How things work out on Project AH

Hello everyone!

It's been a week since our last post and we are very happy with our reach so far. Over 200 people have subscribed for our Horror event on the 30th of March and this makes everyone happy, and fuels us for more sweet things to show you!

So, this time, we thought it would be a good idea to share our working methods and our workflow for the project. So how was the idea structured and went into Unity?

The Mechanics (Game Design)

First of all, we wanted to merge core mechanics of 2 of our favorite game genres, them being Adventure and Horror.

We want to keep the original thinking and puzzle part of Adventure games, making people use pieces of paper in front of their PC to write down the clues we give them! We want people to start cross-referencing and gluing together the core hints and images / events they have witnessed in game in order to get a better grasp of the task at hand, how to solve puzzle X? Should we think about spatial recognition and/or riddles? Should we use different parts in the house in an illogical, yet clever and surreal way? Should we just google the answer? Hopefully, the thrill of solving a puzzle on your own will feed their curiosity and help them solve the puzzles on their own.

At the same time, we wanted to keep the horror part that makes horror games... well. Horror games! That comes down to a deranged and mutated creature lurking around in the dark corners of the game environment, always looking for you, waiting for you, wanting to kill you in many ways. The lurking horrors that make you stealth, sneak past them and think of ways to avoid them, since our character will be practically useless against them in pure combat. It all comes down to using your head much more than using your wits.

Combining these two together, we have created a formula that requires the players to be constantly vigilant with their surroundings, and always on the lookout. Being unable to stand in one place the whole time, will sure terrify some players, especially those who take their time into thinking and solving puzzles, because you will never be actually safe...

Spatial Recognition Puzzles and Sequence is playing a major part.
Not to mention the surreal illogical thinking required for some of the puzzles.

The Story

What good would a horror/adventure game would be without the story element? That s the reason for delving deep into the classics: From early Gothic Fiction, such as the Castle of Otranto, to Poe's writings and with a deep love for Lovecraftian lore and the occult, we've written a true horror piece that will shake the very foundations of your sanity, depriving you of your well-earned rest and make you lose countless hours of sleep, engaging you in one of the most disturbing adventures you have encountered so far, in order to solve the ultimate mystery of one's life. 

And the best part?

It's staged in the heart of all that is morbid, in the late 1800s, the end of the Victorian Era, where civilizations' foundations change from the roots up and the occult takes over every dark corner, every little crevice of one's mind.

Just another ordinary looking haunted house. Why the heck not?

The Coding Part 

With a few scratches on some notepad, agony, pain and some brainstorming hours later, we knew exactly what our game needed in order to build up our mechanics, so we got together and in a few days prepared a very draft prototype of the game, white-boxed with dummy graphics. We are going to post about these mechanics in more depth in future blog posts.

Having a clear image of those 2 genres in our head, it was no hard task to implement such mechanics. It would seem that our game had the minimum available mechanics and it was still playable. After looking through the features over a second iteration, we started adding more tasks that add to the immersion of the game, such as better AI, better VFX and better SFX Systems.

THAT door... Is sure to be hosted in another blog post all by itself. Mark my words...

The Audiovisual Part

After the breakthrough we had with the mechanics being programmed and the story being written, we had to marry the puzzles (Mechanics) with the plot (Story) of our game. That combination however could not be seen or heard with the proper props.

It was then, when our artists stepped into the battle field of production and had their say into how the props and models would appear in game, how creepy the feel and aesthetic would be and how much immersion would the audio part add to the game. All that, in conjunction with the main story plot, the mechanics being tested in the prototype scene inside Unity, and the unstoppable flow of ideas from the minds of our art and audio team.

A 3D Head, because i have nothing to share here.

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.

Genesis are back to action! And opening a Tester Group!

Hello everybody! How's it been this Summer? We sure had a blast that one, for sure, and on August we just recovered our energies and prepared for yet another great year!

This time, knowing our target, we will primarily focus on mobile games mainly on Windows Phone and Windows 8 platforms, while also focusing on what the user really wants and how he feels.

Having all those great people testing Dementia has really given us the insight we wanted and helped us make a better game for them, as long as we had this constructive feedback, and we are really glad supporting them in creating the best experience for them. After all, our main focus is just that. Creating games that are addicting and fun for any gamer!

We are happy to announce our "Genesis Beta Tester Group"! This will be a closed group of Facebook where we will be inviting literally ANYONE willing to be a beta tester for our future games!

What you will be gaining?

• Be among the first to play our games. 
• Help us mold the game towards the direction you want.
• Mention inside the game credits as a "Beta Tester".
• In-Game Exclusives based on the game you are beta testing (This will be announced on every game)!!!

How do you apply ?

Pretty simple actually! Just send us an email at genesisgamestudios@outlook.com or just send us a PM through our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/GenesisGameStudio asking us to become a beta tester! :D

That's all for now! Happy September people!

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 :)