24/7 Rehearsing!

It's exactly one month before we fly off to Seattle, for the Imagine Cup Worldwide finals, and we are super excited and anxious about the whole thing. We want to give our best out there, and impress the judges, who will be announced in early July. 

We are working on the presentation, the game itself and our booth setup in parallel, and everyone is yet once more giving his best shot, in order to achieve our maximum potential at Seattle. 

There are too many things yet left to be done and they are all need to be done at once, unfortunately, this Summer won't be yet another Summer, but it will be THE Summer, at least for Team Genesis.

At the moment, we have also been working on Xbox 360 controller support for Dementia, in order to make the hands-on judging even easier for the judges themselves. While doing so we happened to be walking on the street, going to meet up and get some parts of the presentation ready, and we stumbled upon ourselves... at the newspaper of course! Ethnos newspaper has us featured in the back cover (Still good for now) and showing off our achievement to Greece.

Ahhh, the feels in this image are going over 9000. Anyway, back to the point. We feel like we're having our own little publicity here in Greece, and the more people see us and the more people like our page, then the more obligated we feel to those greek people and our followers to do exactly what they all want deep inside their hearts. A really good position for Greece in Imagine Cup, this year.

Did you know that Greece has never ever sent any game to the Imagine Cup competition, in the games category? Well, this is a first, at least, and we feel honored to be the ones to do it. Nevertheless, this doesn't really say anything else to us, rather than a plain and simple Imagine Cup trivia :P

Well, that's all for now,

happy gaming to all of you :)

The Road to Seattle

It's been some time since our last post, but to tell you the truth we have been resting like there's no tomorrow, for the most difficult, yet the greatest responsibility we had up to this time: We will represent Greece at Imagine Cup's world wide finals in Seattle, in late July, Games Competition!

Seattle, here we come!

So, what have we been up to?

We have been working hard to deliver the best possible experience for those who will try out our game at the world finals. As of today, we are revealing 2 apps that will be your handheld companion in your Dementia: Tales of Blackthorn Manor experience.

Announcing Dementia: The Companion App for Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1 !

You can get the Windows Phone 8.1 version HERE
You can get the Windows 8.1 version HERE

You can also search for the app with its' name: "Dementia: The Companion App - Imagine Cup 2014"

We have also been tweaking with the gameplay a bit, so you can now play faster, by adding in a "Turbo Mode AI" feature, making AI bots playing faster, giving you much faster gameplay for those who are more "Action-Oriented" gamers.

Every day here at Genesis Game Studios is a day of creativity, inspiration and awesomeness, the week following we will be making our appearance on TV for a live interview at Star Channel and this weekend, we will be presenting our game live to the audience of a 3-day Game Development with Unity on Windows Platforms event with Jaime Rodriguez (Microsoft Principal Program Manager) and Cark Callewaert (Unity Lead Technical Evangelist).

Finally, we are proud to present our video presentation for Dementia for the World Semifinals:

That's it for now! See you later for more content! Thank you for all your support!

New secret project on the horizon!

Hello everyone!

It's been a while since our last post since we have been very active the last few days concerning the deliverables of the Imagine Cup World Semifinals (WSFs).

What's happening over here is a period of re-creation. We are trying to cool off, rest a bit, after the huge coding burnout that occured to us, and then out of all the sudden, a new idea came to mind, a new inspiration... Our next project.

We won't reveal much for now, except the fact that at this moment, the Game Design Document for this game is being written, and that we value each and every second of our productivity, so no days go to waste!

It won't be as big as Dementia. We want to go simplistic this time. But the end result will be fun, and we guarrantee this!

Until next time, where we will "hopefully" have some content to share with you :)

The Imagine Cup Team

15 of April..!

The day of submission! That's it! All the rush has come to a temporary end...
The game is now on "Imagine Cup Greek Finals" version, so we can use it for live demo in the finals.

But who is behind this game we've been talking to you about so much?

Introducing... us!

Kostas, Panos, Jordan and Manos are the guys who will represent Genesis Game Studios as "Team Genesis" at Imagine Cup 2014 greek finals at Microsoft Hellas.

But let's introduce ourselves:

Kostas - Game Design & Management
He's responsible for designing most aspects, mechanics and systems for the game, as well as the cards, the Characters and all the text you can read ingame and all the wireframes of the game itself. The one who had to get the message across the rest of the members, so they knew what to code and how the characters would behave.

He was also responsible for overall project management and to guide the team through the most difficult phases of the game, from prototype to the playable version the game has finally reached the last days. He is also the team blogger and that makes him feel awkward talking about himself in 3rd person. Marketing and Business are the other fields of the project he has been working as well, along with the deliverables of the World Semifinals or other Challanges such as project blueprint or UX Challenge. He is the Team Presenter for the project.

Panos - Systems Programming
He's the guy behind the cogweels, wielding the glue that binds every crazy mechanic together. In the team, he is known as "The Terminator" for his amazing coding speed as well as his ability to execute tasks one behind another. He quickly grabs his flamethrower every time he detects a bug and instantly kills it with style.

He is the one responsible for making core structures work in our game, such as the Pathfinding, the Combat, Stealing and Looting Systems, the Artificial Intelligence for our bots as well as their behaviors. The doors, walls and the rooms are in the game because of him. He also gave birth to our User Interface by punching in GUI code and every now and then tinkers with the performance of our game concerning bumpmaps, better texturing, lightmapping and overall quality of the visuals of the game.

Jordan - Gameplay Programming
Endless hours on skype would not be the same without Jordan and his contribution to the coding of Dementia. He would initially have a heart attack and then go and attack some gameplay tasks himself as he is responsible for bringing the initial vision of the game through the game prototype.

He is also responsible for most of the Gameplay that Dementia currently has, including usage of Items, Seals and Events, the maker of the Turn Flow System that rotates the Characters, the one who punched in all the different Damage Distribution cases in the Combat System. Without Jordan, Manos and Kostas would not have any Room Editor to create and Design Rooms inside the house.

Manos - Room Designer & Optimization
Every little detail you can see inside the Rooms is because of Manos. Every furniture, or light, or even the small portraits behind a rusty statue has come from him. He is responsible for designing every single room in the game along with Kostas and making sure that every model used is fully optimized for using in-game.

He is checking every furniture for meshes, verts and polys and has to dessimate them in order to be used in the game properly. He also did quite some Art direction with our artists to create models and furniture, as well as the overall quality (look and feel) or our rooms.

Hello Imagine Cup - Hello Dementia

Been 2 days since our announcement of HexCraft, and now here are some big news for you : Genesis Game Studios will do their best to compete on Imagine Cup 2014 , Games Competition.

Hello World, Hello Imagine Cup

Do you like ghost stories? Do you like exploring the unknown, possibly encountering numerous supernatural beings? What if...

Stories. They are everywhere. In pictures. In our minds. In our surroundings. Every house has a story and every object around us has a story. What if you could experience the story?

"10 years ago, in our hometown, we used to gather at the entrance of a big old house that was built upon a graveyard, just across a Church. Legend has it that spirits of its' former dead owners wandered around the house and we wanted to experience seeing a ghost hovering above the floor. Careless and mindless as we were back then, we ventured into the house with flashlights in order to explore it. 

The very first night we attempted to open doors and explore its' rooms 2 of our flashlights went off at the same time, and we heard strange noises like footsteps along with a chain slowly approaching us as the sound was getting louder and louder. This was enough of a chilling experience for us, as we went out of the house and never ever came back. Who knows what REALLY happened there after all? "

"We never ever mentioned about the house... Until now."

Based on this story, we were so deeply inspired to create a game that would, in its' very essence, bring this thrilling ghostly experience to you, as much as possible, and as such, Dementia, the land of Madness was born. (Dementia = Madness in Latin)

We created our very own universe, with its' crazy characters, all willing to explore places with bone-chilling stories, curses and haunts. The very first place which has many stories to share and experience : The Blackthorn Manor.

To get to the point : Introducing Dementia : Tales of Blackthorn Manor , a survival multiplayer turn-based strategy game with horror elements. The Blackthorn Manor is a cursed building with 3 different floors: The Upper Floor, the Ground Floor and the horrible Basement. Up to 6 players may enter the house at any time and start exploring it. Every time you play, the rooms appear randomly, and you never know what can happen, what is waiting for you on the other side of the door... Can you open the door?

Every room has a story to share, or a seal to break. Each time you break a seal, there is a chance for you to trigger a curse. Every curse changes gameplay dramatically, as one of the whole lot of you explorers, turns into a traitor and most of the times transforms into a horrific supernatural (or not) creature that the rest of the explorers have to fight.

You never get to chose sides, that's the risk of exploring the Blackthorn Manor, your goal is to either destroy the cursed one, or when  YOU get to be the cursed one, your goal is to destroy the others.

What this game has to offer is many many random stories, random traitor setups and a different style of play for each curse that unfolds.

Following is a screenshot of our prototype that we have been working on:

4 Brave Capsules are exploring the Blackthorn Manor...

Every Friday we will be keeping you informed about Dementia : Tales of Blackthorn Manor and we will be updating you with concept art, models, environment. Stay tuned, there is much more waiting for you...

Experience the Curse...

First week at MIC is over!

What a crazy week it's been! We had a blast over at Microsoft Innovation Center, on our first days of finally working together as a team. Did you know that we were working over skype for at least 7 months? It's a relief finally seeing each other's faces, going crazy on our laptops in this great workspace we are provided with!

Our website is live, our blog is live, our social media started spreading everywhere, we will do our best to keep the fire burning and inform you guys about our latest endeavors. Speaking of which, the Genesis Team says "THANK YOU" for this initial love by liking our posts and our pages, we would like you to know that it really helps build the morale to keep us going.

The Genesis Team

And we have one more announcement to make! This week, on Saturday, Genesis Game Studios along with Microsoft Hellas, are organizing a Unity3D event! Kudos to Found.Ation for providing the space to do such an event. Don't you miss it if you live near Athens!

Stay tuned for more juicy updates in the week!

Hello World!

And we are now officially launching our website, our blog and our very existence in this big world of Gaming Industry, Genesis Game Studios are now live!

Finally, after all this hard work we will be starting this blog, in order to write our thoughts, to share our experiences and to serve as a mere developer’s journal in the holy quest of game development, as we will be posting about the development workflow, design and prototyping.

Should you want to know about who we are, how we are working on our games, which games we are working on and how do we feel about it, this is the place for you!

This will be a great ride towards game development, so have no fear, hop on our ship, join us in our adventure and share the awesomeness!

Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, to catch up with our latest news! J

Catch you folks later!