Oozi: Earth Adventure - devBlog

Episode 3 coming soon!

2012-01-17T08:07:00.000-08:00

We're steadily working on the third episode and now we have it nearly completed! If nothing unexpected happens the third episode will be available for download by the end of January. Here's a couple screenshots for you!

Happy New Year, everyone!

2012-01-03T01:08:00.001-08:00

We have some good news to start off this year: the third episode is almost completed and we should be able to release it by the end of January! Stay tuned for more information.

Oozi: Earth Adventure Ep. 2 is released!

2011-11-25T06:56:00.000-08:00

You can download it from Xbox Live Indie Games channel right now and it is priced at only 80 Microsoft Points. We really hope you will enjoy it!

Oozi: Earth Adventure - Episode 2

Episode 2's Release Date and Launch Trailer

2011-11-21T11:40:00.000-08:00

Great news!
The second episode has passed certification is going to be released on November 25, 2011! We also have a brand new Launch Trailer for you, have fun watching it!

Episode 2 coming really soon!

2011-11-16T00:43:00.000-08:00

Remember when we announced that Oozi was awarded Semi-Finalist status in Dream Build Play? We were quite excited and hoped it might allow us to release the game on Xbox LIVE Arcade. However, three months later, we finally know it's not going to happen. The good news is that Episode 2 of Oozi's Adventure is already completed and submitted to Xbox LIVE Indie Games certification process. It means that it will likely be released within a week! We're going to announce the release date as soon as we know it, so stay tuned!

Oozi awarded in Dream Build Play

2011-08-19T01:11:00.000-07:00

We're really excited to announce that Oozi: Earth Adventure was awarded Semi-Finalist status in Dream Build Play contest! You can see the full list of awarded games here:

http://www.dreambuildplay.com/Main/SemiFinalists.aspx

Dream Build Play is a contest held by Microsoft and it's aimed at independent game developers creating a game for Xbox 360 console. Semi-Finalist status means that the game might be offered an XBLA publishing agreement, so keep your fingers crossed for Oozi!

Boss character development

2011-07-14T00:26:00.000-07:00

Hello! This time we've got some development videos to share with you. They show the process of developing a boss character. The first one is 2 hours of work in 3 minutes and presents drawing of the character. The second is 40 minutes of work in 1 minute and is about animating him. Each animation takes about 40 minutes to create, and there are 50 characters in the game and each of them needs ten animations on average. Game development is hard work, but it's a lot of fun as well.

New trailer & screenshots

2011-06-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

Hello! We're steadily working on the second episode and we should be able to release it within a month. We already have all major features implemented, you can watch them in this brand new Episode 2 Trailer:

Oozi and Dream Build Play

2011-06-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

We keep working on the game. We have recently submitted a build for Dream Build Play. It's a competition held by Microsoft where you can win money by creating a Xbox XNA game. Part of our submission was a new trailer covering the gameplay, if you'd like to watch it I included it at the end of the post. And about the second episode of Oozi's Earth Adventure, we already have four story mode levels implemented, and we should be able to release the game sometime in July. We think that it's much more fun to play than the first one, but you'll have to wait to find out for yourselves.

Gameplay video from Episode 2

2011-05-16T09:41:00.000-07:00

We've got a new gameplay video for you! As you can see Oozi is now able to perform wall jumps and punch enemies. And remember it's just the first level of episode 2, there's a lot more fun stuff in further levels!

First update for Episode 1

2011-05-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

The first update for Episode 1 is now available! We listened to feedback we received both from reviewers and regular gamers and did our best to improve the game. You just need to launch the game on your Xbox 360 and you will be prompted to download the update.

Here's the list of things that we changed:

Added hardcore difficulty
Better jump height control
Visual improvements for abilities
Right stick view control
Minor bug fixes

Working on Episode 2

2011-04-20T10:48:00.000-07:00

Hello there!
We have already started working on the second episode. It's going to showcase much more special abilities than the first episode, including wall jumps you can see on the attached screenshot! We believe that it'll be even more enjoyable than the first one :).

The other news is that we decided to add difficulty levels for story mode. If you found episode one too easy then you might enjoy the game much more with the new hardcore difficulty. We're also going to release an update for the first episode that will include the new difficulty as well as some other minor improvements.

There's also one thing we'd like to ask you to do. There was recently an issue with Xbox Live Indie Games ratings abuse - you can read on it here.

Unfortunately due to low number of ratings Oozi had suffered from automated downrating even more than other games and its average rating dropped pretty significantly. We're hoping to regain our previous position over time, but if you'd like to speed up the process please find the game on the Game Marketplace and rate it. If you have a Gold profile then you can rate it on xbox.com as well.

Thanks!

It's done!

2011-03-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

After weeks of strenuous effort we can finally announce that Oozi: Earth Adventure Ep. 1 is now available to Xbox 360 gamers!

You can download the game directly from Xbox Live Indie Games section on your Xbox or using following link: Oozi:Earth Adventure - Episode 1

We also recorded a brand new trailer for Oozi that showcases features we added during last two months.

Please remember to rate the game and click "Like" on our Facebook page. Thanks!

Oozi on Facebook

2011-01-30T09:01:00.000-08:00

We've just set up Oozi's Facebook Page. So if you have a Facebook account and want to stay informed about our progress on the game, just click Like button! In future we'll be posting there all important news, as well as on our blog of course.

Oozi: Earth Adventure on Facebook

Brand new trailer!

2011-01-21T07:26:00.000-08:00

We strike while the iron is hot! Here's our brand new HD trailer for Oozi: Earth Adventure Episode 1. Happy watching!

Oozi at Xbox up and running

2011-01-18T23:29:00.000-08:00

We've got some good news for everyone who's waiting for the game. We recently managed to launch Oozi on our Xbox 360 and it plays really cool! There are still some issues to be solved, but we should get them fixed soon.

The other good news about Xbox Live Indie Games release is that we decided to split the game and release four episodes, each at $1 price!

We initially wanted to sell the entire game at $3 or $5 price, but there are reasons why have we changed our mind. The first and the most important is that on Xbox Live Indie Games your sales are good as long as you stay on one of in-dashboard lists: Top Downloads, Top Rated or New Releases. We hope to get a spot on Top Rated list, but there are many other nice games on the service too. For Top Downloads, it only matters how many people have purchased the game on the previous day. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter if your game is $1 or $5, so anything above $1 stands no chance to compete for #1 spot on the list - it's painfully obvious that people buy cheap games more.

Another reason is that we'll be able to release Episode One much sooner than all four worlds are going to ready. We're hoping to have the first episode available on Xbox 360 Marketplace by the end of February. The other episodes will follow as soon as they are ready.

We'll get back to PC version then and release them all in a single pack since it's much more difficult to release a small game on PC than on XBLIG. So don't forget to check our website for updates next month!

Still alive

2010-09-05T03:40:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since last update, so it's about time to remind you of us. We're still working on a game - slowly, but making constant progress. Game code has been rewritten on XNA, so we hope to release Oozi on Xbox360 (via Xbox Live Indie Games). That's all for now. To cheer you up a bit I'm publishing few production sketches as well as very first game wallpaper - maybe it will be useful for somebody. See you next time, hopefully sooner and with better news. Oozi Wallpaper 1024_768

Oozi Wallpaper 1280_1024

Alpha gameplay footage

2010-05-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

It's time to present the first video recording of our game. We are still working on the game therefore we can't show the clip of its actual version. Shown materials are a few months old - there is a few thing missing( particle, gui etc.) but better this than nothing. we are hoping to be able to present a bit more soon. Please watch it and send us feedback.

Happy easter....

2010-04-04T05:45:00.000-07:00

... for all our fans :)

New screenshots

2010-02-04T10:08:00.000-08:00

It took quite a while since the last post. Work on the game is still progressing. You could say that work is almost too intensive - in conjunction with optimalizign/debuging too many systems in game, we could't show you any gameplay video. As a compensation we show some new screenshots from the game. This time, they come from second game's world . Happy viewing.

Level design

2009-12-30T00:09:00.000-08:00

As it has been already stated, the games contains 50 levels, not too many, not to few - a lot of work though. I have just finished working on a next level so I can present some statistics.

This level has been created within 3 days. This is one of the Story Mode level therefore it should take 10-12 minutes of playing. The elements put into the level are:
- 20655 tiles (platforms, spikes, ...)
- 305 neutral objects (plants, stones, ...)
- 660 collectable objects (stars)
- 138 objects ( enemies, traps)
- 629 collision area

In addition there are quite a few scripts defining events on this level. There it is the general picture on the workload leading to creation of this level. Creating game and designing levels are very interesting but highly time consumable.

There is a movie below to show a part of the level has been created . It is about an hour of work on the movie, which equals around 1/20 part of the level.

Enemies

2009-10-30T14:30:00.000-07:00

It’s time to write something about enemies of Oozi in the game.

To make the game more interesting and challenging for all 4 worlds we are planning to introduce 40 enemies.

We didn't change only how do they look like, we change as well the way how you will need to eliminate them. The most simple way is to jump on their head.

Below we show some sketches and movie about making character for game.

The first pack of screenshots

2009-09-06T03:12:00.000-07:00

It is time to present the first screenshots from the game. The screens are shown at the present stage - some thing may still change (however we don’t expect any revolution) the screens come from the first world of the game.

Some facts about the game

2009-08-28T05:12:00.000-07:00

OK, it’s time for some facts about yet untiteled game. Please note some things may still change.

The game contains 3 modes – story, challenge, and arcade.

Story mode contains 20 fairly long levels, with fairly linked storyline. The player is learning more possibilities with the game development, learns how the game works etc. (typical 2-D platform game standard in nut shell)

Challenge mode contains 30 levels with increased level of difficulty. The levels are shorter than in story mode (3-5 mins each), but with a specific goal to be achieved by the player: level completion in a certain time, elimination of all the enemies etc. You have to complete certain level of story mode to unlock further levels in challenges mode.

Arcade mode is unlocked after completion of story one. This mode allows play any level of story mode. Additionally there is a system on evaluation at the end of each level in this mode. A player needs to go through the level in a certain way in order to get the best rank for level completion.

The whole game world is divided into 4 separate areas. They differ in apperiance as well as in the variety of enemies and other obstacles.

Hello world

2009-08-23T02:25:00.000-07:00

We have started this project some time ago. It is the highest time to present it to the public. Let’s start from the beginning.

We started working on our first project "Oozi: Earth Adventure" - classic 2D platform game around a year ago. We have decided for this type of project not only because we love this type of games but also we have some experience in this area. At some point I was strongly involved in a process of creating series of Turtix games (you can Google it if you like).

What is it all about. It is not a revolution, nothing innovative- simply we can’t afford it yet. At the moment we are hoping to deliver a good classic 2D – a game similar in a form to: Super Frog, Rayman, Earthworm Jim.

That’s enough for today. Soon more details about the game, the team and a everything connected to it.