The Photographer’s House

Cliff Town

We’ve found ourselves having to work out crazily hard stuff, like how to make Lumi realistically climb around footage of a moving ferris wheel, and how a mirrored surfaces can be made interactive.  Sometimes we’re banging our heads on the desk with frustration, sometimes we’re wide-eyed and enthused when it’s gone well.

There’s a lot which needs bespoke treatment, and a lot of head scratching beforehand, then tons of care to make it actually happen.

So things have been taking longer than we estimated. We reckon we’ve probably done as much visual work on the first scene already as there was in the entire first game. But, even though that means we won’t be able to release the game this spring, it does mean it’ll be much much better when it is released.

We’re still planning on a 2013 release, and we’ll be letting you know more about our release date when we’ve done a little more work and can predict it with more accuracy.

More details to follow soon. For now, enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sorry there were no blog  posts in December. Late 2012 was a blur of card, wood, glue & burning the 4am oil to hit our Lume 2 filmshoot deadline. We did it! What’s more the footage really is looking great, and has exceeded our expectations. This has set us up nicely for 2013, and to complete Lume 2 for a Spring 2013 launch. Watch this space, hoping to put up some photos very soon of the shoot. Thanks to everyone who has been involved so far to get us to this stage.

Oh, and if that has made you think about taking a look at the original Lume, it’s for sale on Steam at a fabulous 75% discount  for the next few days.

Kath & Luke

We don’t want to show too much of Lume 2  just yet, as we want players to get some surprises as they play the game. However, here are a couple of  pictures of things coming together.

Other highlights this month,  include:

Working with the highly talented Paper Artist Sarah Bridgland who has created some fantastic paper creations that will ‘dress’ the city.

Finally getting the moving elements working within the City, microwave motors have worked a treat for our rotating elements

On another note, Luke has done a fantastic Postmortem on Lume for Gamasutra it’s a great piece and showcases the highs and low’s of the project. It’s great to look back and digest Lume as we enter into the Lume 2 completion and release in the next 6 months.

Oh and there has only been one near miss so far!

Kath

Setting up….felt tips at the ready

Simple!

A selection of paper models created by everyone

Luke setting the scene

We were thrilled to be asked to take part in GameCity 7 this year to create our ‘Paper to Play’ workshop for the good people of Nottingham. It was a great event and the response we got from children, adults and fellow Game Developers was fantastic. It was busy from start to finish and everyone was really enthusiastic and completely involved with creating paper elements (critters, buildings, cars and buses) for our hand-crafted platform game. Everyone was able to have their name in the credits and we had a wall of suggestions for the name of the game too. Thanks to everyone who took their time to get involved and get creative!

Level 1 screenshot below……

Thanks to GameCity for asking us to be part of it, and for hosting such a brilliant festival again this year

Kath

After hearing how fabulous GameCity Festival in Nottingham is every year, and kicking ourselves that we didn’t make the short train ride from London to get there. Next week we are finally attending. Not only attending but hosting what we hope will be an exciting  event: From Paper to Play

“ You’ll be making buildings, streets and monsters with your bare hands and ingenuity, and we’re going to film them there and then. With some technological magic we’ll be making this footage interactive you’ll be able to run, jump, and generally mess about in the world we just created, and take home a game you can point at and say ‘I made that’.”

Come along on Friday 26th October,  10:30am – 1:30pm Old Market Square,

We’ve also discovered recently that Lume is a finalist  in no less than 5 categories at the TIGA Awards we are thrilled to bits as these awards showcase the best of British Gaming. So we really are in fantastic company.

We are Finalists in the following categories

Action/Adventure

Visual Design

Game Design

Originality

Game of the Year

Wish us luck! We only have to wait until 1st November to find out if we are winners at the swish TIGA Awards ceremony.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As well as the general game design, it’s also crucial to have a final model of the city perfected. We’ve been testing a range of materials including wood, paper, card, metal and plastic. Developing colour swatches and generally building a city we are extremely happy with.  We’ve been enjoying the process and all going well we will begin filming mid-November. 

Here are a few pictures from the studio taken today

Kath

The Android, Kindle Fire and NOOK versions now have a higher resolution than the original and look gorgeous on these devices.

The game is available to download right now and for a limited time at a huge discount for all supported Android phones, the Kindle Fire and the NOOK.

Luke Whittaker, Director of State of Play Games says

“We are extremely excited about launching Lume to these new devices and markets. We are pleased to be able to finally satisfy those fans of Lume had have been asking for it on their Android device, Nook or Kindle Fire for a while, we are proud to say that Lume is finally here for you.

The game is now in a higher resolution than the original game and is perfect for the handheld market. It’s such exciting times and we are looking forward to seeing new audiences discovering the charm of Lume.

The Game is now available here:

Google Play for Android

Kindle Fire

NOOK

After a successful two days showcasing Lume as part of the Develop Indie Showcase. Our time there was rounded off with a lovely big win! Winning the Overall Showcase Prize at the event. We were so happy as you can see from the picture.

Thanks to everyone who came up to us and said how much they enjoyed the game, it really meant alot to us. It was also great to watch people play the game again and see how they interacted with the game on so many different levels.

What always amazes me about events like this is how bloomin’ friendly  the Indie Game community is. We had a great time hanging out with the other Finalist’s as well as everyone else that came to the event. Thanks to you all.

Also, Congratulations to the other Winners of the night Q.U.B.E by Toxic Games won Editor’s Choice Award and  The Missing Ink by RedBedlam won People’s Choice Award.

Thanks again we now have a shiny thing on the studio wall!

Last week we were thrilled to hear that Lume has been shortlisted for the Develop Conference Indie Showcase.  As part of the Indie Dev Day at this year’s Develop Conference there will be a dedicated Indie Showcase area within the Expo, featuring 10 independently developed games shortlisted by a panel of experts.
One of these 10 games will be judged overall Indie Showcase Winner by the judging panel and there will also be the chance for all delegates to vote for their favourite game during the event in the Peoples Choice Award.

We were also had the fantastic news last week that Lume has been nominated in this year’s European Games Award 2012! We’ve been nominated in the Best European Adventure Game category, which is fantastic news.  The European Games Award is Europe‘s largest video game public award and the winner is decided by online votes. We need every vote so if you have a spare view minutes it would be great if you can vote for us. Its all very Eurovision!

We are really excited by both these awards and it’s great that Lume has been recognized.

Bring it on!

Kath

Not being able to attend ourselves we have been sent some great photographs of the exhibition which I’ve posted below. It’s great to see some of our ‘Making of’ pictures framed alongside the game, and it’s inspired us to get some produced for the studio here in London.

The show continues until 8th July 2012

photo credit: Mark Ashkanazy, courtesy ACMI