Blogs - excamedia

We decided to stop working on the old build, coding, animations and models. Too many problems with the old build. Quite a big decision after 12+ months of working on it. We've started over and we've more than 2 minutes of gameplay. With dummies of course and not much feel/gameplay/storyline. The team has expanded with a couple of professional guys and we have more interns starting in the new academic year. Also Robert will be interviewing 2 marketing interns for a 5 month period. Overall we'll be 15+ people strong. Also we're going to a bigger office 119 m^2 in the dutch game garden.

A lot will be coming in Q3 and Q4:

1. We're going towards the Epicon (10k+), Firstlook (130k+), gamescom (340k+) and Tokyo games show (220K+ visitors).
2. We're going to do a Kickstarter
3. We're going to create a forum
4. We're going on Steam/Greenlight.
5. More twitching our game development
6. More interaction with youtubers
7. More screenshots and test builds!

Besides this project 111 still continues, creating the contact list of influential gamers.

If you want to be part of the clumsy club, sign up for our newsletter (1x per month): Excamedia.nl

A Clumsy Adventure big update #2

for the normal lay out visit: Bit.ly

Introduction
Welcome, oh clumsy one!
We’re glad to announce some exciting news! The team, after a constant reflection and dedication of several work weeks, has been able to deliver a new build! Full of enhancements and new features; the most notable news is especially the new camera system and the new models created for this occasion along with new animations. The SFX team has been able to provide various enhancements to the sfx system. Finally, at last but not at least, the fighting system has finally been created!
You can play the game here:
Gamejolt.com
Please provide feedback via:
Docs.google.com
Game development
Synopsis of the gameZack is a marine, video games fan and actually a real clumsy guy. One day during a virtual military test, Zack accidentally destroys a supercomputer for VR training and his superior decides to discharge him. Someone however is watching his every move and kidnaps him, bringing him into a different reality where he meets a mysterious voice telling him that an evil alien race is about to invade Earth, brainwashing all people thanks to Zack’s “mind schemes” and frequencies that are able to bypass the normal schemes of human will. Knowing he is the only one who can save the day, Zack sets off for a journey across an absurd Earth to beat each general of the alien army to get the access to the alien world to beat his nemesis, the evil alien emperor, before it’s too late!
Game Music and Sound effectsThe composer (Dwight a.k.a. Chief) created several pieces for the Dark Level so that there were several options to choose from. At the end the team decided what the best audio was to represent the suspense and tension in it.
The task of the composer was to bring excitement and an atmosphere of mystery that can create a big empathy into the player for this level; the audio also needed to have retro sounds mixed with some modern tunes for this is basically what A Clumsy Adventure is about: to bring back the feel (this also includes audio) of the way we used to play videogames back in the day. Kamisachief is doing a great job creating and composing such tracks.
The sound effects are also provided by Kamisachief, he created and edited them in software like Propellerhead Reason, Adobe Audio and Cubase, using voice actors, free online sounds or from his own sound library. Actually new levels are coming up, so new audio has to be made and the composer is all over it. More epic and memorable sounds are coming your way so keep your ears open!
Want to hear some more examples or extra audio for A Clumsy Adventure? Go to the www.kamisachief.nl or Soundcloud.com
Art:Zack has been remodeled using ZBrush to improve some elements of his model, looking so much better now; with a view to make new animations in Maya, adding much more flexibility and less possibilities of crashes.
Zack has now a better facial animation rig, a necessary condition for better cutscenes; reworks have been done on various old animations, as many of our fans asked.
Many cutscenes have been created using Maya, but the need of creating an interactive cutscene to better involve the player in game’s mechanics moves us towards a wide rethinking of our needs and possibilities.
Various monsters (including The Shadow) have been improved to make them more impressive; another monster that will give you a hard time is the Big Crocodile created using ZBrush. Really stressful for you!
To please you, fans, a nice collection of 3D printed art from the game has been prepared. It will include heroes, monsters, some parts of levels etc... so be prepared to see these cool figures collection!

Programming:
EnemiesThis is a new addition to the game, fundamental for good gameplay.
We made several different enemies in the game. They will be a true challenge in terms of AI, granting the player a need to focus on strategies along with the power of their attacks in terms of damage.
All enemies have their own AI/behaviour, going from sophisticated moves to the classical getting “angry” or “calm” according to the player’s position.
Each enemy is located on a coherent terrain for them.
Some enemies have an impact on the environment, either in form of a puzzle or to get to a certain point.

CameraAfter a couple of sessions where we invited people to come over and test our devbuild. They said the the depth is really hard to see where you walk. This was something that concerns us because it’s a 2.5D game. After a couple of tests we came to a point where we had a good point of view, but the 2.5D concept falls a bit of the table. So now we made the camera dynamic. Whenever you need the 2.5D view for certain gameplay; the camera will change directly ingame.This is something we still need to test a little bit more.
MenuAdded a menu fully playable with keyboard, mouse and xbox controller.
CreditsAdded credits in the menu that shows the name of the very clumsy developers.
Object TriggersObject Triggers are objects in the game the player can interact with. Think about this stuff like coins and traps.
In the Dark Level we have tried to balance the coins’ quantity. We did it for multiple reasons: one of them is that otherwise it might end up causing problems with the upgrade-shop if not balanced correctly, allowing the player to buy too many upgrades or not being able to buy any because the coins are not correct; the second reason is because coins are a good way to fill a part of the level so it doesn’t feel empty.
Coins aren’t the only pickups now: rats drop ammo crates.
Something exclusive to the Dark Level are the Dark Voids, Dark Portals and they “Darkness”.Dark Voids are giant red tornado looking objects that will suck the player into the abyss, however their blue counterpart, the Dark Portals, help the player advance the level.
“The Darkness” is a giant shadow orb that looks like the stuff that surround some enemies in the Dark Level. It will chase the player to the arena.
There are also three kinds of traps in the actual build: a deadly spear able to cause Zack’s instant dead, when he steps on a platform; the second trap is box full of painful nails that hurt Zack, when he walks on them; the last trap we made is a giant head shooting arrows with a deadly impact on Zack.
Balancing Not yet started.
Fixes ZackComplete new animation script stops the bugs and strange movements of Zack.
Zack can only jump one time now and is calculated by a ground check.
Fightsystem calculation is improved now. Zack has a base attack and a base defence that will calculate the enemy’s attack and defence * a multiplier, so each attack delivers a different amount of damage according to each enemy.
RenderingImproved rendering with collision culling, mesh colliders deleted, less polys.
This increases the frame rate (first we had 8 fps, now 70 fps).

Marketing
Email:Robert@excamedia.nl (anything clumsy is appreciated)
Clumsy Mailinglist:Excamedia.nl< (top right is the subscription form)
Twitch:Twitch.tvStarting 2 months ago with a livestream on Saturday. We brought retro games, recent games which were hot at that time (think of Dark Souls 2, Killer Instinct and more recent Titanfall). We got a small steady group of viewers and followers and they are rising in numbers. We will continue this and mix it with news in the games-industry, games we personally played and development builds live from our office at Dutch Game Garden.

Instagram:Instagram.comWe post all our Twitch announcements on Instagram, cool gaming pics from the office, Maarten’s collection of old retro games and consoles and we’ve gained a lot of followers. We feel that the combination Twitch and Instagram is working really well for us in terms of visibility and making A Clumsy adventure visible amongst the gamers. Also with the right hastags we are really focusing on retro gamers.
FacebookActive as always, Maarten shares our instagram, twitter, twitch, and what not posts on Facebook on our special fanpages:Facebook.com
Facebook.comSo in the past months until now he posted a lot of material about A Clumsy adventure, artwork and screenshots and everything else related to Excamedia, the team, A Clumsy adventure.
TwitterTwitter.comMostly Maarten tweets a lot to interact with the followers and fellow indie developers out there. Every friday it’s #ClumsyFriday in which Maarten will ask a (retro)game related question or puts a screenshot from his huge collection of retrogames.
PinterestTony and Dwight are really killing it at Pinterest. As we try to show as much of the development process to the clumsy squad here are the links of the artists:Pinterest.comPinterest.com
SlideshareDo you want to see the conception of Zack? Slideshare.net
IndieDBAs we try to be really thorough in our marketing efforts we make sure that we use all the relevant channels for getting attention. We’re still testing the waters with IndieDB because there is a really neat statistics tool there.website: Indiedb.comstatistics: Indiedb.com
GamejoltBesides the obvious channels this one is really important. They have a chat room for general, developers, lets players and multiplayers. Chatting with these guys, some of them indie developer, some of them only want sub4sub or that you subscribe asap, is so important because you get instant feedback on whether they like your game / website or not. Also they provide insights on how to do it better, we even have a small following on Gamejolt for our game. Besides that they are genuinely interested in you and your game. So our marketing department hangs out a lot in this chat.
Not so Clumsy ForumWe can’t tell you too much about it right now! Sign up at our clumsy mailinglist and we’ll let you know, when you could be part of the inner super secret tea drinking noodle eating clumsy circle!
Company developmentSince Shahid Ahmad, Sony strategic manager, made a public apology on behalf of Playstation on Twitter, we’ve been noticed more by video game webjournals and game shows. Especially on Twitter people follow us more and look more closely on what we post. And I (Maarten) would like to add that we appreciate this kindness from Sony and the way it’s helping us from the very beginning until now. Sony loves Indies and we love Sony! On a sidenote Maarten also wants to thank Rami from Vlambeer for his recent efforts when he helped us out. Vlambeer is and remains the icon of Indies according to us!
Epicon, Animecon & KickstarterFor the kickstarter we had to wait for the availability in The Netherlands, but it’s finally here and we are busy in preparing to launch a Kickstarter as soon as possible! So KEEP YOUR EYES ON OUR PAGE(S)!!!
Epicon and Animecon are two important expos we will attend to show the public our upcoming epic challenging and funny action platformer “A Clumsy Adventure”. If you go to Animecon (13 - 15 June in The Hague) please come to the Games Room to try out what Dutch Indies have to offer and play our game live on Twitch!
For Epicon (5 and 6 July in Den Bosch, Brabanthallen) we will join the Dutch Game Garden at their Indigo booth to show A Clumsy Adventure to the public. What we are going to do during this event, beyond showing the game, remains a secret for now.

Future events we want to attend but not confirmed are:- Games Com Cologne, Germany- Tokyo Game Show Tokyo, Japan- First Look Utrecht, The Netherlands

Recently we got featured as a Developer Spotlight at Gamesauce website
Gamesauce.org
Maarten did various podcasts with Game Over Yeah and Gamecowboys.nl
Directory.libsyn.com
Youtube.com
Some awesome youtubers made a nice preview of our last build, check it out here:
Youtube.com
Youtube.com
Youtube.com
Youtube.com
Also Maarten visited events such as Indievelopment:
And Maarten visited Gamekings Studio to talk about First Look 2014 and meet gamers and developers:

If you like the game and what we are doing, we also have a job opening for a 3d animator: Reddit.com

Job description for animator

Requirements: Animator need to have good skills in animation in any software he would like (3Dsmax, maya, xsi, motion builder or anything else that is compatible with Unity (.FBX)) animator will be charged of the animation of all the characters provided by the team (some will be reusable for others characters), character are as variate as humans, aliens, monsters and beasts. The goal is to provide our action platform game with great animations for fighting and moving, but egally some cut-scenes mut be asked.We’re looking for a person that is fun, able to cope with stress & a lot of feedback and must be able to work with deadlines, needs to take initiative, must have good (English) communication skills & willing to learn a lot about indie development.Skype and headset are mandatory ( for our meetings )

We offer: profit sharing with for the first project, possibility to get permanent contract, also experience to work in a big (10 people) international team, a hard working team that is always online from 6 - 23h (GMT +2), work on games which will be published by big publishers, gain experience working with multiple platforms such as Wii u & PS Vita.

Check out our website for more information: www.excamedia.nl/press (international indie game development studio)

Kind regards, Robert Hopman

So.... you're all thinking where were the cool posts, where was the action, why didn't we post more gaming articles about our game or even worse: we were totally silent. Well lets put it like this, our whole marketing department had some really important exam so he needed to pass that one. Now he is back and more cool posts will follow, first update: Our amazing Jules had made a new presentation with concepts about the sicily level. Let us know what you think about it in the comments (feedback is really appreciated):

So what is the game about?PART ONE: A CLUMSY BEGINNINGWhile taking part to a special VR TRAINING to join the marine forces, Zack, a clumsy soldier, ends up destroying an army supercomputer and for this reason he’s discharged. However, he doesn’t know he’s been watched over by a secret group of aliens who wants to conquer the planet. He’s kidnapped and through his mental schemes, the simplest on Earth, the whole human population is brainwashed leaving the world defenseless; Zack doesn’t remember what happened and finds himself in a dark place, his only friend is a mysterious light that guides him, telling him what happened: Zack’s the only person who can save the world because his mental schemes are useless against him. To succeed he has to find the dimensional keys owned by each general of the alien armies who are already on the globe: he has less than 4 days to save the world before the Evil Alien Emperor will come with his fleet bringing destruction on Earth.His first trip will be throughout Europe where Zack finds out how the Light’s story is actually real, so he gives his best to get to England and beat the first Boss: the Leprachaun. Zack gets on a boat trying to reach America and free his place but he’s eventually shot by alien jet fighters sinking his boat.

We're going to stream dark souls II

www.twitch.tv/excamedia

Also Jules has made a new Slideshare:

Slideshare.net

Hey guys & girls,

as I see a big gap between indie game development companies and Youtubers/Twitchers that want to (p)review our games, I thought of searching for a list of Youtubers and Twitchers, unfortunately this list doesn't exist... So I'm going to build it. If you have a Youtube / Twitch Channel, please fill out this questionnaire:Docs.google.com

all the responses will be shown at the second link of this page:Keepcalmandgoto.quora.com

Kind regards,
Robert

So, some time has past since Excamedia
published my last blogpost about hidden secrets and easter eggs.
After writing these blogs I saw something that's going on for a
while now. That's casual gaming.... What's with this label that
people put on games you play sometimes or people who play sometimes?
Before this casual gaming label there was no such thing. Here are my
thoughts after 30 years of playing games.

Let me start with the beginning, which I briefly described in my previous
blog posts. I was 6 years old, your average kid who's busy with
school and unfortunately the first bits of homework which I hated.
But that's a common thing will all kids I guess. When it was around
my birthday parents gave me a Philips
Videopac G7000 and I remember just staring at it.

My dad finally hooked it up and when I turned
it on I saw a game called Bowling

I was amazed that you could actually do bowling
on a TV. While I was still amazed I started to play and found out
that from this moment on video games were for me the ultimate
multimedia entertainment medium (repeat those last words 3x). And I
was hooked: I bought magazines, got books from the library to look
at. My parents supported me so I always got the latest consoles and
computers when I saved enough money. So you can say I experienced
every console-war there was. While I got older I noticed that around
me games were still considered for small children and as I became 13
my aunt did tell me a lot of times why I still play Super Mario bros
3 because that's for kids. When I asked her to try as it apparently
was very easy she refused. Of course, most parents and that is still
nowadays a issue, don't understand the medium that is video games.
So that part didn't change over time. What I did saw was that more
and more people got a computer at home, first a commodore 64 or a
Olivetti computer and a IBM computer.

It was so normal for me to have a computer or
a console at home, but for most people it was, like the early era of
the tv, relatively new. Friends and family were amazed how much I
knew about games and computers/consoles. I believe it was from 1995
where a computer really became a standard at home and so were video
games. This started basically the digital era where you see nowadays
people play games everywhere and on any device. Laptops, tablets,
handheld consoles, smartphones. People love games. It's obvious
that the video game industry sells more than Hollywood. You see that
Hollywood struggles with making movies and you see film adaptations
of Gran Turismo and Need for Speed to live up the needs of the gamers
alike.

So you may ask, where does casual gaming fit
in? Well you could say that it's due to the fact that gaming
nowadays became entertainment for everyone and not just for hardcore
games (also a pretty stupid phrase!). Also funny to mention that
Western people often felt that people in Japan are stupid for playing
video games everywhere, while nowadays we also play video games
everywhere. So who's stupid now? Yes I have been to Japan enough
times to judge it correctly as the gaming culture there is brilliant.
It's just as common to go to the arcade and play games then to go
to the cinema. It's pretty damn cool I can tell you. Gamers know
why you should go to Japan....I only need to mention Akihabara.....
And the maid cafe's because they are a very funny in a cool way to
witness.

Before I go berserk on a sidetrack let me focus
on casual gaming, because there is also a downside of the fact that
gaming became also casual..... The difficulty of video games,
nowadays I feel that games are far too easy. Let me give you a past
example and a recent example. Note that I am not saying the bad
example is a bad game...no it's not. Okay... that's clear let's
start:

When I was young, you didn't have internet,
no walkthroughs and in my case no friends around who played video
games or later a Nintendo Hotline. I played games such as
Castlevania, Platoon, Shadowgate, Dragon'sLair, Megaman, Ghouls ‘n
ghosts well the classics.... And they were all difficult because you
had to learn where the enemies where, you had to see through the
pattern of the end-bosses, where the items are located etc. Most of
the time you had limited lives and limited continues. And when they
reached 0 it's most of the time tough luck for you and please start
over! The example is Castlevania, how hard this game sometimes was
with multiple enemies shooting bullets alike in different heights.
And when you dodged them sometime else unexpected came and you were
thrown in the water....a life less to play the game. Of course it
sucks but it enables you to remember the levels in and out, You
mastered the game and when you completed that one level after months
of struggling, you felt euphoric and extra happy. And that's what I
feel what gaming is about! You had to do effort to beat those classic
games. And the only way you know about those hidden secrets was
through a expensive magazine or your friend or fellow student who
played the game and had news about it.

So this is an example of how it was for gaming,
difficult, a niche-market, only for people who considered nerds as
they played games. So you can say nowadays everyone is a nerd. But
that as a side note . Now a bad example of the face that gaming
became well known and accepted as entertainment: Call of Duty. Call
of Duty is great to play, it looks good but....it's far too easy.
It's super scripted with events that gives you a short rush of
adrenaline as you shoot your way through the levels. And to attract a
wide audience nowadays the developers need to make the game and the
games in general more accessible to the people who play games
sometimes....by lowering the difficulty. How nice and shiny Call of
Duty looks, it's very easy to finish for people who play games on a
regular basis. 5 hours and you look at the credits screen, goodbye 50
dollars (or 60 euro's here in Europe). This is with a lot of games
nowadays, it needs to be accessible and profitable so they made it
easier to make progress, unlimited continues, auto-aim, a never die
sequence like Prince of Persia. And if it's still that difficult,
look a walkthrough on the internet. Search and now you know how to
progress in Darksiders for example. And yes there are exceptions to
the rule like Dark Souls or the before mentioned Darksiders which are
challenging but in general in my opinion the games are far too easy
and help the player as much as possible so they finish the game.
Browse through the Nintendo forum and be amazed of how many teenagers
are complaining they can't finsh Metroid or are stuck and don't
know what to do. They are too much used of looking it up, google is
their best friend. It makes them lazy!

But why games were so difficult so many years
ago? One reason was at the beginning of the arcades to let the player
put as much coins in the arcade machine as possible. The simple
gameplay mechanics also limited the rules of programming so auto-aim
was not a option. Most of the games were also developed by people who
played games themselves and wanted a challenge instead of a easy
ride. And this is what it should be, a challenging game from
beginning to the end which keeps on testing your reflexes, makes you
think or you see the Game Over screen.

And so we now know casual gaming, since when is
gaming casual? Why people started to use this phrase? Aren't we all
gamers, not matter how much or less you play? And maybe you don't
like the casual gamer because a casual gamer thinks it's a status
nowadays to play games although they played Angry Brids once, but
this gamer also does what you like to do: play games. I think it's
a bad thing to put labels on this in terms of gaming as a medium. Why
do we need to care about whether you play a lot or only once a month.
Is that really so important, or you just want to prove yourself
towards your environment?

Casual gaming did bring something negative into
the gaming industry in terms of how games are played on the challenge
they bring to the table. Due to the easy access to gaming nowadays
you see a lot of casual crappy games, what you also saw in the early
days of the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, gaming was kind of popular
so there were a lot of games and holy shit how crappy were some of
those!

A negative thing about casual gaming is also
that because of to many gamers need to be reached, the companies see
the big money and only focus on that..... Myself as a indie developer
sees development as fun and excited and the money is just a nice way
to make more games in the future. Nowadays they care more about the
money to be earned as these games are big projects and costs a lot of
money. So they tend to play it safe and choose easy to pick up games
that a lot of people like, or in case of Call of Duty that people buy
the games because their friends play it.

This is where indie games come in as these are
creative out of the box games, most of times very original. The
biggest and best example is Super Meat Boy. Simple, yet complex and
challenging. Oh hard as nails too! I myself didn't finish the game
yet.

This is my take on casual gaming, it's great
that people of all ages play games and started to play games but
there is also a downside that games are too easy. Big audience brings
the big cash and safe games to decrease the risk of failure. I am
happy as a gamer that people play games, after all those years I
thought that people should as games are great. But I never expected
the commercial success and general usage of games bring the games to
a lower level in terms of difficulty.

Leave a comment if you want, it's always great
to discuss about things. No matter if you are a casual or hardcore
gamer (yeah someone invented these stupid labels), enjoy this form of
entertainment, play the games you like and love. And support the
developers because no pay for them is no games for us.

And
if you like difficult games, check out our epic difficult but
challenging game A Clumsy Adventure, our current build (beta) can be
found on our website or email us at info@excamedia.nl
Game on or be clumsy!

Excamedia.nl

Go to Twitch.tv

little copy past from the marketing blog post that robert is writing:

*WARNING: long article that might help you*
*2nd WARNING: Work In Progress, this article has no clear structure*

Understanding the (Playstation) games market for marketing:
applying 80/20

So if you really want to get your game visible don't go for the magazine (what I previously thought was the "biggest influence worldwide"): Playstation news, reviews and cheats | Official PlayStation Magazine

We want to get gamers, so we're going to focus on YouTubeand Twitch . But first we need to get some early early action online. Let's call these the early adapters.

How do we get visible, first we look for the "small" influencers:
PlayStation Vita: What are the top 50 playstation vita blogs?

1. Reddit.com
2. Indiegames.com
3. Gamasutra.com
4. Indiedb.com
5. Gamejolt.com

Video Games: What are the top playstation games review channels on youtube?

1. Video Game Caster <-- this thing rocks

Daily/weekly & Monthly marketing routines are important to update the clumsy tribe!

The whole team will send me at least 20 dev. screenshots of WIP every week. I'll be uploading these to slideshare (amazing to see the visibility of a simple presentation (can't wait when we have really good stuff to present)) and to Free Indie Games andRockin' Indie Games one pixel at a time. Imho, the best language/game/gamer fit as we speak.

Check out Robert's marketing blog if you like it here

We're getting reviews left and right.

www.mygameslounge.com/indies/a-clumsy-adventure/

"Excamedia are currently we are making our first game A Clumsy Adventure for PS Vita, PS4 and who knows the other platforms. This game will be brought in 4 episodes. Every episode is to be evaluated by the players, so we can make every next episode how you want to play it and what you want to see in it. We are indie and proud of it. A lot of epic things are coming from us to you so stay tuned and remember…… Don’t be clumsy!"

Also Kamisa chief has added audio to his soundcloud!

Here is a .gif from Jules

another .gif on our website:
Excamedia.nl