Zombiesaurus Games

From the Blog

Derry Gamecraft – Zombiesaurus Jam with Nintendo

Posted by Emma on September 19th, 2013 at 2:43 pm

Last Friday and Saturday Zombiesaurus were lucky enough to take part in Global Gamecraft’s first jam here in the city. We had 24 hours to develop a game around the theme

“Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.”

As exciting as this may seem already, it was made even more so thanks to the lovely folk at Nintendo who joined the fun by providing Wii U dev kits for us to play with, I mean work with. The result was something pretty awesome! 15 games were submitted by the end of the 24 hours, 15 victories over time and tiredness.

We opted for a 2D platformer set in a nightmarish world, using ImpactJS and Flash. We were joined by the very talented Donal Phillips who created an impressive soundtrack in no time at all. Support was available from both Nintendo and ImpactJS’ Dominic Szablewski who all worked right through the night with us. This was the best part of the game jam, the learning and helping and working together. And it didn’t end with the support teams, all the development teams were just as eager to help each other. The most often asked question had to be “How are you getting on now?” as many of the attendees floated around seeing each other’s work and showing off their own. It really was a great environment to work in, such inspiration all around us.

We were so well looked after too, it makes working for 24 hours straight a whole lot easier when you have dinner, breakfast and lunch provided and snacks available all night. And coffee, thanks to the guy who kept bringing fresh coffee! Thomas, our artist, has mentioned more than once, “Gamecraft exhausted my mind but kept my belly happy with loads of free food.” He was particularly fond of the curry on Friday evening, I thought our game was going to be about curry he was that into it.

On top of the brilliant development opportunity, the excellent atmosphere and the great grub, Gamecraft also had prizes! Although it never really felt like a competition due to the camaraderie that quickly built up, there were prizes available in a number of different categories. We were delighted to be named by Nintendo as Game with Best Potential, an absolute honour for our first ever game jam. We were alongside a load of brilliant developers, ideas and games who received thoroughly deserved recognition from Nintendo and Global Gamecraft. Other winners were:

Best Party Game – PLAYSCAPE
Best Interpretation of the Theme – AMOEBAS
People’s Choice – HAPPY AS LARRY
Best Multi-player – QUIT YOUR CUBICLES
Honourable Mentions
ESCAPE HARMONY
BUT NOT A DOG SHALL GROWL
REAL POETRY

You can see all the winners and submitted games here, including our entry, Don’t Be Afraid.

Now that the haze is finally starting to lift, the excitement from Gamecraft is fuelling some great new ideas here at Zombiesaurus. We are continuing to work on Soul Grinder for Android and Ouya as well as working on some new ideas which we’ll chat more about once we have some more concrete details. We’re more focused, more determined and more certain than this is where we should be and what we should be doing.

And now I have a tonne of people to thank;

CultureTECH and the staff of the Millennium Forum who kept us well fed and watered
Dominic Szablewski for his Jedi-like patience and endless help with ImpactJS
Global Gamecraft, in particular Andrea and Vicky, for keeping the entire thing going
All the brilliant folk from Nintendo who gave us the chance to make a dream come true, providing tech and support, giving us all really cool t-shirts and totes and for giving away thee greatest ever swag bags ever as part of the prize!

It really was a fantastic experience, we can’t wait for the next one!

Soul Grinder Is Actually Coming Out!

Posted by Sol Blast on August 20th, 2013 at 2:26 pm

Soul Grinder‘s done, dusted and will be available on the App Store on Thursday 29th August!

You can check out the release trailer below!

Android and Ouya owners can expect a release for these platforms hot on the heels of iOS.

I know what you’re thinking. I thought we’d lose interest too, but by jove here we are!

No Mask Left Behind… Except These Ones

Posted by Grindie on August 12th, 2013 at 1:23 pm

Drawing up the masks for Soul Grinder sure was fun. It was a great stress reliever too. When I was headbutting a brick wall trying to get a background or enemy animation just right, I could take a break n’ draw up a mask of Vic Mackey from The Shield or an arse that Sol’d demand I scrap right away!

But we only had so much space for masks, so a few had to be cut. So here’re all the masks we left behind on the battlefield. They’ve probably been captured or killed by now, so let’s remember them together…

This was gonna be unlocked if you rage quit a level after dying loads of times. We did away with the whole unlocking thing (all masks can be bought if you have enough coins), so it was pointless.

This is one of my characters that no one’s ever heard of. He was given the boot for a better mask.

Doesn’t really look like He-Man, does he? Without the massive muscles n’ tiny pants, it just looks like a bad hair do.

Everyone loves Iron Man, so we wanted an Iron Man mask! But I don’t think Marvel’d be too happy if they ever caught wind of it. Changing his eyes to look like Robocop’s didn’t help.

Nope! Lawsuit! Off!

Inspired by a character of the same name from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He got the boot ‘cause I don’t think it looks that great.

Remember him from Soul Reaver? That game was the best, hi! But aye, it’s just stealing someone else’s character n’ sticking it in the game… which I don’t have a problem doing, if I can make it look different enough to avoid any legal action.

I had no intention of putting this in the game. I just wanted to see what it looked like.

Doodle Time

Posted by Grindie on June 7th, 2013 at 11:59 am

Ow hello! I didn’t see you there. Welcome to another Doodle Time with Thomas. Take a sea– NOT THAT ONE! There’s a bear trap on that! Comfortable? Okay, let’s go.

Have you seen the Soul Grinder poster we posted this week? I think it’s pretty cool, even if I do say so myself. But just how did it come to be? Did I plug a USB cable into my head and think it into existence? If only! Then I wouldn’t’ve had to deal with the worst program ever designed; Photoshop! My hatred for this overcomplicated pack of puke grows with every use! Naw, I’m getting used to it now, but using ctrl+alt+Z to undo multiple times? Who the hell thought that one up!?

Okay, let’s go for real this time. I quickly doodled together the layout for the poster. Cannae beat the ‘classic big baddie in the background trying to grab our hero as his evil minions rush him’ poster.

Things’re getting a little clearer with my second sketchy pass. Added some new enemies to get across the idea that it’s not all set in a graveyard, that’s just the first world (which you’ll never beat anyway. Haw haw haw!). It’s not just creatures of the undead out to get you, we have robots and punks that wanna piece of you too!

I attempted to draw a zombie on the poster, but Sol whacked me on the back of the head with a Jammy Joey! The only time I’ve seen him that angry before was when I lapped him in Mario Kart Wii! He never stops going on about how zombies are played out. So there are zombies in the game, but they’re not the star attraction. Just like the zombies in Castlevania or something.

Here’s everything inked up n’ looking pretty. I’d be happy to leave it here n’ go play Dark Souls, but naaaaw! Sol thinks posters need colour! Jeez! Slave driver, hi! So I put my pad down (after getting molested for the 40th time by a skeleton) n’ dived head first into the paintbuckets. I thought there was no way Sol could find me there, but he did! After washing the paint off, I got to work on colouring.

And then it was coloured! The end! I’m away back to Dark Souls. See ya.