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."
Bounden either turns players into graceful ballet dancers, courtesy of the Dutch National Ballet's expertise, or into giggling messes, de Jongh says:
"Playing the prototypes with a lot of people showed us that there are two ways of playing Bounden: One, in an elegant matter, and two, in a more playful, Twister manner. Both have completely different experiences, I can tell you, and they both have something interesting. You get to do a beautiful dance with someone with the elegant levels, only to get completely tied up and confused with the playful ones. So there's something for everyone, really."
Bounden is due out this summer, first on iOS and later on Android.
