A few weeks ago I attended a 24 hour game jam at DreamHack, the DreamHackathon 2014.
Together with Unmechanical-buddies Joakim Holmér and Marko Permanto we created a shooter-racer-runner-rhythm game for the Oculus Rift. We had such a blast making it, and were awarded both Best Sound and First Prize!
We are now in the process of starting up the project for real and create a full fledged game from the idea. We hope to share this experience with you sometime next year!
To be honest I have totally forgotten about this section. With all the different social media services, updating a blog sometimes seems a bit unnecessary. Nevertheless, some big things went down the past month. Paradigm had a Kickstarter, which raised over $37k AUD. With development costs secured we are super excited to keep working on this and I cannot wait for the game to be finished and to share it with all of you!
We also were super lucky in that Felix Kjellberg (no relation, I think), better known as PewDiePie, played a demo of the game on his channel. To this date 5.4 million people have watched it – insane! I especially recommend you watch the first 15 seconds of this video. Exposure like this is to die for. 😀
I am super glad to announce that I will be composing the music to a crazy point-and-click adventure called Paradigm!
Music will have a 70’s synth/prog vibe coupled with the cheezyness of the 80’s.
Paradigm is a Point and Click Adventure Game which is set in a strange fantasy world in the not so distant future. Its main style influences are Eastern European settings, the late 70’s and early 80’s.
Paradigm is the result of a failure from DUPA genetics. A company who sells Prodigy Children to the rich and powerful so they don’t leave their inheritance to their poor excuse for biological children. During the growing process something went wrong and Paradigm was left horribly mutated. To cover the companies reputation, Paradigm was dumped in nearby almost abandoned post Soviet Union town to fend for himself.
Finding solace in music, Paradigm dreams to be the best electronic music artist the world has ever seen. However as a protagonist, inevitably his past comes back to haunt him and he must become a terribly ugly reluctant hero.
Project Announcement! The Veil is an atmospheric puzzle adventure for mobile, with a semi-generative soundtrack. This is the first gameplay video of a very early alpha. The game is highly story driven and aims to be an immersive and calm experience. Hope you like what you see and hear so far! Stay tuned for more information.
I was commissioned by composer Jesper Nordin – developer of Gestrument – to make a simple Kinect-to-MIDI conversion software. It recently got featured in CreateDigitalMusic and VDMX own tutorials! Yay!
http://vdmx.vidvox.net/tutorials/connecting-gestrument-kinect-to-vdmx-over-midi
Download link:
http://www.gestrument.se/future-development/
Unmechanical wins the prize ”Best Artistic Achievement” in the Nordic Game Awards 2013.
Below is the jury’s motivation:
“Artistry is sometimes visioning the end result and making it all fit together to make it dynamic and strikingly memorable.”
The happy camper in the picture is my friend and Talawa’s CEO Jesper Engström.
Beginning of December 2012, Jesper Engström from Talawa Games got to travel to Brazil to collect the award for ’Best Sound’ and ’Best Game’ in the Brazil International Games festival (BIG). While being very happy for the whole Unmechanical family, I am personally, obviously most excited about the Best Sound award. As I have previously said, the response I have gotten from the gaming community for my work on this game has been overwhelming to say the least.
A big thank you for buying and playing this fantastic game, and an even bigger thanks to you who have bought the soundtrack and have contacted me just to say thanks. It really means a lot to me.
=D
Quoted from the Unmechanical website:
Unmechanical the BIG Winner!
Proud winners of Best Game & Best Sound at BIG, Brazilian International Games Festival
Last week I went to Sao Paolo Brazil with no expectations what so ever except seeing a new place, meeting tones of interesting people and telling our dev story during my 1h talk. I got this opportunity thanks to Unmechanical being nominated for Best Game among 4 other great games, Tiny & Big, Papo & Yo, Awesomenauts and Capsized. we were also nominated for best sound and art among a ton of beautiful games.
The jury consisted game dev gurus like Chris Avallone, Jason Della Rocca & Leah Hoyer.On behalf of the whole Unmechanical team, Talawa Games, Teotl Studios & FutureGames! Thank you BIG Festival for the prizes Best Game & Best Sound, for giving us the opportunity to exchange experiences, share ideas, and for all of us to keep on making great games!
Recently I got great news that Unmechanical is recieving attention around the world. Two festivals, hòPlay in Spain and BIG in Brazil have nominated the game in several categories and among them best sound/music. It’s a great honor for the team and myself and fingers crossed we might actually win an award, if not all of them :0). The festivals are scheduled in late November.
Quoting the Unmechanical homepage:
Wow, we are 1 of 5 games that are nominated for Best Game in South Americas first Games Festival, BIGfestival, held in Sao Paulo, Brazil!
Like that was not enough we are also nominated for Best Art & Sound making us, together with one more, the only 2 games nominated in 3 categories! =D
Then we have hóPLAY, in Spain, were Unmechanical also is nominated for Best Art and Best Sound.
Both of these festivals are held around the 27th to the 29th of Nov 2012.
What an honour this is, thank you so much for your support and making this possible!
For my bachelor graduation concert in the spring of 2012, I produced an intermedia piece titled VEIL. The piece features electroacoustic music in an eight speaker octagon setup, live generated and static back projection visuals as well as a dancer performing in front of the screen.
The music is a mix between material generated in SuperCollider, concrete sounds and commercial software. Visuals are all generated through Processing, a java-based language. Most of the graphics are generated on the fly, allowing for randomness as well as exact control, sync and responsiveness with the audio.
Most of the dancing is improvised, however there are some choreographed elements necessary for the dramaturgic development.
While open for interpretation, the piece is about submission under social power structures in society – such as capitalism, conformity and religion.
The piece was performed at Reaktorhallen R1, KTH. The space used to house Sweden’s first nuclear reactor and was used for research purposes. This was well over 40 years ago and all that remain is a large, empty and eerie dilapidated hall 30+ meters below Stockholm’s soil.
The very talented Tara Motazed Kivani danced in this piece and made an amazing job, especially since because of technical difficulties we had but one full practice run just before the show.
Running time: 23 minutes
Today I am very proud to announce the release of the Unmechanical OST – simply titled ”Unmechanical”.
The game was released on August 8th by indie developers Talawa Games and Teotl Studios and has in a short week managed to grab a lot of people’s attention. Critics scores range between 7/10 to 9/10 and players rate it even higher!
The game can be purchased via GOG, GG and Steam.
Following quote is taken from my Unmechanical bio page:
One could say that I sort of squeezed myself into this project halfway in. I came across a video from an early build and said to myself: “I’mma work on this here game”. I mean, look at it. It looks awesome. The setting and environments are perfect for electronic music. I tried my best to create a sound world that felt fresh and original, staying far away from the hashed out blipblop stereotypes that are usually associated with games (especially those involving robots). This resulted in about 50 minutes of new music, with a lot of focus on ambient textures combining the mechanical and organic elements found throughout the game.
Aside from being my first video game soundtrack, Unmechanical has already proven itself to be a fantastic experience, forging great friendships with both developers Talawa and fans around the globe. I have been humbled by many kind words regarding the soundtrack, especially regarding the theme featured in the trailer. Even the critics reviewing the game have had mostly nice things to say about the music. Yet you can’t please everyone. That said, I would love to hear your thoughts on the music!
Purchase the OST at any of the sites below
[…] as complementary soundtracks go Unmechanical’s is up there with the best.
– IncGamers.com
The soundtrack is one of the better ones I’ve listened to in a long time
– Synt_x
I watched the trailer for the game and was all like wow! I’ve never seen anything that worked so well together visually and musically.
– MediocrityIsTheNewGenius.com