Development is sometimes painful and hard but most of the time it is pure fun! The past couple of days we’ve been hard at work with getting the demo up to date in time for our GDC appearance.
There’s been some major changes to the core concept of the game and for the first time in a while it feels like we’re making some great progress!
I’ll try to set aside some time for a write up of the current state of the game, but for now you’ll have to make do with a play testing video.
We’re speaking Swedish in the video, but hopefully our reactions are sufficient to understand what’s happening!
Cobalt has been nominated as an Independent Games Festival 2011 finalist in the Excellence in Audio category! So incredibly well-deserved nomination (in my not so humble opinion), thanks to the great work by anosou (music tunes and jingles) and thewreck (sound effect engineering). With help of friends, of course The jury’s motivation:
The soundscape in Oxeye’s Cobalt was also praised for “giving it the amount of life it has”, with “immersive sound effect work that absolutely sells the atmosphere,” and a soundtrack that “stays away from melodic motifs to let the overall ambience take center stage.”
Cobalt also received honorable mentions in Excellence in Technology and Excellence in Visual Art!
A lot of people commented that they couldn’t really see what was going on in the teaser, so we thought it might be nice to really introduce Cobalt in this video.
For people who’ve played a lot of platformers before it might be a bit too detailed, but hopefully you can get a feel for the awesome platform flow we’re striving for.
In this first of hopefully many dev videos for Cobalt we demonstrate some of the features for the map editor.
Also you get a unique (ones in a lifetime) opportunity to hear my soothing voice (/Kinten).
Check it!
Edit:Should have looked at it before uploading. I promise, it’s not as dark ingame
Why hello there, let me introduce myself. My name is Mattias (also known as anosou) and I’m the composer responsible for the music in Cobalt. While this mainly means I’m composing the music for Cobalt I also have a lot to say about the musical direction and help take decisions regarding how the music is handled in-game. Nothing fancy really but incredibly rewarding. This also makes it logical for me to talk about the music of Cobalt and that’s why I wrote this post you’re reading! So, I suggest hitting the jump below for some inside info on the Main Theme of Cobalt!
Crunchin’ is not like surfin’ – not as cool and far less enjoyable. For some.
To us it’s a lifestyle. Crunching (intense working that more often than not leads to bloodshot eyes and veins being popped) is what we love – and crunching to get the IGF demo ready is what we’ve been doing the last couple of weeks.
This is just a small update on the matter that I will be working at Mojang this winter and onward. Mojang, and especially its founder Markus Persson (Notch), is pretty famous for the game Minecraft, and I really look forward to helping them out! This feels like a perfect match to me. I’ll be able to do what I feel I do the best, and Mojang is a successful company that has the “indie spirit.”
This will not change matters for Oxeye very much, either. Project B is mainly developed by thewreck and Kinten, and if anything it could even help Oxeye a little since I will need to move to Stockholm, where they already live
About Project B, we will be announcing its new name very soon!
Our little fellow Blueface has been a little low lately. All alone and working every day… Summer has been cold too, and all we’ve got is the grim darkness of the Swedish winter to look forward to.
But then, from beautiful California, there shines a light at the end of the tunnel! Spelunky and Meat Boy are hanging out and seem to have a great time. Blueface just had to send a big…
We should’ve posted about this earlier, but for the last few weeks Mattias Häggström Gerdt (anosou) has been working on the music for Project B. Mattias has made the soundtracks for games in the past, such as Kaleidoscope, and is an active contributor to OverClocked ReMix.
Playtesting is fun!
The jury’s motivation:
