There was lots more in March as well: Bendik and Eivind attended GDC in San Francisco and came back inspired by great workshops and meetings with their pockets stuffed with calling cards. Erik travelled to Italy, where he was one of the speakers at the Tools of Change Conference, part of the Bologna Book Fair. His talk to the book publishing industry on how game developers bring a new perspective to interactive storytelling was well received and quoted in the Italian press.
Oh, and while we are at it: Our good friends at Virtual Game Worlds also received a grant from the Norwegian Film Institute for their new title, Company of Mammals. I menton this because, the credits for both concept art and direction in Company of Mammals go to SnowCastle artists Fredrik and Fridtjof!
We at Snowcastle Interactive are proud to announce our next production called Festival of Magic!
Festival of Magic aims to innovate and combine tried and true game design in a visually stunning world. Follow Amon, a young hero in the mysterious town of Ragland and his captivating adventure in the city’s many exciting environments!
Columnist Jinny Gudmundsen gave Hogworld: Gnart’s Adventure a 4 stars out of 4 rating in her weekly column Kid’s Tech in USA Today this week. The column titled Five Amazing Apps for Kids ends its review of Hogworld with the following:
“With stunning 3D visuals, a varied soundtrack, great voice acting and interactions that are seamlessly incorporated into the story, kids will be transported into another world. It is one of the most sophisticated yet accessible book apps published so far.”
Daniel Donahoo, a regular contributor on the GeeekDad blog at wired.com has written a great developer profile on SnowCastle Interactive. Check it out here.
“Hogworld: Gnart’s Adventure is an adventure game app for children aged 4 to 8 years, and it is brilliant. It is effectively an interactive storybook like none we have seen,” begins GeekDad alias Daniel Donahoo, in his glowing review on wired.com today. And he also really gets what SnowCastle believes is true interactive storytelling. But enough from us here at SnowCastle Interactive. Read the full review here: Hogworld: Excellent Adventure Storytelling for Kids
Finally, the rest of the world can experience Hogworld: Gnart’s Adventure, the children’s app that made it to #1 top-grossing app in Norway.
Not a book, nor a game, this application occupies an exciting new hybrid category somewhere in-between; a territory Norwegian game developer SnowCastle calls “Interactive Stories”. This is storytelling the adventure game way.
Hey guys! Virtual Game Worlds hired Frits and me for some preliminary concept art for a project they’re working on called “Company of Mammals”. It’s early days on the project yet, but it was a bunch of fun to do some environments!
I’ll kick Frits around a little and get hold of his character designs so we can post those as well!
In the meantime, check out these (they’re works in progress and I’ll update when they get to a more polished state )
Finally the rest of the world can see why Hogworld went right to the top and became the #1 App in the Norwegian App Store.
“The exciting atmosphere and beautiful graphics grip them (the children) immediately. As a digital children’s story this is a big and welcome step towards more interactivity,”
Norway’s largest newspaper, Aftenposten
Hogworld is an interactive story about the adventures of the timid little hogbunny, Gnart. He has to get to the dentist by sundown, but to get there he has to pass through some pretty scary places. On his way, Gnart makes several new friends and confronts his fears. The story is a true interactive experience that makes full use of the iPad touch interface. Beautiful artwork enhanced by semi 3D effects and animations as well as music, sound effects and voice makes this a unique app somewhere between a book and a game. You may want to follow the story and then go back to explore the environments, which are full of beauty and surprises. Or you can pause to explore at any time.
Hogworld is intended for children 4 and over, but we do think quite a few adults may enjoy the app also. Available in iTunes app store in a few days! Sign up here to be among the first to know when the app is released.
The much anticipated massively multi-player online game Glitch with contributions from our very own Art Director Fridtjof went live for everyone a few days ago. The company behind it, Tiny Speck, was built by core members of the original Flickr team including co-founder Stewart Butterfield,Cal Henderson, Eric Costello and Serguei Mourachov. Glitch is not the kind of game you play to win, but more something you want to play in, to be part of. With support from Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Andreessen Horowitz and Accel, the development of Glitch has been followed closely, and at launch the game had 27K users and “hundreds of thousands” of requests, according to this article in TechChrunch.
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