The Nuts and Bolts of our new project & Horror Unity Event at 30 of March

Hello Everyone!

At first, I'd like to let you know that Genesis Game Studios along with Student Guru Unipi will be hosting a 3-Hour Event at University of Piraeus, on 30th of March, with me talking about Unity3D Game Development and more specific a quick development of a 3D Horror Survival Game. This is the poster for the event:

And thus, the time has come to reveal more details about our new project. It is Friday the 13th after all, which fits perfectly into the mood of our game.

So, last week, we said that we are preparing a somewhat big project, at least moving away from mobile titles a bit. So, it's a great pleasure for us, assembling a new team once again, and going through the path of PC Indie Game Development.

At this very moment, we will not reveal the true name of our game, and will merely call it with a codename, more precise, Project AH.

Okay, straight to the main course then! What is the game all about?

Project AH is going to be a First Person Adventure / Horror Hybrid game that is going to be featured in full 3D, and released in the PC Platforms, aiming for as many digital stores as possible, including the Windows 8 Store.

What can someone expect from the game? Of course, everything that you can expect from Adventure Games and Horror Games. In a nutshell: Puzzles, Riddles, logical thinking and Spatial Reasoning Puzzles, that each affect the progression of the story. And on the other hand we have the creepy presence of a terrifying Monster that lurks around, that has made the goal of its' life not to let you rest. Not to let you think straight before you solve the puzzle.

As a result, the player will be in constant vigilance and in parallel will try to solve the puzzles thrown at his path in order to proceed through the game. Everything will be story driven, and it's the player's goal to go and find out the rest of the story. The whole theme and setting of the game will be revealed in later posts though, so you know exactly what we have in mind..!

The thing that got us into the project in the first place was our urge to beautifully and creatively manipulate the strongest and most ancient emotion the world has ever known : Fear. Which can be easily elevated in First Person Horror Games when done right.

So, that's about it on our genre and platform reveal, next time we'll talk about the inspiration part and story and setting.

As a side gift, here is a screenshot from our prototype build:

"Open the door, or Stay right where you are?"
Dummy Prototype Screen with Dummy Textures on the walls. Don't mind the Sanity Meter. It's built for testing purposes.

Have fun!

Genesis Game Studios' New Project

It's been quite some time since we posted anything on our blog.

To tell you the truth, we were so busy catching up and cooking the next game in our horizon, that we wanted to be sure.

So, let me tell you a quick story.

6 months ago, I got a job as a Lecturer at SAE Institute. My field of expertise would be no other than Unity Game Development. Then, I got to meet many greek students who wanted to become game producers and change the image of Greece in the fields of game development. I saw the fire in their eyes every time they talked about their dreams. It would seem as if they felt that living in Greece would cut their wings, not let them fly and not go after it. But after a couple of off-the-record conversations they realized that it's not the country they live in, it's how badly they want to go out there and become someone. So, after some days of thought, a couple of inspired students stepped up and talked to me about creating something big for their portfolio. Something that would exceed their expectations of themselves.

"We want to create a game that would exceed our expectations and would not fit into the mobile genre. We want to remember something big after we graduate and having something significant and unique to show to possible employers out there. We want to go Indie."

These words pierced my mind like an arrow to the knee. I knew I had to take part in this!

And so i said "meeeh, why not" and thus me and some other students began assembling a team of developers, mostly students who wanted "the big hit" for their portfolio. And then, after talking to a couple of students from the 3D Animation Department of SAE, they quickly became interested in our secret project idea and wanted to go full throttle into doing something different for themselves.

My goal was to assemble a team of passionate students who wanted to take their next step in their game development career and have something in their portfolio / CV that would stand out.

And then... The idea of our game was born.

So, I'm officially announcing that we, Genesis Game Studios and this small student team will work on a new project, that will not be a mobile game, and we plan to release it on as many digital stores as we can.

A Note Left on the Table. What does it say? Find out on our next blog post!

What about the project you say? We will not reveal THAT much for now, but be sure to keep in touch, as it's going to be our biggest project yet, and this is going to be, yet again, since Dementia, our Development Blog, to keep you guys informed of how things will work on this game and what we are going to do.

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!

Imagine Cup Games National Winners!

We did it! We actually did it!

Team Genesis won 1st place at Imagine Cup Greek National Finals, and we are proud of sharing our latest news with you! Judging was a tough call, taking over 2.5 hours to complete, but in the end, we managed to creep everyone out with the Blackthorn Manor, and the Rat King!

We are already preparing our deliverables for the World Semifinals where we will be faced off with all the games throughout the globe. Our hopes are high and so is our excitement!

This time we won't say much, we'll let the pictures talk for us!

The Team, as we were preparing for our 10-minute presentation

Our Game Designer and Project Manager, Kostas, presenting Dementia

The croud that got to see the first ever public reveal of Dementia

Awards Time! along with mrs. Eleni Rachaniotou, one of the 4 judges 

The Team - Proudly showing off their trophies as National Games Winners

New merits for Team Genesis, Leaking Screenshots!

Hello again, people! This time we got EXTREMELY exciting news for you!

First of all, we would like to announce that Team Genesis won its' second reward in Imagine Cup - Honorable Mention in UX Challenge, climbing to the top 10 of the Games Category in the world once again...!

User Experience (UX) Challenge was about creating 2 documents filled with diagrams covering basic gameplay flow of our game, the target screens and their functionalities, 2 LowFi Wireframes about our gameplay and menu screens as well as one HighFi Wireframe concerning the gameplay.

You can see Imagine Cup's Official UX-Winner Announcement here: http://bit.ly/1kHjeTH

Kudos, team!

Secondly, and that's somewhat even more awesome for sharing with you, we will now leak the first ever "ACTUAL" screenshot of the game, which is actualy the high fidelity wireframe that we submitted over to the UX Challenge.

In the following screenshot we are revealing quite a few things:

1. The characters in 3D !
2. Some of the Rooms of the House!
3. The Whole User Interface!

So... without further ado, behold, our UX Challenge Screenshot:

Note: This Screenshot was taken in January. Trust us, there is MUCH more to show you :)

Things are about to get nasty, as one week remains until our game is submitted for the Greek Finals so now, team Genesis is going on full power! Let's do this!

Bugs on the loose!

There are bugs on the loose! Identify them, burn them, don't let them live...!! Oh! Hello!

As anyone can guess we are still on burnout mood. April has arrived and we got sweet news for you..!

The past month, HexCraft got featured in over 38 markets, we gotta admit we did not expect that coming, as it grew smiles on our faces and now we are working with a better mood..!

Right now, the Imagine Cup team is creating the initial and final screens (The Character Selection Screen and the Winning Screen) as part of the game flow, so that players may chose any character from the 6 given and take control of their very own destiny! The rooms have been redesigned a tad bit, some optimization here and there, and still we are quite a few AI tweaks away from going to playtest phase right before the greek finals!

Greek finals... yes, it has been announced, and it's getting more and more official by the day, here are the rewards of the greek Imagine Cup finals :

The Spoils of war!!!

Did you know that we are using Trello as our lead project management platform, for assigning tasks to everybody and killing off all those bugs that keep running away from our intense test cycles? We've been falling in love with it lately as we overcame our fear of trying out something new besides Visual Studio Online and Excel.

Stay tuned for our next post, as I am now promising to all of you that we will leak the first ever screenshot of the game with some rooms open, characters scattered around the house and the whole first draft of the game HUD on screen. :)

Till next time,
have fun all!!!

Presentation, Progress and Awesomeness

Today's Thursday and we are around a month and a half until the Greek Imagine Cup finals.

The whole team is giving its' best self to overcome the difficulties we are facing every day with our code. Traversal is finally fully functional, you can see the characters ascending and descending staircases, falling into deathtraps and sliding gracefully into the dark corners of the manor.

All the work is focused around the Scenario at the very moment. Such tasks include:

• Spawning the Rats around the Manor.
• Perfectly Positioning them in their respective nodes.
• Correctly fitting the Rats into the Turn Flow.
• Getting the Rat King into the Ritual Chamber.
• Punching in the Winning Conditions of each side.
• Watching how wicked the Rat Ritual is!

Coming right up after this, we will focus on creating the Single Player aspects of the game, meaning that the User Interface will only draw our selected Character on Screen, and all other characters (Not Controlled by the Player) will be controlled by the CPU. This is our last stand, our final obstacle between us, and a game ready for the judges : The AI.

Meanwhile, we are working hard on the presentation for the Greek Imagine Cup Finals. Here is a quick view of the first slide : 

Team Genesis - Imagine Cup 2014 Greek Finals

The presentation itself will require ultimate overview of who we are, what we are doing, why we are doing it and trying to take a deep dive through all the aspects of our game, such as Concept, Gameplay, Goals etc.

Further into the idea, we must discuss about ourselves, how we met, why did we decide to do this for Imagine Cup, how did we work at this project and what's the whole business idea behind it.

We are relaxed taking on Business again, as we believe we can punch in a couple of slides that perfectly explain our competition, our customers, our financial management as well as how is the game going to be distributed and monetized through various platforms, as we have already received an honourable mention at the project Blueprint Challenge and the feedback from the judges has been far more than just valuable.

So, here we are, trying to glue everything together.
Oh boy, what a month April is gonna be...

Till next time, Rat King says "Hello!"

The Curse of the Rat King

Hello people and have a great week!

It's Monday and it's about time we gave you an exclusive update for Dementia : The First Scenario to be implemented in the Game for our Imagine Cup version of the game..!

Story :

" It's been 10 years since anyone has set foot in the Bloodthirsty Manor. Spectral Remains of tortured people roam about. All the explorers shake hands at the entrance and they hope they do find what they seek in this God forsaken place.

Cracks on the floor, Chains can be heard from far away and nearby, a sound that no human ear can easily discern, strange light from unknown sources is filling our hearts with hope, as we venture deeper and deeper into the house.

We can hear the rusty gears of the machinery room every now and then, yet there is no power in the house. Only candles to show us the way, it feels as if the kind spirits of those who seek revenge from the evil ones, guide us to find their dirty little secret. You can feel there is darkness lurking in every corner of the house, under every sheet, or blanket, all you think you'll find is blood.

Everywhere. 

The whole house itself may be acting against us, but we know our true purpose here. And we hope our minds can bear with what tricks it will play us. Our sanity is the only veil that covers our terrified soul from the aparitions of this damned place. Dark Clouds gather and cover our footsteps. 

We feel like there is no way out. Most of our comrades seem to have lost their minds, they all have grevious wounds made by either cursed objects, animated furniture, or even themselves. Everyone is on the verge of insanity. Especially this shady man, with which we entered the house. But who is that man really?

You can hear his screaming. You can hear his pain. You cannot feel anything less than empathy for that poor soul. He seems completely ruined and drained. Yet here comes the skittering sound. Noises of low-pitched squeaks now roam in the house. You can feel that the house is infested.

Suddenly, the noise gets louder and louder. Every time. Things only get worse, as we have met up with our friends at the Entrance Hall. Except this one man. We know something has got to be happening. His screaming has now reached a climax. We can feel his tears on his face. He is not screaming because he saw something. He is crying out loud. He knows he has met his demise, or will probably do so soon.

Loud Skittering sounds are getting louder every second. We hold hands with our friends. We curse the moment we decided to enter that pesky manor. Why bother? Why leave that hot cup of tea and our favorite books lying in our rooms, yet to be finished, just to come here for "our greater purpose"? 

When we took the courage to walk forward, we saw him. He was not the same as before. He had a skull on his head, his body was hairy and pale gray. He had a long tail and his hands held a staff. Our friend became a were-rat. He were frozen in fear when we saw him. He completely ignored us, rushing towards the basement. We knew that such abominations should not live in our world. He was not our friend anymore. He was a demon.

"The Rat King Himself - One shall be deemed worthy enough
to command the army of Rats. That night, he is the chosen."

As we ventured towards the basement ourselves we were attacked by his vermin followers. Rats! Rats everywhere! It was a bloodbath. So we took matters in our hands and keep moving towards the basement. He heard wicked words out of the WereRat's mouth. He was their king. And even more Rats appeared out of thin air. 

We knew our final, true purpose. We HAD to destroy them all..."

The Curse of the Rat King - Scenario #1

We took the liberty of giving you out our first Scenario this way.
But what will you be at the end? The shady man who turns out to be a wererat? Or the fellow companions who must battle their way through the maze of Rats?

Most of all... Who do you think emerged victorious?

Leaking one of the Rooms of the game and Promotion across the Internet!

It's about time Dementia got some publicity! We had our time on the project and we decided to do some sharing around the internet so even more eyes can see our game!

We want to create the community around Dementia : ToBM, we want people to start talking about our game, to anticipate it coming, we want to go to Imagine Cup Greek Finals and win.

So, for all those guys that managed to get to our blog, we have one huge question:
Do you know someone or have a friend who likes Board Games? Show him this blog!
Do you have anyone who likes online action with a bunch of friends online? Show him this blog!
Does your dog like ghosts? Show him this blog!
Do you know a bunch of people who enjoy horror stories around campfire at midnight ? Show them this blog!

Everyone who likes board games or video games should check us out!

We can't stress it out more - We believe that word of mouth can help spread this idea even further, and generate the amount of audience required for Imagine Cup and success for this game. We believe in our idea, now it's your turn to believe in us :P

We look forward to talking to each and every one of you, to hear out your ideas for the game, and to share as much as we can by the time of development of the game.

Anyway, back to the usual stuff!

We got our monkey programmers on site to create fantastic traversal experiences at the moment! Interestingly enough, the house itself is made of 3 floors (as you already know) - The Ground Floor, where all the ordinary rooms can be found, such as the Kitchen, the Dining Room, the Abandoned Room, the Altar and/or the Hallowed Organ Room.

Then there is the Upper Floor, which is a bit creepier if someone is fond of heights... You never know where you might end up to! Such rooms are the Attic, the Collapsed Room, the Office and the Master Bedroom.

Last but not least, we have the most dark place of the game: The Basement Floor! The Basement has all those creepy rooms that may give more spice to your horror stories, and all those horrible stuff happen there. Rooms of ultimate darkness include the Ritual Chamber, the Incinerator, the Machinery and the Crypt.

Now, what were those "traversal" experiences that we mentioned before? Our explorers can reach the upper floor by ascending the Grand Staircase, found right at the start of the game. Then, through the Collapsed Room, they can fall down to the basement. Their only escape is the Staircase to Foyer which leads to a Ground Floor Tile. Finally, they can find themselves in the Basement after discovering "The Leap Of Doom", a semi-collapsed room found in the Ground Floor that leads directly to the basement. One way!

Currently we are making sure that they reach their destination as requested from the in-game GUI.

Now, for the highlight of the post I would like to share a Leak of 1 Room with you - just to get an idea of what the house will evolve into:

Behold: The Main Entrance Hall, Including Foyer and Grand Staircase Room Tiles !!!

Welcome to the Blackthorn Manor. Dare to Open the Doors?

And with this... I shall leave you :)
Experience the Curse!

Bashing code for HexCraft like crazy!

The days are passing and HexCraft's first release is being prepared. We got galactic monkey demons writing code, so you guys can finally play!

This week we have started going into rage mode for our promotional art, and adding finishing touches to HexCraft, such as Facebook login and In-App purchases. We expect to be done around the end of the week, if everything goes as smooth as we hope it will!

Each level you play is going to have a dead-simple goal : Solve the puzzle. That's it! You don't have to worry about the best time, or the best moves, anymore, as we are only recording these for getting you into the global leaderboards of HexCraft, meaning that if you like playing for fun, then we won't stop you, or mess up your experience!

The very first release of HexCraft will be for Windows Store, and soon there will be a Windows Phone version coming right after.

Stay tuned people, till next Wednesday!

HexCraft Promotional Image - Coming first on Windows Store

Let's do the HexCraft Dance! - Gameplay Video

Hello people!

How's everything going? It's HexCraft Wednesday! Everything goes smooth in the world of the hexagons. We are adding timers on each level and playtesting like mad, every single level. Some of us suck at this game, we got to admit, others are just getting better, so we really hope the time we give out for each level suits everyone's playstyle and it really helps them out to gather as many stars as possible.

Besides designing for levels we are just begining turning our wireframes into in-game UI, so that is "under development" as well. Social Media is still a pain, since we have been researching quite a lot on how to implement such features correctly.

Remember what we promised you last week? Was it a candy? Was it a toy? Or maybe was it a HexCraft Alpha Version Exclusive Gameplay Video? Bwahahahah, and just as promised, here is some video footage from our gameplay currently in alpha version (Which only means it will only get better)

By now, you get the idea of the whole game, and for those who still haven't i gotta warn you it may not seem as easy as it seems on first sight. There are actualy some hexagons that will make your life easier and some that will make it harder, by turning around all other nearby hexagons. Sure, you want to turn that Cyan Hex into an Orange one, but just by doing that, you may turn all Orange Hexagons around it to Cyan Hexagons.

Think before you act! But then again, there is the factor of "Moves" and "Time". It's a tough call...

Catch you next week folks! ;)

Hexagon Cells gone crazy!

Guess what? It's HexCraft Wednesday!

Time to fix you up with the latest..!

So, what's been going on at Genesis the latest week? With all those crazy projects on, our minds are literally blown, yet we are so thrilled to just keep going at the same pace as before to deliver..!

HexCraft is coming to a pretty decent shape, since we have finished up the procedures of level design and we have been working on visuals, leaderboards and porting to Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.1 Platforms.

Each level now ought to be tested thoroughly, as those little cells are taking away chunks of our time, in order to properly create a challenging enough experience for everyone out there. 

Looks Yummy. Next Week!

We have a special treat for you people, next week - We promise to hook you up with a sweet Gameplay Video, so stay tuned, there are puzzles to be solved!

You can see our progress here, when our programmer has failed enough times on this puzzle so he can now solve it perfectly right in front of you, hey dont cheat now, when you get the game, okay? ;)

This HexCraft Puzzle is calling out to you "SOLVE ME, SOLVE ME!"

Welcome HexCraft to the Genesis Family!

Happy new year everyone! 2014 has arrived and we promised for special news! So here they are!

We are announcing our first puzzle game to come on Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 Platforms : HexCraft !

HexCraft is a hexagonical tile puzzle game, featuring over 200 puzzles for you to solve and sharpen your
brains! Can you beat them all ?

The concept is pretty simple. Rotate all the hexagons so that you solve the puzzle! Just tap on the hexagon to rotate itself and all its' neighboors around themselves but be aware, rotating the wrong hexagon may make the puzzles even more challenging than they already are!

But then again, rotating the right hexagon may result in making your lives easier..!

Here is a sneak peek from our Level Design :

We focus on designing pretty, challenging levels to bring you hours of fun!

We will be bringing you news of HexCraft every Wednesday, so stay tuned people, as we have even more spicy news to share!