Our small experimental arcade game for two players, made in co-operation with the artist Marta Dzikowska, is out!
The game is free. We plan on releasing its source soon.
It’s a small diversion, made for fun during the DBC game jam, so we decided to release it for free. The game is very simple, but can be pretty fun when played with a partner. Let’s say it’s a belated Valentine’s Day gift from the Moa.
Co-Op is a space shooter with no shooting. The only way to kill enemies is to cut them with a flexible power beam connecting players’ ships. The goal is to max your score before you inevitably die due to your partner’s mistake.
The new preview build of Cinders is finally ready and available to all pre-order purchasers.
If you bought the game, please check your email for a new download link from BMT Micro. If you are a member of the press willing to do a preview, please contact us and we’ll fix you a copy, too.
The new version includes a lot more story content, along with numerous fixes and improvements. Writing took much longer than we expected, so to make use of that extra time, we got around to implementing some cool new stuff from your suggestions and our own wish list.
Notable changes:
Branch icon appears when current events are an outcome of earlier choices.
Every character now has several more poses for specific situations.
Small face icons were added next to character names for better readability.
From now on, save files will be compatible between game versions.
Several bug fixes and other minor improvements.
We hope you’ll enjoy the new build. If you have any feedback, please leave it in the comments or on our forums.
As for the general development progress — we’re getting there, but there’s still a significant amount of writing left to be done. We have hired an additional writer to speed up the process. If everything goes well, we should be able to set some release date soon.
Christmas is around the corner and the year is coming to an end. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you again for your support and wish you all a Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, if you so prefer).
It’s also a perfect opportunity to reminisce at the passing year. And boy — what a year it was!
We finally managed to make the transition to full-time indie and launch MoaCube. Which — who knows — may as well be one of the most important decisions in our lives. And, thanks to your support, we’re still afloat. Sometimes, it’s still hard to believe this is happening for real.
On the other hand, we failed to release Cinders this year. Showing that no matter how much you learned on your past mistakes and experiences, threading into a new territory is always much harder than expected. Unfortunately, it likely means that no matter how good the game will be, it won’t be profitable. We’ll probably have to take some more commercially-safe project next year to secure our indie-ness.
Still, I can only wish the coming year to be as exciting and challenging as this one. When the goal is so enticing, who cares if the road is a bit bumpy.
I just received the remaining graphics for the little co-op arcade game I wrote about before. They are so lovely that I just had to share them.
Especially these ferocious (but lovable) space monsters:
The planets are nothing to sneeze at either. Like this space-pretzel. Home of the peaceful race of Pretzelorians.
All the art is done by Marta Dzikowska. An artist I’ve met on the DBC game design workshops. Assets are first drawn on paper with pencils and crayons, then photographed and tweaked in Photoshop. The whole thing has a paper craft aesthetic to it.
The game itself just needs a few more tweaks and a proper game-over screen and it’s good to go. It’s not more than a day or two of work, but with Cinders taking the priority, I can’t really tell when it’s going to happen. Probably after the new preview build is sent to the pre-order owners.
Each time we test Cinders, we end up with a small list of potential issues to fix and small improvements we could make. This time, we’ve came with one of those silly little features, that mostly go unnoticed, but look pretty and make us feel good about ourselves.
Whenever current events are an outcome of your earlier decisions, this branch icon appears in the corner of the screen (with a cool blooming flowers effect):
We like to boast that Cinders has more choices than most indie visual novels. But the problem is that players still experience only one story at a time, unaware of all the subtle things that change based on their actions. This feature clearly marks the moments where the storyline branches, hinting that things could be different on another playthrough. It should help those who want to find all the endings and their variants.
It’s pretty subtle and definitely not critical to gameplay, but in our philosophy it’s the little things like that that make the game. Like the idea?
We’re in a bit of a rut. We don’t want to show any more Cinders materials in fear of spoiling too much. But at the same time, we would like to share what’s going on and what we’re working on right now.
So here’s a little sneak peak into our future projects and plans.
We’re still busy with writing Cinders, but that doesn’t mean Gracjana can’t work on conceptualizing our next project.
The process starts with several quick sketches in her notebook. We test different shapes, styles and variants of every character to see what fits our vision. Then the best sketch is taken further to become a more polished concept art (like this) that is eventually turned into the final in-game asset.
These are those very early sketches for some of the characters in our next bigger project. Chances of them actually looking like this in the game are pretty slim, but they should give you a hint of what mood and themes we’re aiming for this time.
I recently got involved into a bi-weekly game design workshops (a full blog post about it), and this is the fruit that these meetings bore. A small arcade co-op game with a pretty unique core mechanic of having two ships interconnected with a flexible energy beam.
All the art in the game is actually hand-made using pieces or paper, pencils, crayon drawings and such. It looks quite neat in motion.
It’s a small project, but pretty fun to play, and it’s not like there’s an abundance of hotseat co-operative games out there. We plan to release it soon for free. Most likely with the source code available for those who would like to learn from it.
It fixes some moderately annoying bugs and adds some new functionality, so it’s recommended to update the extension if your project uses it. No changes in the game’s code are necessary.
List of changes:
WAV files are now supported.
Added caster_pause and caster_resume, to pause samples.
New caster_error_occurred function tests if there was an error since last call.
The current version of Caster can be now retrieved using caster_version.
Added functionality for panning.
Fixed various bugs, and improved the error handling system.
If you have any questions, feature suggestions or bugs, leave them in the comments or contact Marius directly at: marius@moacube.com.
It’s been all about Magi updates and Mac port lately, so there’s a certain drought of pretty images from Cinders. Time to correct this with a screenshot of Madame Ghede’s magic shop:
Madame Ghede is one of the two possible “Fairy Godmothers” in the game. The one representing conscious choice as opposed to belief in fate. She embodies the more down-to-earth side of Cinders, so it made sense to make her a strong and independent Wise Woman, who makes her own ways through life.
The game itself is probably going to be delayed a bit more (surprise, surprise!). Technically, it’s done. But Ayu is still working hard on the remaining scenes, and writing a game with so many little and big choices takes time. Sorry for this, guys. And thanks for your patience.
We may use this brief idle period to start working on our next game, so it’s not unreasonable to expect some news on that soon.
A new update for the PC version of Magi, bringing all the changes we did while porting the game to Mac, is now available. Improvements focus mainly on the cosmetics, and keeping the game up to date with modern systems.
Download the new demo:
List of changes in v1.4:
Added MoaCube logo at the start of the game
Replaced the old generic message popups with nice custom ones
The game now handles toggling fullscreen like a good boy
Mac version of Magi is finally done and available for purchase! The full version costs $5.95 for the duration of the Magi sale. There’s also a free demo available.
Invest in MoaCube and get all our future games for free. Learn more.
If you haven’t tried Magi yet, it’s a unique and very challenging strategy game about wizard duels. You can take a look at the screenshots below or just try the demo. You can also check the Strategy section of our forums for some handy tactics and character builds.
All owners of Magi also get a 50% discount for ArcMagi when it comes out. Though, at this point we can’t tell if ArcMagi is going to have a Mac version.
Why it’s cool:
It’s a strategic and challenging game that makes you work for victory.
Can be played in short bursts and works great as a coffee break game.
There are 10 different characters and over 50 unique spells.
Spells are designed so that each has its unique tactical purpose.
It’s pure nerdy and addictive fun, with builds and strategies and what not.
