Rimelands: Hammer of Thor will be published by Crescent Moon Games of the Ravensword fame. They will be marketing the game and also helping us with the development to make the game a truly astounding experience.

We find Crescent Moon Games to be a perfect fit for our company, since they’re not only the developers of one of the most popular iPhone RPGs, but also a team that shares our ideals about producing great games.

Here’s the first more in depth blog post about Rimelands: Hammer of Thor. Please keep in mind that the game is still in production, so the’re can and will be changes along the way.

Screenshot from the game

Combat

The combat is turn-based in the same way as in many roguelike games: on each turn you move to an adjacent tile or perform a single action. Then, all the enemies visible do the same. The basic tactical choices depend on your character build: melee path characters’ tactics involve efficient use of weapons and talents, ranged characters will find to their advantage to keep mobile and plan their routes, while magic users need to keep track of their mana reserves.

Varying enemy types will require different strategies and some enemies will work together, so you’ll need to think carefully which opponents to tackle first and with which attacks.

We are taking efforts to ensure that the game mechanics are as transparent as possible, so you’ll always have a good grasp about the consequences of your choices. The main guideline is that if you fail, you’ll have a good understanding of what actions most probably lead to your demise.

Exploration And Story

The game features both random generated and pre-designed levels, latter of which will also include some light puzzle elements. There won’t be too many mazes, but people wanting to search any nook and cranny will find their efforts rewarded by additional treasures.

The main plot in the game will be linear and there won’t be any dialogue trees, but additional side quests will be there. We’re taking care not to drown anyone in the dialogue, so all the conversations in the game will be pretty short. We’re also planning (skippable) cut-scenes in between the levels to carry out the story, but we can’t yet tell how they will be handled.

The mood of the story will be light, adventurous and slightly humorous, but with some more epic and serious undertones.

In retrospect, the Nausicaa vibe some have noticed in the forums is a good perception, although Laputa has been a more conscious inspiration. Among many others, of course.

A little backstory for the Rimelands setting:

Rimelands - Backstory

The first screenshot for Rimelands: Hammer of Thor has been released!

The game’s website is currently unavailable, but we’re working hard to get the final site open to public as soon as possible.

Rimelands: Hammer of Thor

Our next game is called Rimelands: Hammer of Thor. The website for it is here, with more information coming up in the future, as we get the site design done.

At this point, the following facts can be revealed:

* It’s a turn-based RPG, not unlike a certain Rogue

* It’s steampunk with a frosty twist

* It’s more pulp adventure than fantasy epic

You can now play Diceworks for free in the comfort of your browser!

Nothing is perfect. Not even our press releases.

We forgot one vital bit of information from the press release, which is the price of the product. So, here it is:

(drumming)

$0.99! (€0.79)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dicework Games To Release Their First Game On iPhone

Tampere, Finland, August 18th 2009 – Newly founded Dicework Games will release their first game, the self-titled Diceworks, in 28th of August. The company founders Arto Koistinen and Peter Finnberg, both of whom have former experience in the game industry, believe that strong vision and solid design are the key elements in a highly competitive marketplace such as Apple’s App Store.

“While I find it a bit naive to say that all you need for high sales is a good game, I strongly believe that a strong portfolio is something that will ensure the longevity of a development studio”, says company CEO Koistinen. “We are aiming to make Dicework Games a brand in which our customers can trust. As a small studio, we have the possibility to take risks and try new things, or go for less popular genres.”

Diceworks, while being in the popular genre of puzzle games, brings this thinking to practice in its visual design. The steampunk inspired art direction dodges the usual candy-like visual style of the genre and maintains a coherent tactile feel for the game. “We wanted the game to feel like a physical object”, the artist Finnberg explains. “The user interface is designed so that everything feels like a part of a clockwork puzzle box, I think it really brings a unique atmosphere for the game.”

Everyone who is not yet convinced of the game’s puzzle-y goodness can also try it on the company’s website, where a web-browser version of the game will be available.

The developers also see their choice of engine, the Unity 3D, as a definite strength. For a small startup company, a tool that enables the developers to concentrate on game-specific development instead of having to build a software framework from scratch, at the same time giving the possibility for multi-platform release, is a valuable opportunity.

As is usual for the game industry, only few things in the horizon look clear. For now, the games will continue to be published on the iPhone and they will be self-funded as with Diceworks. “Concentrating on our own portfolio is currently the most viable option. Of course, we are open to publishing deals and sub-contracting, should a viable opportunity present itself. To be honest, I’d still love to work on some great license”, Koistinen, who has previously worked with mobile license games, confesses.

Dicework Games
http://www.dicework.com/
company@dicework.com

Sir!

Our Magnificient Department Of Spycraft has landed some information on the nature of the secret project under work on the hidden laboratories of Dicework Games. It would appear they are working on a some variety of an aviational device. Due to rough weather and massive hostile presence, our agents were not able to get images of greater detail.

We shall increase resources of the department to unveil further details on this intriguing enterprise.

An Airborne Contrivance

The page for our first game, Diceworks Puzzle, is now up. To celebrate this event, here’s a little story about how Diceworks came to be and how the company became Dicework Games.

The concept for the game came up pretty quickly after me and Peter decided to go and form a company of our own. I played around with ideas for a simple puzzle game and, although the company wasn’t meant to do simple puzzle games, we decided that something that could be wrapped up fast would be ideal first project for the company. We had a new platform to work with and a more complex project would have soon ran into big trouble if developed while still trying to get the gist of all the quirks of both iPhone and the Unity3D.

First there were dice. I though having a grid of dice would be a nice basis for a puzzle game. Then, after going through different mechanics (switching two adjacent dice, rerolling them and so on), I felt like the best way would be to just find the combinations that are already on the grid, without actually manipulating the grid itself. It felt solid enough to begin prototyping.

It took me less than a day to come up with a working prototype, which I then showed to Peter (and to my beloved girlfriend, who liked the game enormously), and it seemed to work well. Even though there were little bits and pieces to be ironed out, the central mechanics of the game have stayed the same. You find a combination of dice (pair, threes, fours, straights and so on) from the grid and select them. Proper combinations disappear and new dice drop down from the top of the grid. And that’s about it, plain and simple.

In my books, the game falls to the same category as most of the casual puzzles out there: it’s a perception game. You have a bunch of symbols, and have to find certain combinations of those symbols, just like in any match-3 game. The spiritual predecessors of the game, however, are not Bejeweled and its kin, but word games like Bookworm.

Most of the perception games are timed challenges, where you have a limited time to find as many proper or possible (in game where you can manipulate the board) combinations as you can. We decided not to go into that direction. In part, it’s my personal dislike for games that have time limits, in part it’s because we felt it would hurt the feel of the game. Diceworks is not a game about anxiety of beating a challenge, it’s a game about having something fun to do for a while. That doesn’t mean the game can’t challenge you – try beating the best score anyone has had this far, somewhere over 11 000 points – it means it doesn’t lay the challenge on you if don’t want it to.

The fun thing about game in which you seek combinations on a grid design-wise is entropy. When fed with random tokens, the grid slowly and unavoidably descends into a state where no new matches can be found. This will happen sooner or later, depending on both the far-sightedness of the player and luck. This is to say, even if the game feels 100% luck, it’s not. There’s quite a bit of strategy involved.