all, pebbles are your color. That's when you win. What's the coolest aspect of Bam fu? We think that the coolest aspect of the game is that you can play it with everyone. Any gender, age or language; literally everyone! The rules are so simple that it doesn't take more than a second to get them. In fact, we are yet to find a player who doesn't skip the the tutorial. Plenty of thought has gone into small details to keep things simple. For example, we are using the fingers on the hand to count your points, so it's immediately clear that you play to five. We have also made the game accessible to colorblind players, which was a challenge for a game than distinguishes between players by color. This is why the pebbles were designed to point toward a player's corner.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Fingle
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Adriaan de Jongh and Bojan Endrovski of Game Oven feel out the indie industry with Fingle, a finger foreplay title for iPad. What's your game called and what's it about?The game is called Fingle, which obviously is a play on words on "finger." It has a bit of mingle and fondle in it as well. The game is about bringing people closer together. A lot closer.A bit more in detail, Fingle is a cooperative two-player puzzle game for the iPad. Both players drag up to five buttons on color-matching targets. The targets often move and you move your fingers with them. The puzzles were designed in a way that it is impossible to avoid contact, resulting in intimate or awkward intertwined finger moments -- depending on who you play with, of course. And there are a few slow funk tunes in the mix to set the mood.Is Fingle solely a foreplay game, or is there a deeper strategy you envision for it?Fingle is most definitely more than a foreplay game. The first part of the game is intimate, but as players get accustomed to the feel and touch of each others fingers, the game slowly switches focus. Later levels require more and more cooperation and trust among players to finish them.The foreplay element is the lure, the hook, it's what will catch your attention. But it is also what sets the mood throughout the game. The visual style and music are completely true to that idea and help reinforce the formula. The result is an intimate game, sometimes suggestive, but only as dirty as the mind will make it.
