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[SolarLune]

I agree. I haven't used it much, but Stencylworks is like Game Maker for Flash. It's pretty nice.

[Jol]

Hi guys,

Wake me up before we (indie)gogo !


Trailer, awesome perks and stuff after this link : http://igg.me/p/111357?a=317635

[Jol]

Just wanted to show the awesome fan art made by Ztnarf :
http://ztnarf.illustrateur.org/2012/05/31/et-maintenant-une-page-de-pub/


And you can find us on facebook to : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ecotone/297249130362976

[Jol]

Our first Music, feel free to give us feedback.





And the project is open to funding at : http://www.indiegogo.com/ecotone

[Jol]

Artwork and graphism

Let’s talk about the graphic part today : The atmosphere of Ecotone is very
particular, that’s why one of the challenge of this game is to make people feel
it. We wanted something cute and nice but in the same time, something
disturbing (You can also feel that through the music composed by Aleksi).

After conceive character and univers design, we have to define the look of the
strange monsters of this world. Not very easy to design mysterious creature in
a cute world without giving them a dumb look. Finally, Alexandre began with
something very simple: black color for dangerous creatures and a translucent
appearance for creatures part of the environment which can be helpful.

It’s better to show you some design researches.



Alex had the idea to make a little drawing of Ecotone. As for the music part of our
previous news, I let Alex to present his vision of the project:

« For the graphic atmosphere, I wanted a dark univers, but not too much, something
which drives the player to wonder some questions, but only if he wants to. Our
character has to be mysterious. So the mask became more and more important
during the production, until I decided to make it a central element. I didn’t
want to give to the character a real physic presence: his body is a black
liquid materialized, and everyone can interpret that the way you want.
I decided to represent this in my paint."

Researches :



… and final
result (50x65cm) :


 
The result is a pretty blurred to the edges of the paint.</span> I’ll update that when we’ll have
a better scan but we hope you will like (and if you do so there is more of his work here :http://alexbourdier.blogspot.fr)

This image will be the poster that will be sent to people who will give a 50$ perk (or
more) on Indiegogo. The original version will be sent to the generous
contributor who will give the maximum perk. By the way, around ten days only
before the end of the Indiegogo campaing to reach the objective http://www.indiegogo.com/ecotone!

Concerning the projet, we decided on what will correspond the World 2. But I will say no more until the next article.

So feel free to give us your feedback !

[Jol]

Ecotone Ocean and goodies !

After a short while without news, it is time to write an article about the project. The Indiegogo campaign has now expired with the total sum of almost 2000$. This enabled us to pay licenses, insurance and perks. By the way, for people who participated to the campaign, you should have received a little thing in your letterbox. Even if we had set too high our goal, we didn't think  that so many people would be interested by our project and would be so generous. So thank you all of you !

World 2

As you can well imagine, the title refers to the current developpement of Ecotone. You are familiar with the first world, classic, with flotting islands, now here as a world premiere, take a look to the new environment of the world 2 and its 15 levels: The aquatic universe. The environment is still dark  with a suffocating/heavy atmosphere. You will get a close look at the bestiary for the next article.
Concernig the level design, it's pretty cool to work with this new environment. The levels are announced more particular than the first world's ones. Here some examples: "Manipulation of time, change in body, level with two players ..." But an image is better than a thousand words: as you can see the following animated screenshot of one of the levels of this underwater world.





As I said, the next article will concern the bestiary, without returning so much in the details to not spoil you the discovery. Same thing for the world 3 which won't be revealed.
So, to sum up, the World 1 is finished, the World 2 is about 1/3. Next big step, World 3 and first betatests. As usual, we're waiting your feedbacks and your gameplay ideas by comments or by email.  

Goodies

Here a bonus, some Ecotone goodies : a great t-shirt (a birthday present) representing Ztnarf's fan art from Ztnarfhttp://ztnarf.illustrateur.org/2012/05/31/et-maintenant-une-page-de-pub/.
A huge wallpaper of Alexandre's artwork (you can have an idea of the size thanks to Chaton) overhangs the living room. By the way, if you had participated to the Indiegogo campaign and you haven't received a little post card, you have to complete your indiegogo profil with your address and send an alerting email here : [email protected]





Otherwise, we (I mean Alex above all) made some wallpapers for your computer in 1980x1200 :

First one : http://bit.ly/Vuzorz
And the second : http://bit.ly/Vuzuzg


There are also two Dreamscenes for people who want animated wallpapers :




You can find it here : http://bit.ly/Rc7Y5v (Right click save as)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AImiss723HU

The second one is here : http://bit.ly/Rc89hb(Right click save as)

It is all for today, next soon !

[Velvety]

This looks really cool.  The art reminds me a lot of the movie Princess Mononoke (the art style with the mask makes the character look like those little forest spirits, and the black ooze, and the general aesthetic of everything).  In fact the art gives me a definite Ghibli Studios vibe overall, which is a good thing.

[Jol]

Thanks you, we try to get a great mood/ambiance for the game, hope we will reach this goal.

[Jol]

Time for news !

Today, the gameplay of World 2 is finished. Well, we have just to finish and add some graphic designs and do playtest. So, what happened these last two months?


About the LD, everything is done for World 2. We have to do more playtests to adjust all of
this. After some tests, the World 2 should take more or less one hour of game.  This world is composed of platformer levels, puzzled levels (a little bit harder than World 1) and sometimes particular levels in a way of “think outside the box”. Well, you will see that.

So, the LD takes us a lot of time because the gameplay changes for each level. So imagine you have to encode 45 mini games and imagine you’re not a programmer. Ahah..I wouldn’t brag about it.. And finally, sorry I won’t show you the bestiary, but it’s better to keep a little bit of surprise.

We improved the graphics too :

From that :


to this :



If bubbles are always here, Alex drew some little background elements which make it look all more alive! We have also a new background and I added a filter which brings more depth and matter (it’s
inconspicuous!). Oh, and you’ll enjoy that some black worms will watch our little avatar and keep an eye on him.

And finally, we begin to think about marketing stuff: creating a web site for Ecotone, thinking about communication for project launch, and maybe trying GreenLight ? Well, if you think you can give
us some help or if you have this kind of experience, some advices, send us an
email : [email protected]
Well hope you will like it, and if you want to give us feedbacks you are very welcome.

[Jol]

Hello, some news !

Demo, trailer, music and stuff here : www.ecotonegame.com

Greenlight here : http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=139353742

If you can give us feedbacks on the demo, it would be awesome .

[jO]

Just gave my thumbs up for this on Greenlight.
As other said before, I am really charmed by the wonderful, dreamy artwork.

[Jol]

Thanks ! I have to say, your game looks pretty awesome (I love pixel art).

[Jol]

Well, we are back from the dead!

[Jol]

So yes we are a bit back from the dead! We just announced that ecotone will be on Steam early access April 7.
A new teaser was made that you can see on the new website : http://www.ecotonegame.com/
and of course we did a steam page ! yay! http://store.steampowered.com/app/446070/
Here is a gif that show our progress ! https://gfycat.com/ImportantPotableGyrfalcon

We improved the game thanks to stencyl 3, the screen border is now a moving shaders, godray  (in water levels) are shaders too we also could add a lot of new graphics like the mist and "light glow". The game also support the gamepad now !

[maruki]

After 4 years, basically, of this game's development I came across it. I like it a lot, especially the main character concept. I think it expresses well the idea of cute + offputting.
I started tracking you on indieDB too.

[Jol]

Hey, thank you, Yeah 4 years, so much happened since then. I'm not so much on indiedb, but I will try to keep this post up to date .

[Jol]

So the game is on Steam Early Access!http://store.steampowered.com/app/446070/

Hope you will give it a look and we could use some feedback (on the game or on the steam page).

Thanks.

[Jol]

Hey guys,

We did several updates during EA. Level Menu, Mac version, lot of bugfix. We plan to go full steam ahead on may 6!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/446070/

I also did a tribute level to earthworm jim:

Original


Tribute


Thank you.

[Jol]

Well looks like it is the end of the road, even if we still need to do some update (localization and linux version. But the game is now released and we asked MJoshua (he made the trailer of that dragon, cancer) to do the launch trailer after his work on the teaser:



So here it is another game on steam! http://store.steampowered.com/app/446070/