MageMaze - turn-based puzzle adventure

Discussion in 'Upcoming iOS Games' started by emdash, May 6, 2012.

  1. emdash

    emdash Well-Known Member

    Mar 18, 2012
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    artist / Art Director
    Oakland, CA
    MageMaze is a turn-based puzzle adventure game by RoboDojo for iOS. Play as Norse warrior Svenn the Svaliant to explore the dungeon maze of Yngvarr the Ynvoker and rearrange the maze itself, making the gameplay incredibly dynamic , challenging, and fun!

    Svenn is on a quest to explore the dungeon of the sinister mage Yngvarr the Ynvoker in order to rescue the villagers' gold. As you navigate the catacombs, Yngvarr unleashes fearsome beasts to dissuade you from your progress. In the game you'll

    • Arm yourself with different weapons
    • Face many different monster types, each with their own distinct behavior
    • Avoid traps, fight boss-battles, and enjoy multiple kinds of in-game challenges
    • Equip many different kinds of power-ups and equipment.
    • 60+ levels of increasingly challenging fun
    • Interesting story-line, engaging characters and witty repartee
    • Catchy music

    On your turn, you can either move Svenn one tile or slide an entire row or column of tiles to rearrange the playing field to Svenn’s advantage! (And if you’re not doing so, ye gods, whose side are you on anyhow?!) You’ll have to navigate the constantly-changing maze, get the gold, svanquish the monsters, rescue the young lady, and withstand the barrage of Yngvarr’s snarky insults.

    Here are some screens:

    [​IMG]

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    [​IMG]


    We're signing up people now for beta testing on TestFlight, so PM me with your testFlight info if interested.
    You can also try our web build of the game at www.mage-maze.com. It's not got quite the same feel as playing it on your phone with a touch-screen, and is a little bit buggier, but feel free to give it a show to get a feel for the mechanics.
    Please let us know what you think!
     
  2. Charybdis

    Charybdis Well-Known Member

    Apr 2, 2011
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    Programmer
    Kyoto, Japan
    Hey, I cant believe no one has commented on this. I played this game ages ago when it was still an infant. It was fun even then, but it has really come a long way. It's great!

    Michael, I was looking at the page and saw your name. I thought, that rings a bell. I am 'SquishMe' on cgsociety. I havent been on there for ages and I'm sure you wont remember, but several years ago we interacted a bit during the some challenges. I was always a fan of your work and followed your progress, you have such amazing skill. I remember your walrus avatar, hehe.

    Anyway, keep up the amazing work and I will certainly be following this game's progress. If you're still looking for testers, I'd love to have a go. I am on testflight.
     
  3. emdash

    emdash Well-Known Member

    Mar 18, 2012
    77
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    6
    artist / Art Director
    Oakland, CA
    Hi, Charybdis, thanks for the note! I sort of remembered the name, but when I went and got a look at your Spectacular entry, I remembered the piece instantly. I vaguely recall us talking about ways to get good wrinkle effects in the legs using Photoshop trickery... Anyhow, thanks for commenting on MageMaze.

    This bump spawned a few PMs so I'll update status:

    Despite appearances here, things are progressing reasonably well on the game. We're on a pause right now as 50% of our 2-man team relocates from Belgium to England for a new game industry day job. We'd been beta testing recently and found a few flaws - people having trouble with the overarching story goals and finding some of the AI too simplistic/random, so we've been working on that a lot lately. We now introduce some of the secondary characters (and plot) a lot earlier (ie the first level!) and Kristof has, for example, redesigned the minotaur AI so that how soon they break through walls depends on how confined their space is: If they're trapped in a 1x1 space they break out very fast and in the direction of Svenn while if they're in a space with, say, 6 tiles, they take a little while to explore it before busting out.

    We've added a lot more items in the store (and are making them work properly - bonus!) and really focusing on the first dozen or so levels of the game to make sure that new users know what to do but don't get bored with too much hand-holding.

    We are hoping for a fall release. We're definitely still looking for alpha/beta testers (particularly if you are good at giving feedback!) so feel free to keep PMing me about that.

    Cheers!
     
  4. drelbs

    drelbs Well-Known Member

    Jun 25, 2009
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    Flew under my radar somehow.

    PM Sent! :cool:
     
  5. emdash

    emdash Well-Known Member

    Mar 18, 2012
    77
    0
    6
    artist / Art Director
    Oakland, CA
    Thanks, Drelbs. And thanks to everyone else who has PMed me about beta testing. As some of you may have noticed, we hit a little snag: The Provisioning File expired yesterday. You'd think it would be an easy matter to fix, but as our programmer has all of his belongings in boxes for his move today to Nottingham, England, it's a little tricky to fix. Once he gets settled into his new home, and gets the all-important Internet connection, we'll have a new build up and running for you all. 'Til then, we ask for your patience...

    And in the meantime, if anyone else wants to be added to the beta test list, please PM me.

    Thanks!
     
  6. emdash

    emdash Well-Known Member

    Mar 18, 2012
    77
    0
    6
    artist / Art Director
    Oakland, CA
    Hi, everyone! We're finally all ready for our first big new demo/beta!
    Thank you to those of you who PMed me about testing: You should very soon get a TestFlight notice about the new build. Thanks for your patience! And anyone who still wants to get in on it, please PM me with your TestFlight e-mail address.

    The demo is the first 13 levels of the game. (The final game will be 50-60 story levels and 3 different modes.) Here, we really wanted to test the on-boarding process: How easy is the game to get into, pick up the controls, etcetera? We're looking forward to hearing folks' reactions, either here or privately!
     
  7. slewis7

    slewis7 Well-Known Member

    Apr 6, 2011
    3,775
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    Male
    Retired!
    Houston, TX
    This looks interesting. I hope there will be an iPad version.
     
  8. drelbs

    drelbs Well-Known Member

    Jun 25, 2009
    11,200
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    Cool - looking forward to it!
     
  9. Misguided

    Misguided Well-Known Member

    Jan 27, 2009
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    Ditto.
     
  10. picohero

    picohero Well-Known Member

    Jul 16, 2012
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    I'm getting on this :D
     
  11. emdash

    emdash Well-Known Member

    Mar 18, 2012
    77
    0
    6
    artist / Art Director
    Oakland, CA
    Thanks for the interest, everyone! All of you should have all received your MageMaze beta invites by now and are hopefully playing and enjoying the game!

    (Picohero, we're still waiting for you to add a device to your testFlight account)

    We've got some helpful and positive comments in our survey, but please feel free to share your thought here in this thread as well! And if anyone else would like to get in on the beta/demo, just send me your testFlight account address. Plenty of room!
     
  12. picohero

    picohero Well-Known Member

    Jul 16, 2012
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    Sorry, forgot to accept! :)
     
  13. picohero

    picohero Well-Known Member

    Jul 16, 2012
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    Good dungeon crawler puzzle(thing :)) I really like this game
     
  14. t0x1cj4m

    t0x1cj4m New Member

    Jul 28, 2013
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    Hello, I'm Megan! I've recently joined the MageMaze team to help with marketing. Its about time this thread had an update :)

    If you haven't heard of MageMaze before, then please try the demo on our website:
    >>Play the Demo<<

    Onward to the latest news:
    The completion of MageMaze inches ever closer! So Kristof(Coder/Co-Designer) and Mike(Artist/Co-Designer) asked me to help out in anticipation of the game actually launching. We now have Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages set up.

    Our press kit for RoboDojo and MageMaze has been put together, with many thanks to Rami Ismail from Vlambeer. If you haven't got a press pack together for your game and its nearing launch, you should check out presskit(), its straight forward to use and a real time saver.

    Congratulations are in order, Kristof will soon be shipping out to Finland to start his new job at Remedy as a Technical Character Artist! *clapping* We hope to get the bulk of the remaining work on MageMaze completed before he departs on 7th August.

    Level 50 – the final boss battle is well underway! We are really excited to be working on the final level of the game. Kristof has also been looking to get MageMaze’s alternate game modes, infinite and hardcore implemented.

    Mike has made some updates to the loading screen to accommodate the screen size for iPhone5 and so Svenn looks more Svenny, what do you think?:

    [​IMG]

    In other news, our IndieCade jurors having been allocated, which coincides amazingly well with the hack to Apple’s developer portal, which means we can’t give them access to the game. Boo :(

    We have also been starting to think about the promotional video for MageMaze, our friend Joe is helping out with his video editing skills. You’ll have to wait for launch to get a peek though :)

    If anyone wants to get involved with beta testing MageMaze then please PM me with your TestFlight email address.

    tl;dr progress is being made on MageMaze.
     
  15. t0x1cj4m

    t0x1cj4m New Member

    Jul 28, 2013
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    UI updates and Infinite mode

    Greetings! and welcome to another MageMaze update :)

    Mike has been busing working on the hi-res UI and coming up with ideas for the additional space on the iPhone 5 screen. We are thinking of going with a combination of versions 1 and 2, with different hints fading in and out. What do you think?

    Version 1

    Version 2

    Version 3

    We didn't manage to get the provisioning profiles set up for our IndieCade jurors, but, never fear! We gave them a link to a the latest version of MageMaze to play via the Unity web player. It's not ideal, but, it's better than nothing. I hope the jurors will be able to imagine the joys of sliding tiles around a touch screen :)

    After arriving safely in Finland, Kristof has started to settle into his new home and job, and has still found time to work on MageMaze! Infinite mode is working and will be ready for beta testing soon.

    If you are interested in beta testing MageMaze then feel free to pm me!
     
  16. t0x1cj4m

    t0x1cj4m New Member

    Jul 28, 2013
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    Have an awesome MageMaze desktop wallpaper! :D

    We are so close to finishing this thing! So, what has been going on with MageMaze over the past few weeks?

    We have been working on the final victory screen, but that is a super secret reveal for when you complete the game. Instead, we can share this painting of Svenn defeating the monsters of MageMaze, much to the displeasure of Yngvarr. It makes a tasty desktop background, check out the images here:

    Svenn takes names

    Yngvarr's regret

    We are trying to work out a nice way to show off the game in the promotional video. As MageMaze is in a dungeon, we thought an underground setting would frame the game nicely, here are some pictures:

    Dungeon underground

    Zoomed underground

    Here is our new padlock animation for the Infinate and Hardcore modes that unlock when Story mode is completed:

    Padlock animation

    As always you can check out the MageMaze demo on the website, all you need is the unity webplayer:

    >>Play the demo<<

    Thanks for checking us out!
     
  17. _Max_

    _Max_ Well-Known Member

    Apr 19, 2012
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    That's good news, may i ask price and release date?
     
  18. emdash

    emdash Well-Known Member

    Mar 18, 2012
    77
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    6
    artist / Art Director
    Oakland, CA
    You may ask...! :p
    But seriously... We are getting closer and are working hard on everything - especially adding the Infinite and Hardcore modes - but we're not close enough to name a release date yet. Sorry! I fervently hope we release by the end of the year. Why so vague? Kristof just moved to a whole new country and is now working in Finland for Remedy on 'Quantum Break' for PS4 so he's been a bit busy (to say the least) with life and the day job.

    As for price, still debating that as well. What do any/all of you think it should be priced at?

    Cheers!
     
  19. genesis_pig

    genesis_pig Well-Known Member

    Oct 25, 2012
    67
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    This looks really interesting, eager to see more.
     
  20. stevejarman

    stevejarman Well-Known Member

    Feb 13, 2013
    256
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    Game Developer
    Sydney, Australia
    Always been a massive fan of this game. Get it done already so we can play it! :)
     

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