Blog - Trim Tangle

When we don’t work on Therefore, sometimes we do other things. Occasionally, our colleagues Diego and Rodrigo writes and designs these haikus related with Therefore universe (if you follow us on the social media you must see them yet). They are so dark, with so intricate meaning. I know. You must see beyond all the ordinary things and let your imagination flyes. Hope you like them.

Crisis Crunch – Demo in progress (II) and Mallorca Game

We are still perfecting some aspects of the game for the demo, as long as we develop others. For example, we are working on the walktroughs and different options of animations. We are revising some interfaces too. That implies efforts from all the Crisis Crunch team to make this changes consistents with the whole.

It’s taking many time to adjust the dialogues. On the one hand we are constantly looking over the writing. Crisis Crunch is a game where jokes and word games are very important. Every line is got to be perfectly written. On the other hand our programmer David is working on the dialogues system. It implies some options as: changing the character during the conversation, turning back on the option dialogues, animations while the character is speaking, the selection of options, etc. He is also developing a generic positioning system. Crisis Crunch has a lot of scenes. Every character has to be exactly where he has to depending on the scene and the active characters. Now our system nows it how to do it.

Finally, we are glad to tell you that a few weeks ago we’ve been on the Mallorca Game, a little videogames and media exhibition on Palma de Mallorca. One of our coworkers who lives there, Dani, prepared its little space to show the people our work.

It was a very good experience. Althogh it is not a very big fair, it was a good way to make contacts, meet people, discover new things. Hope next year we could take more advanced work.

Crisis Crunch – Demo in progress (I)

Today we start a new section on the blog: demo in progress. As we told you before, although we didn’t make the crowdfunding some media and some people were interested in our work so… we would like to tell you about how is it going with the demo development.

At this time, all the animations of the leading roles are ready, as long as the NCP that will appear on the demo. You will like them! This we show you is a waiter at Starbugs (so clean and trustworthy). You shoudn’t mess with him…

Crisis Crunch - Character: Starbugs' waiter

Patricia and Diego are working on correcting a few scenes. Some of them are exclusive for the demo. We’ve just added a new member to the team, Rubén, to help us with this thing. Everything must be perfect.

We are also working on the menus: the main menu (just fot the demo) and the menu to select the characters. You can’t do anything without them! At the same time Dani is working on different interfaces and deciding with Diego about them and the typefaces. They are trying to set the priorities about the workflow.

As you see, this are just the first steps but we are doing them carefully.

PD: Next time we’ll write about Therefore.

Therefore – Demo in progress (I)

At the moment Therefore team is working on the demo we would like to show you soon. Our design companions, Diego and Rodrigo, are preparing the characters that will appear there, as long as their animations. You can see as an example this festive girl. She is one of the Masters (maybe we should say that she is just a part of them, or… well, better not telling too much).

Therefore - Character: Greatmother Aureen

On this subject, we are also making some concept art of the scenes planned, and designing a few interfaces and cursors. We made some dialogue corrections too (they never end).

On the other hand, our programmer Nicolás is developing three aspects about the internal functioning of the game:

The Wanderer movement (very important, the Wanderer is the leading role). There was some troubles walking near the edges of the road. Now we use a Unity tool to control it. We apply a “speed vector” that obeys the keys we press.
How to control the cursor on the screen. What it can do, what it can’t do. We can’t let the Wanderer do whatever he pleases.
The pathfinding, to control the Wanderer movement with the mouse. That refers to how to move our character from a point to another, just clicking on the place we want him to get. It was a difficult thing to make. The Wanderer has to go just through the indicated way, at the same time that he avoids the objects from the scene. We followed some steps to get it perfectly as we wanted:
- We had to define a group of points from the scene, to get some kind of a grid. The points mark the valid positions of the character. It’s very important to define a maximum distance between them because it helps the search algorithm to calculate the adjacent points and make it works. You can define the grid automatically, but it could carry some problems. If you do it by hand you get very good results on the movement of the character.
- The Pathfinding uses A* algorithm to stablish the way from a point to another passing through the needed points on the grid. This is the most used algorithm for pathfinding on the videogames world. It always gives you the best solution (the shortest way) and it’s very good on efficiency terms.
- We move the character progresively through the way or group of points finded by the algorithm. It is as we would join the dots, as the children, to make the shortest way between two points.

Nothing more today. Soon you’ll have more news about the game.

Why must you know Trim Tangle?

During last months, our games have been acclaimed in several gaming media: blogs, magazines… A great example was this entry published on IGN Spain by Nivel Oculto:

Nivel Oculto: Why must you know Trim Tangle?

Here we do a summary of them for both games:

Therefore on the media Crisis Crunch on the media

Crisis Crunch on the media

Here it is a summary of some reviews that gaming media has published about Crisis Crunch:

IGN España
“It remind us to the classic Maniac Mansion. Keep an eye out for the old blind because it could be a classic”

Desconsolados
“An old school point and click videogame adventure”

Start videojuegos
“Crisis Crunch seems a lovely tribute to those Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. An innovative and fresh proposal inside adventure videogames. A dream on crisis times””

GeekyJuegos
“A troupe of good people with many talent. Spectacular soundtrack. Crisis Crunch, where laugh is the medicine to everyday and socioeconomic troubles that beat our tragic times”

Nivel oculto
“Humor and desire to be a teaser with the current social situation are always welcome”

Consola y tablero
“Original cartoony aesthetic. It has tons of humor”

Hypergame
“A very revolutionary inventory system. It is so risky that it would be a pity if it would be unnoticed”

Game Crimes
“Satiric and very cartoony point and click adventure”

Wraithkal Indie Gaming
“How about some cartoony visuals, goofy humor along with a bunch of violent interactions?”

Therefore on the media

Here it is a summary of some reviews that gaming media has published about Therefore:

Indie Game Mag
“Weave in a Wasted World”

IGN España
” At the vanguard of the present modern videogames”

Indie Retro News
“The concept is intriguing, the music and scenery is beautiful, and the graphics are very old-school”

Nivel Oculto
“It is a proposal with philosophical moods and a gorgeous pixelart that reminds us to that beautiful thing called Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery”

Kill Screen
“Therefore promises “interactive philosophy”, dreamy pixel art. What’s initially so captivating is how the music and art style blends together”

Geeky Juegos
“Adventure game with a living nature and that is willing to change our vision of this genre of videogames”
“Instrumental music with a great artistic quality”

Devuego
“A very attractive pixel art and, above all, beautiful soundtrack”

Start Videojuegos
“Therefore reminds Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP”

Game Crimes
“Imagine getting beautiful pixel art, a bit of the script of Bastion and the moody ideas behind Fez and melting it together”

Cliqist
“The pixel art is incredibly detailed and presents a lush, otherworldly locale”

Therefore crowdfunding campaign ends

The Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for Therefore has ended. We didn’t achieve the expected funds. However, we are glad to say that we had a great media diffusion and good reviews. In parallelism to the Team Crunch mates, Team Therefore is ready to produce a playable demo, that will be used to enforce future funding options.

We want to thank all the backers that trusted us. It really means a lot to us. Thanks to the media guys too. You have treated us great, specially the spanish press and its everlasting support for autochthonous projects. We will also collaborate with the article about the crowdfunding campaign and we will share our own experience about it, so other designers can take advantage from it.

So as our Wanderer we also know how to use the Memento Mori and reset opportunities. That is just what we are going to do: produce a piece of this world that will allows you to taste the Therefore experience and let us being able to get close to what we want to express through it. So let’s go for it and don´t lose sight of us!

Crisis Crunch crowdfunding campaign ends

The Indiegogo campaign for Crisis Crunch has ended. The funding has not been as expected but we received a big surprise due to the community feedback and the media support. In fact, we feel flattered for your comments and good reviews about our game, and even if our campaign has not reached the funding goal we considered it a success in diffusion and community support.

The Nexus collective has been aware of this great reception and realized the potential of the game and it´s contact net has been mobilized immediately in order to support our project (and not only ours), new members have helped us directly and even some of our collaborators entered in the core team as partners, joining forces with us. If something defines Trim Tangle is the ability to lend a hand (lot of hands) when you need it most. We are so proud of our team, of our Nexus companions and of being part of this amazing collective.

Thanks to all this, we can announce that we have all what is needed for the next step: a playable demo, on which we are already started to work while we are studying future funding options. We have learned a lot from this crowdfunding, we would like to make a little article in which we will share this learning with other people who are trying to make their own campaign. Maybe they could learn something from our experience with Indiegogo.

A crowdfunding is a very well known funding method but its management is not easy and there is not a foolproof success formula. There are some facts to have in mind, and you must dedicate time to it and be ready for anything. So, Crisis Crunch leaves Indiegogo for now but resumes its production schedule in order to show, in a few months, a demo, a piece of this adventure, to be, at last, that interactive experience we want to offer to our players.

Thank you very much to the backers who trusted us, we will always appreciate the gesture, also thanks to our project collaborators, Nexus members and contacts and, of course, to the media guys out there, giving an affectionate salutation to Spanish media, you all are superb! This was not an end but a beginning. So we keep up moving, after all, we have nothing to lose. What the hell!

Crunchie Crusade

We are making a crusade. A crusade for those things that pisses us off every day. A Crusade of laughs and sharp pencils glimmering in the night.

Since yesterday until 26th April you can leave a comment in our Facebook event about a social or daily life theme you want to complaint (you can also do it in Twitter through the hashtag #crunchiecrusade). If we like your idea, we will make one of our weekly gags (we call them “crunchies”) related to it and dedicated to you. We will publish the crunchie in all our social media accounts to spread out your complaint everywhere.

The Crunch Bunch is ready to take your orders!

PD: Please, don´t miss the chance to support our crowdfunding campaign in Indiegogo.

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