Linkies, a Indie iOS game
Hey fellow artists!
I'm the sole artist here at VisualDreams and we are currently working on our upcoming game, Linkies. We are a small indie team of three developers. Two coders and one artist and have released two prior games, Capcom published Herman the Hermit and Slam Dunk Basketball.
Linkies is a physics based connect game built in Unity 3D. The game is built in full 3D with lightmapped backgrounds and rigged/animated characters. We have tried to really give the characters life by adding many expressions to the rig. We still have about 1½ months left in development so there are a few features and a lot of polish left.
We are currently looking for beta testers for it as the beta will launch in about two weeks. To register for the beta simply follow THIS LINK and register, it takes a minute and after that installation etc is handled directly to your device through email. The beta is for iOS only!
http://tflig.ht/KFBoEh
Here is a capture from the alpha...
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENtf7DBLfCs"]Linkies Alpha Gameplay - YouTube[/ame]
If anyone is interested in how the backgrounds were built, character creation, gui animations, development in Unity or whatever I will gladly create some tutorials or blogpost about anything requested.
www.VisualDreams.se
I'm the sole artist here at VisualDreams and we are currently working on our upcoming game, Linkies. We are a small indie team of three developers. Two coders and one artist and have released two prior games, Capcom published Herman the Hermit and Slam Dunk Basketball.
Linkies is a physics based connect game built in Unity 3D. The game is built in full 3D with lightmapped backgrounds and rigged/animated characters. We have tried to really give the characters life by adding many expressions to the rig. We still have about 1½ months left in development so there are a few features and a lot of polish left.
We are currently looking for beta testers for it as the beta will launch in about two weeks. To register for the beta simply follow THIS LINK and register, it takes a minute and after that installation etc is handled directly to your device through email. The beta is for iOS only!
http://tflig.ht/KFBoEh
Here is a capture from the alpha...
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENtf7DBLfCs"]Linkies Alpha Gameplay - YouTube[/ame]If anyone is interested in how the backgrounds were built, character creation, gui animations, development in Unity or whatever I will gladly create some tutorials or blogpost about anything requested.
www.VisualDreams.se
Replies
No, seriously. We really appreciate all the testing we can get, and there are more than a few people with keen eyes for game art in here to give great feedback on that part.
We have been listening to all the great feedback from the first beta and have made the levels alot smoother and have also added a system to add stages into each level to make them a little longer. A main menu have also been added as well as a real early version of a endless mode.
So if anyone want to try it simply register through THIS LINK
Thank you guys!
www.VisualDreams.se
Anyways, here they are. Feel free to comment and critique and I will try to fix any issues you guys have. Will try to get a video capture as well so you can see it in motion (looks a lot better with all animations working).
World 1
World 2
World 3
World 4
Thanks guys!
(open the email with your device or login to their site through your device)
The game is made with Unity 3D and the backgrounds are built of a mix of both transparent planes, opaque 3d meshes and a lot of UV animations and some vertex shaders for animations on the leaves. Lights are baked with Unitys Beast light engine, really smooth and fast.
Hope this gives you an idea of how the backgrounds are set up.
I gotta say that I love Unity, first game we have made with Unity and coming from Maya it is just perfect, everything works like you want it to :P
Edit: Damn photobucket lowres...
[ame="
Enjoy!
good stuff!
That is great to hear, there is nothing better than hearing that people like the game you developed
I will forward your comment to our soundguy, I'm sure he would love to hear that. We have been pushing him real hard to compose a song that fit the game and I think he is onto something with this one.
The idea is that through the game more and more mechanical objects will be added (as seen in world 1-4) and the final world is the "boss" that is poluting the poor yellow creatures (aka linkies) world.
So for the final world I started blocking out a wrecked robot. I will have it animated, eyes moving, steam pumping and the jaw opening hurling out shapes into the water, the fingers twitching or something.
It just has a default texture and 2 minute lighting since I'm focusing on the shapes.
Feel free to paintover or whatever, I am really just mocking around here and inspiration and ideas are really welcome
great job, so far!
Will rig the damned thing se how it animates, have a few texture issues to fix as well.. The horribly stretched pipe thats closests for instance :P
great job making a simple game idea into a great fun looking game!
in awe!
Waiting for the coders to hand me a script to randomize between a few different idles but here is a test animation anyway.
[ame="
Now I will try to make a short intro where the monster comes alive and starts spewing out shapes into the world. Hope to get away with a few close ups and a intro animation for the robot.. 30 seconds max..
Some feedback people, there has to be stuff that sucks that I can fix :P
With the textures are you using any normal maps at all?
No just using diffuse and lightmaps. The textures sometimes look kinda funky to work with the strong colors in the lightmap so it's alot of tweaking textures together with tweaking lights.
[ame="
I also made some effects for the consumeable powerups the player can purchase and activate. The A-Bomb is kinda like a level skip so therefor I wanted it to be quite massive. Here is a capture of it.
[ame="
Hopefully the device won't die from the light because of the fillrate, it is a plane with animated alpha to create the lightflash. The bomb is a simple mesh with texture offset animation.
I'm quite done with the art now, all worlds finishes, rough intro in place so I will mostly be adding animations to the characters and polishing stuff.
I'm Batman!
We have finally sent Linkies in for review. Four months of development and the two weeks of total crunch but we made it!
We are planning some suprises for the release that is going to be in September but untill then here is a Gameplay Trailer that we put together, enjoy!
[ame="
And some screenshots:
www.VisualDreams.se
Why not put up a site where people can see much a indie developer really earn on launch day?
So we did... And on the 6th of September you can follow the launch of Linkies at www.linkies.se
We will present, total number of downloads, earned revenue and position on the US top charts for our new game Linkies in REALTIME!
The countdown has started!
We have already got some coverage from a few sites such as PocketGamer and we are really excited about the release! Check out the launch trailer below, hope you like the fluffy and colorful artstyle :P
iTunes link:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/linkies-free/id561678270?mt=8
This game looks beautiful