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[jonaz.dk]

New project announced from Zillo Games in Helsingør.

Whiskers and Wizardry!

[jonaz.dk]

Jean-Claude Van Damme comes to Hitman!

[jonaz.dk]

The latest in AI 'gameish' generation from DeepMind... and oh boy! Things are moving fast! Now the latest development is the ability to explore and much more stable world that doesn't completely regenerate when you look the other way.
We will see if/when tech like this ends up in actual enjoyable and useable games. Might take a while.. but never say never!

A related near future scenario would be to have AI visual filters running on top of existing games. Converting the game's visuals in real time into whatever you want pretty much. Won't be a game changer per se, but a nice upgrade that can give old games a fresh coat of paint or allow for cheaper to develop games if the intention is to have eg. high AAA like visual fidelity. Furthering 'democratization' of game development.

Also I would speculate that future potential AI generated games will more likely to be developed by a team of specialized Agentic AI's doing all the pieces of design, coding, testing, art or so forth to put together in an actual executable. As opposed to this more dreamy on the fly generative approach. Now that could be a game changer, providing if it will actually be able to generate good enough content. Whether people like it or not, is a different question. It is here to stay.
The level of generated images and video certainly seems to have a large effect already in the mainstream, on social media sites with tons of crappy spammy content generating lots of impressions. Games could easily be spammed out in a similar matter some years out. On the other hand it could also be the tool for elevating the possibility space of games as a medium. At the end of the day it is a tool and will be used as such for peoples varying goals.. some honourable, some less honourable..



More
https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/g ... rld-model/

[jonaz.dk]

GMTK - What it's like to release a game on Steam

[jonaz.dk]

DK project developed by Hairington Games and released back in October 24. It's free!

Corporate Cut: The Hair-Raising Adventure of an Office Employee

[jonaz.dk]

Mikkel Svendsen from Geometric Interactive on some of the tech behind COCOON.

Pondering Orbs: The Rendering and Art Tools of COCOON

[jonaz.dk]

Also a an excellent reminder. Writing your own engine from scratch will unlock the true potential of the GPU.
All the large standard engines are heavily burdened by their incredible feature set. Which definitely comes at a cost.

Writing your own engine is of cause for the few who has such time and talents. And will consume a hefty price in time of development.

The engine for Tiny Glades is written in Rust by the way.

Rendering Tiny Glades With Entirely Too Much Ray Marching

[jonaz.dk]

Tempest Rising from Slipgate / 3D Realms gets a release date trailer!

Looking good so far!
Seeing excellent estimated Wishlist numbers! Currently placed at a very nice #50 on the global Steam Wishlist.

Though the game is also mentioned as among the most expensive developed tiles in Danish game development history.
So we will see how the game fares in returning the investment when it hits the market. But I would give it fair chances without knowing exact numbers.
And clearly there is a large hunger for a new Command & Conquer like game out there.
So the first part of the puzzle is completed, as in making a game that people actually wants to play. So that's awesome to see in the Danish games industry which have had a history of struggling with that specific part in too many cases.

Looking forward to an hopefully excellent launch 24 Apr, 2025. But with a raised eyebrow. Slipgate has not delivered inhouse developed titles much beyond mixed reviews recently. Though I did enjoy an earlier released demo of Tempest. So I hope they got their stuff together this time. Crossing fingers!

[jonaz.dk]

"Live" concert from 2023 with PRESS PLAY ON TAPE.

PRESS PLAY ON TAPE at BIT LIVE 2023

[jonaz.dk]

Lightmatter from the closed DK studio Tunnel Vision Games is now on a super deep discount for less than 1 euro.

Yes the DLC is the full game.

[jonaz.dk]

Winter Borrow from (DK) Pine Creek Games has a playable demo.

Gave the demo a spin! Seemed pretty nice if you are into collect thingies and crafting thingies type of gameplay.
But then I got stuck inside the crafting station after about 1-2 minutes of gameplay.

Btw. Winter Borrow is developed by some of the former team that was working (for a very long time) on the game Above. That sadly never saw a release. Let's hope it goes better this time.

Adding: The wishlist looks good though! Currently at #629. So that's promising for a good launch on Steam.

[jonaz.dk]

I have been longing for AI driven auto retopology for quite some years now. Now Nvidia has revealed something in the works, Meshtron!.. looks like an amazing tool. It was always just a matter for time before something like this would happen. And the quality certainly looks good enough for most use cases.

Meshtron has a github page.. but nothing to download (yet anyways)
https://meshtron.github.io

Nvidia blogpost
https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/high- ... -meshtron/

[jonaz.dk]

So yesterday I met Christian Faber. AKA the father of LEGO Bionicle at the Nimbi Gamelab first welcoming meeting.

Apparently he has a new game/story world concept in the works and has been in the working on the project for an extensive amount of time, around 15 years I hear. And with a certain following of old Bionicle fans to boot.

The project is called 'Rebel Nature' and is under the company Waveborn ApS.

Pitch video of the 'Rebel Nature' concept from 2021.


Instagram profile
https://www.instagram.com/fabframes/

Gut feeling is so far not convinced it will be a prime candidate for a commercial success like Bionicle was. But let's see! Hoping the best!

Adding: I'm also really struggling to see the maximum appeal of the project for people who liked the Bionicle universe in the first place. The audience is now.. 15 years older. The robots is more of a sideshow here, while the story world is overtly force feeding a UN/environmentalist agenda (I don't think the metahuman generated protagonist looks like Greta just by chance anyways)

And if the idea is to make a game as the primary diving factor. The pitch indicates little insight into gameplay and making a good game first. A lack of a strong focus is a major issue.. Visually it is also not super strong (fair enough it is an early pitch video).
Also it looks like it wants to be a high budget project. But I am not really sure the core of the project will have a strong enough hook in a large enough audience to warrant the production of the game/show's and hence a return on investment. I get a much more niche audience vibe from it. I get the feeling the project will have to spend a lot of resources on finding a new audience as a lot of the identity of what made the original Bionicle a hit is not so present. And kind of a concept sitting between 2 chairs of trying something new that doesn't have a direct connection with the past and then adding a half baked/mismatching appeal to attract the original audience. That's a REAL tricky combo to execute.
Sorry to be this blunt and hard. But that's just the feeling I get. Can't help the honesty! That's how I roll!

So all in all there will most certainly be challenges to overcome for the project to realise it as fully intended.

Though I could certainly see taking veins of the original Bionicle IP and creating something new and appealing from that. Actually I think it would be a brilliant idea to do. But it's all about how it's done.

[jonaz.dk]

DK game in the works. Thrustme Too from PetskullGames


Also some gameplay footage surfaced from his Cosmic Stronghold

[jonaz.dk]

And 'Mission Possible' - An online escape room from DK Zebrasoft from small town Uldum between Horsens and Vejle.


It's quite the interesting oddity to see self distributed online games as a tiny indie game developer.
> I would probably not recommend! <
But it makes kind of sense as their business model is looking like it is 'pay to play per session'. So that would not fit within the available stores. But certainly limiting in many other ways.

Mission Possible and their other online escape room games
https://zebraescapes.com/mission-possible

[jonaz.dk]

Building Better Games

[jonaz.dk]

Merry Christmas out there! hope you had a good one!

And now for mythbusting in Unreal with the always amazing Ari.
Met him a couple of times now. Great guy!

[jonaz.dk]

So is devlogs worth the effort?

Nooot really in most cases. Rare cases yes!

[jonaz.dk]

Hell Drive from (DK) Teacup Games will be releasing very early next year.





Previously they have displayed another project in the works. 'Klara and the Rex Brothers' more of a cutesy 3D platformer type game. But I might suspect that project is on hold for now at least.
https://www.instagram.com/teacupgamesllc

[jonaz.dk]

Boom! Grats to Hovgaard Games! 500.000 units sold of 'Big Ambitions'.

500,000 Copies Sold!
First and foremost, we're thrilled to announce that Big Ambitions has reached a milestone of 500,000 copies sold! We are incredibly grateful for your support and for being part of this amazing community. Your passion and feedback continue to drive us forward.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 3696081261

[jonaz.dk]

So the amount of released games on Steam see another years of increase.
In 2024 almost 19000 games was released alone.


https://steamdb.info/stats/releases/

At the same time Steam users only spent 15% of their time on games released in 2024.
https://gamedevreports.substack.com/p/s ... 5-of-their

So no doubt that you will need something even more extra special when launching your game in Steam.

Highest rated 2024 released game goes Balatro! (Update: It was just ever so slightly oventaken by MiSide)
https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/2024/

[jonaz.dk]

Also 2024 has seen a new Danish Podcast, Gamerfar, come to life from DK developers and well known faces to me at least. Michael Flarup from North Play and Alexandar Max Skronski from Ghost Ship Games. Not development focused but talking about all kinds of gamer dad related topics.

First episode is online.. and more episodes are online.

Velkommen til Gamerfar



https://www.youtube.com/@gamerfardk



https://gamerfar.dk/