Level Zero Games

GEN CON TRIUMPHANT!

John Gosling — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 05:15:32 +0000

We’re back from our glorious opening at Gen Con 2011! We’ve taken our time to recollect and do some follow-up work.

It was a fantastic success, and it was really vindicating to see everyone loving the artwork, learning the game quickly, and having fun with the demos we ran.

I personally want to thank everyone who bought the game, and a grand salute to you guys who went back to the hotel and showed it off to your friends! It was pretty awesome to have people come up to the booth and tell us they had a buddy who insisted they had to try the game out.

and NOW the Main Attraction: ONLINE SALES! Check out the newly renovated Node page to buy a copy ($18, and free shipping to boot).

$18 USD and FREE SHIPPING!

If you’re the kind of person who likes to feel a game before they buy it, We’re also at the Dice Dojo in Chicago! Right by the register! If you’d like to give the game a try, we even have a demo deck there: just ask one of the awesome fellas who work there if you can give it a try!

We also put up the alternate rules for 3 and 4 player games we told you all about, and the drinking game one of our new customers suggested, and a few other game variants and houserules we enjoy!

I was thrilled to meet and talk with all of you, so let’s keep the conversation going! Comments or complaints? What would you like to see? Are you trouncing your enemies or being trounced!? Let me know at John@levelzerogames.com!

As a final note: We do these “victory pictures” where we take a picture of the game when someone wins, usually with hands in frame displaying our deepest innermost reflections on the duel in the form of a hand sign. I’d love to see you all pick up the tradition and head on over to our Facebook Page and show us your war trophies!

Node

John Gosling — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 23:55:35 +0000

Now announcing Node!

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You can find our page for the game here, and can expect more content added as we build towards our finished cyber-title.

Right now we have some pictures up for you, a description of the premise, and a bit about the games nodes. Before the month is out, we will give you something to introduce you to the game and teach you how it plays!

Node is Co-Created by: Jordan Booth, Joe Locastro, and John Gosling.

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Gala-Level Event!

John Gosling — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 23:33:10 +0000

Greetings fellow Gamesters!

Back on the 2nd of October, Columbia held a spectacular Gala event, which brought in lots of wealthy and prestigious people. Somehow, we got involved!

We brought in Sir Tet, Grave Robber, and Depths in addition to our board game Forces and brand-spankin’-new card game Node, which you’ll be getting another post about in a bit.

We heard lots of good things on the looks of our games across the board, but we actually got to teach quite a few of them how to play Node! The game is pretty easy to pick up, and within two attempts these well-to-do folk were compromising high-security corporate server farms.

The best part about the night – aside from the excuse to wear a fancy suit and play games with other people in fancy suits – was showing us that our game really was accessible and easy to pick up, while still offering a growing complexity in tactics and strategy. ”Easy to learn, hard to master”.

So while I write up about our new game, you can ganger at our dapper selves, looking sharp back home at the Arcology offices.

Manifest turn-out

John Gosling — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:35:06 +0000

The manifest show closed recently and we had a great reception! But don’t take my word for it: Bear witness!

We! Are! Manifest!

John Gosling — Fri, 14 May 2010 23:35:01 +0000

Loyal Citizens:

We’ve finished setting up for our lovely show! The final games included are…

Depths, Sir Tet, Grave Robber, Forces, Locks, and Whistlechain. We also have a non-playable demo of The Sunset with a selection of songs and screenshots from the game.

Now, three of those games you haven’t heard anything about yet! You can click on the link page above for more information, but in summary…

Forces is an easy-to-play tactics game, aimed at being a gentle introduction into the world of tabletop gaming while still offering the foundations of the genre. You assemble the battlefield out of small tiles made of hexes, assemble your mercenary company, and get to the fight!

Locks is a simple game that can be played with any writing utensil and any piece of paper. That’s right, for free! We looked at the Tic-Tac-Toe monopoly and said “We are going to bring you down”. Our game is a bit more substantial, but can still be played with your best buddy on a relaxing train ride home.

We said to ourselves, “Selves, why stop there? There’s this media platform thats been around for ages called “sound”, yet there haven’t been many games made for it!” With that thought in mind, we ventured forth, and are releasing Whistlechain.

And Here’s the set up! (pardon the low quality images. These were taken by spy camera)

(More after the bump)

A Red Dawn

John Gosling — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 08:04:51 +0000

Showing at Art of Play 3!

John Gosling — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:57:32 +0000

Attention Arcology citizens!

Level Zero Games will be showing two of our fine projects at the Art of Play 3, a gallery of interactivity at Columbia College Chicago.

Play Sir Tet and a demo of The Sunset at the show!

Where: Project Room, 916 S. Wabash Ave., Room 111 (MAP)
When: Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 5 p.m
Until: April 1, 2010

The Sunset: The Stage

John Gosling — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:41:28 +0000

We’ve taken to calling the background image for our little pixel opera the “stage”, which is fitting: It’s where all the action takes place, it’s a sort of ‘abstraction’ of something larger than what’s shown (his whole kingdom), and it captures the feel of our world through the props shown. It’s been growing steadily, as we add iterate through the designs, refining edges here and adding effects there.

Since you saw this background last, we’ve added highlights to the edges of the scenery as the sun sets lower on the horizon, and worked on the coloring of the sky as it turns to night. We’ve also added a whole forest on the hill and a cross section of the earth, lovely details to the hill, meticulous touches of moss and mortar to the stonework on the castle, and radiant lines of waves cutting across the ocean.

We hope you like how it’s progressing! All compliments and comments for the beautiful pixelwork can be posted below, or sent to larry@levelzerogames.com.

In addition, I put together a little package for you guys, wallpapers of this image as it is below, with our title, and our lovely green title page for that minimalistic look! Download it *here*.

EUREKA! -or- How we take an idea and start a project

Josef Locastro — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:54:59 +0000

When inspiration strikes the Level Zero team we are usually sitting, watching some TV or playing games and one of us pipes up “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if…?” and so begins a lovely talk about a new idea. Some ideas only go that far and rightly so, talking about AAA titles we can’t make till we can throw millions on the table is all good and well though! We write them down for later. The MEAT of the conversation comes with an idea we can actually make.
Here’s how we pick’em.

(More after the Bump)

Look in your phone, on your contacts list, on facebook and next to you. Is there a team there, ready to work and devote lots of time and effort to your project? Chances are the answer is no! Not all of us work in offices, or have enough free time and expendable income on our hands to work on a project that may or may not pay us back. A project for a student group needs to factor in midterms and finals, a project for graduates needs to factor in dayjobs and equipment needed. You can’t design without the right tools!

The real key to having a small productive team is finding dedicated people with solid work ethic who want to get things done. With the right kind of motivation a small team can do amazing things! So once you’ve got the people and the can-do attitude fired up, you’re ready to take the big first step.

ORGANIZE THE PROJECT

All good projects have a heavy layer of top-level organization that makes them easy to read, edit and work from. We use a number of productivity tools for this. I’ve listed a few you should take a look at!

Dropbox

Dropbox is a free file-sharing service that installs itself to your Documents folder and behaves as a literal dropbox for files. You can put anything in there (up to 2 gigs free, more when people sign up using your referral), and it instantly syncs with not only the online storage space, but anyone you’ve shared the folder with. This allows a team to all share one folder, so no duplicate documents get saved or made, and the updates are all automatic. It feels natural and it works well!

Dropbox has one problem: If you open a document that’s already being worked on, it saves out an “alternate” copy when you are done. Luckily, all you have to do is check with whoever edited the last document (the recent changes are all saved online in a “history” feed), and keep the correct edits. No worries!

Be sure to organize your folders well! There’s a reason folders can be put inside folders! Having one folder with all the games documents in it is messy and will lead to bloody ends. Here’s an example of how I would organize a file structure for a new project.

"The Sunset"s folder structure

Inside of those folders you can get creative. An “Inspirations” folder for sound and art? A “Sketches and Scrap” folder? Flesh out the lower levels but keeps a tight reign on where things get put! Art in art, Sound in Sound…etc. The folder structure will help your and your team find things they need quickly and easily, and with Dropbox you’ll all know immediately when someone edits any of the documents!

SVN (Subversion) using the TortiseSVN client

SVN is a combination of Subversion (the thing on the website that hosts the files) and TortoiseSVN (the thing we use to interact with Subversion from our computers). It’s a lot like Dropbox but there’s an important difference: SVN keeps tracks of who has documents out for edits, it has a log of changes, and (our version) doesn’t sync files automatically across everyones computers. It’s a shared online space where you can upload files, and save them to your hard drive, while making sure you’re not “breaking the build”.

We use SVN only for game builds, and code. When working on a project all non-code files go in Dropbox, and all engine/game code goes on the SVN, including the final game assets (images, sprites…etc…only what’s going in the final compile).

Evernote

Evernote is a note-sharing service that allows you to save anything (clips, exerpts and even voice recordings) and save them to an online shared folder. Then you can access them from anywhere. Evernote is great is great for when inspiration strikes at odd times, or when you want to snap a photo to remember something. It even reads text from your pictures, interprets handwriting and lets you search your notes for tags it generates.

Evernote may not be something we use daily, but we use it a lot. You never know when the good stuff bubbles up.

Google Wave

Google Wave invites are a dime a dozen these days, with more people signing up daily. But what is it? Google Wave, some would argue, is what Email is going to become. Google Wave lets you invite collaborators to “waves”: strings of posts under a subject heading that can all be edited in real time. While it seems like a waste of time, given Emails get the job done, the focus is on working on something with another author. Using Wave requires REMEMBERING Google Wave even exists (it is still in beta, and the only notifier for it so far is a Google Chrome Beta Extension), and a focus on working together.

We’ve used Wave in limited amounts, but it worked great when coming up with the name for Net Gain. John and I sat in there and made a BIG brainstorm list, leaving real time comments on names we liked, bolding the finalists and eventually I thew Net Gain on the table and it stuck. Now we have the Wave to remind us of the names the game almost was, and our inspirations behind it! Not a bad deal!

Microsoft Word

Not even joking. Word is great at organizing documents infrastructure and keeping track of versions and revisions. Learn to use this tool well. Open Office is great and all but if you want to make games, you gotta use the big boy tools. Word has been invaluable.

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Once all of that is out of the way, you can start planning the pre-production. That’s right. PLANNING the PRE. Awesome. But having the structure, and keeping a tight grip on it will only help. It may drive you crazy if you’re not used to using multiple programs/interfaces for sharing information but trust me, it’s been a habit I am thankful for developing. Organization is tough with projects that involve multiple people, and just as tough when its only you. Communication aside, having the information ready to kick into gear could be the most important part of the process.

So give a few of the above methods a try, have some fun. I use at least one of them every day, if not more. Take care, have a great day and thanks for reading!

JGTBH,

Joe

Burj Dubai

John Gosling — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:59:59 +0000

Now announcing Burj Dubai: The Cost of Opulence!
You can find our page for the game here, including a free download of the full game.

You are In charge of the workers of Burj Dubai, what will be the world’s largest tower.

You have a set deadline, and you’ll need to press the workers to their limit to get the project done on time.

To build the tower efficiently, you’ll need to have enough workers and keep them from getting upset.

Work them as much as you can by increasing their hours per day, and days per week. Reduce their pay to keep on budget.

With the deadline close and the budget for wages small, there are ’special actions’ you can do to reduce expenses, and to keep workers in line if they start to protest their treatment…

For further information, visit our research blog: Worker’s Rights: Dubai

Or visit the Wikipedia Page.