Blog

Dyscourse Announcement & Kickstarter

November 6, 2013 by Devin Reimer

This month is a very symbolic month for me, it marks the point at which I’ve now been an indie game developer longer than any other job I’ve ever held. A feat that I did not dare to dream of when I embarked on this crazy adventure.

What makes this month even more awesome is we finally get to announce the next game we at Owlchemy Labs have been cranking away on. The game is called ‘Dyscourse’.

This game is by far the most ambitious project we’ve ever taken on. Because of this, we’re announcing it via Kickstarter to get support to help make it a reality.

So without further ado:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/owlchemylabs/dyscourse-survivors-choose-wisely

In short, Dyscourse is a survival game like you’ve never seen. You and a haphazard group of travelers are marooned on a desert island and your choices greatly affect the outcome.

Dyscourse is a crazy exciting project and the unique Kickstarter video was a blast to create and we think it turned out great.

Update: We are funded!!!! Jump over to the Owlchemy Labs blog for our rundown of some of the announcements we made during the kickstarter: http://owlchemylabs.com/dyscourse-is-happening/

Owlchemy Labs – CTO (Chief Technical Owl)

July 8, 2013 by Devin Reimer

I’m very happy to announce that I am now the CTO (Chief Technical Owl) of Owlchemy Labs.

As many may know I’ve been working very closely with Owlchemy Labs over the past couple of years, including the co-creation of Jack Lumber.

Over the last few months Alex Schwartz (Owlchemy Labs Founder and CEO) and I decided that because our visions aligned so well that it was time to make our business relationship more formal.

We have a lot of exciting things in the pipe and the future is looking like it will be a hoot!

2D Toolkit UI

June 5, 2013 by Devin Reimer

Over the past few projects I’ve been working on a UI framework for use with 2D Toolkit. I love 2D Toolkit, but it biggest issue was the lack of a UI solution. I tried NGUI and while it is powerful, I found it clunky and very slow (big problem on mobile).

So I set off to build my own UI framework that would work with 2D Toolkit. The criteria was it needed to be fast, easily extensible and event-driven. After numerous iterations I had something really solid that dramatically improved our workflow. I then realized that other people would probably find this useful.

I shot an email over to the creator of 2D Toolkit and after some discussion we came to an agreement.

With that, this UI framework is now included in 2D Toolkit!

This means if you already own 2D Toolkit you get it for free. And if you do not already own 2D Toolkit, it will come bundled with it.

Win-Win-Win!

Webplayer Demo: http://www.unikronsoftware.com/2dtoolkit/webplayer/uidemo/

2D Toolkit Unity Asset Store: http://u3d.as/1Wi

 

New Game Announcement : Jack Lumber

April 4, 2012 by Devin Reimer

I’m very excited to finally announce a new game I’ve been work on: Jack Lumber.

Jack Lumber is an absurd arcade/action game about choppin’ wood! An insane bullet-time path-drawing log-slicing pun-filled mashup for mobile platforms.

AlmostLogical Software has teamed up with Owlchemy Labs (of Snuggle Truck fame) to bring this crazy game to life. We’ve been hard at work and will be publically unveiling Jack Lumber at PAX East in a couple of days.

If you are attending PAX East swing by our booth, say hi and play the game. The booth is #760 and is part of the awesome Indie MEGABOOTH.

For more details and to see the teaser trailer jump over to JackLumberGame.com.

Also check out this sweet article Touch Arcade wrote about Jack Lumber today: http://toucharcade.com/2012/04/04/snuggle-truck-dev-announces-next-game-jack-lumber/

Update: Jack Lumber PAX East recap!

Maze Mover Launch (iPad and PlayBook) – Developed with AIR

September 20, 2011 by Devin Reimer

I’m very excited to announced my first fully featured indie game, Maze Mover has finally launched. It is now available for both iPad and PlayBook.

I’ve been working on this game on and off since December with the help of Calin Reimer.

I developed the first and second prototype of Maze Mover using Flash. When both prototypes were successful I expected I would move onto something different to develop it (either Unity or Corona). But with the progress made with AIR (AIR 2.6 and then AIR 2.7), I decided to give AIR a try.

I couldn’t be happier with the final result. Maze Mover turned out to be the perfect game for AIR. I might do a more detailed article on the development of Maze Mover in the future.

If you  happen to be in the Winnipeg area on Thursday (Sept 22) swing by Demo Camp. Here I will be doing a talk on the development of Maze Mover.  http://newmediamanitoba.com/events/180/democamp

What are you waiting for, get Maze Mover today!
iPad – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/maze-mover/id458547694?ls=1&mt=8
PlayBook – https://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/55013
Maze Mover Website and Trailer – mazemover.com

Office Zombie Simulator on Kongregate

February 20, 2011 by Devin Reimer

I’m happy to announce the release of our new game Office Zombie Simulator. This game was created by Calin Reimer and myself for Kongregate’s Unity Game Contest.

While it is still a work-in-progress I am very happy with how it turned out considering how swamped I was this last month (So Many Rooms and client work).

When I heard the announcement for Kongregate’s Unity Game Contest I was very excited and knew I needed to create something for it. I love game development contests because they have a great feature; a fixed deadline.

The premise of “Office Zombie Simulator” is pretty simple, imagine a few zombie loving nerds are stuck in an office for the weekend. Instead of working they decide to setup the ultimate zombie apocalypse simulator.

The idea for “Office Zombie Simulator” came to me out of necessity.

One problem that we keep running into with developing 3D content is the amount of time and effort required to build all the necessary 3D models. So the idea was if we could reuse more models between projects we would save development time. Since another project we were working on required office equipment I thought if this game could be set in an office, we could hit two birds with one stone.

Other than that the game shouldn’t have any complex 3D models or animations (too time consuming) and needed to be easy to pick up and play.

After a few days of brainstorming, the concept for “Office Zombie Simulator” was born. It turned out to be a very cool concept and is more proof that creativity works best under constraints.

So give it a try, leave feedback and please rate.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/AlmostLogical/office-zombie-simulator

We are hoping enough people will enjoy the game to warrant us building a fully realized version. We have a lot of cool ideas that we would love to implement.