Development blog Swords and Soldiers

Prioritize

2009-06-16T07:54:00.000-07:00

We heard a lot of people saying it is hard to select the right unit in a group. Throwing a heal on the wrong unit can be very uncool and could well be a losing move in your strategy. Of course we found this problem way early in the development of the game :)

That's the reason why we implemented a priority system that will choose the right guy from a group when you throw a spell on a bunch of fighters. It's quite subtle and it is time to explain this a bit more! When you select a spell and then throw it on a group of units, every spell will go through a set of rules to decide which unit was intended by the player. It will always choose the best unit from a strategic point of view. This is done to overcome miss clicks.

Below you can see the decision flow chart of an lightning bolt when it is targeted on multiple units.

“best unit”in this chart means the unit with the highest attack priority number. Every unit has a number giving it a priority. For instance the priority of the swordsman is lower than the priority of the rocketeer, the opposing team will hit the rocketeer instead of the swordsman if they are both in range. Although their amount of remaining hitpoints is also counted for, so units will try to kill the most efficient enemy first.

NTSC Winners!

2009-06-11T05:26:00.000-07:00

The first three Überpwners have stepped up from the crowd! Achieving the ultimate secret code in an even faster fashion then the European competitors.

The winners of the Swords & Soldiers goodie bags are:

1. Chris David, Canada
2. Roberto Israel Hernández de la Garza, Mexico
3. William Koepke, U.S.A.

Congratulations guys! We will send the prizes as soon as possible.

And as you may know: For all the other guys who send us their codes, we will keep collecting codes for the second goodie bag extravaganza! In the second round we will randomly pick a bunch who we will send the package. So keep sending in your codes you might win a goodie bag after all!

S&S Crosses the big pond!

2009-06-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

Swords and Soldiers is now out on American Wii's. That's right, nothing stands between you and fullfilling your deepest, darkest Sidescrolling Realtime Strategy desires!

After a great reception in Euro-Australia we hope the folk from across the Atlantic will also have a blast with S&S. Once again: thank you playtesters, blog visitors and everyone involved for your enthousiasm. Also thanks to keyboardcat for perfect rythm and ofcourse Chuck Norris for laying down the law. Enjoy S&S and may Thor's thunder light your barbecues!

Conquest of paradise!

2009-06-03T02:01:00.000-07:00

America will get Swords & Soldiers next Monday!

After a long wait, you guys can enter the battles between the Viking horde, the Aztecs and the Chinese empire on Monday the 8th of June. Of course some of you lucky guys have already been playing the game at the E3 at the Nintendo booth, where Swords & Soldiers is being demonstrated!

The game has been received really well in the past few weeks by all kinds of media and we are really grateful for all the support we are getting.

Also the forum is doing really nicely and the group of S&S gamers is growing. Therefore we are thinking about setting up a tournament for everyone who calls himself King of Thunder, Lord of the Undead or Ninja Monkey Master! We want to know if you guys would like that and if you got specific ideas on this event, including place, date and rules. Discuss it here!

Don't forget we got three goodie bags waiting to be shipped to the U.S. So if you think you are the toughest and smartest strategist in America, get all the achievements and send us your secret code, as soon as the game comes out. For more details about the secret code see our faq.

Movie Poster Wallpapers

2009-06-02T05:40:00.000-07:00

The American release is almost there, and to give you guys a small treat for waiting we have made something totally cool!

Swords and Soldiers movie posters! The first two are Indiana Jones and Kill Bill inspired :)

In the media section you can download the wallpapers in the format you like.

Discuss which other movies would be cool on the forum.

More cool stuff is incoming!

Harder, better, faster, stronger!

2009-05-26T06:31:00.000-07:00

Want to make Swords and Soldiers a bit more challenging?
Or is the game proving to be a bit TOO challenging for you?
Rejoice!! For there is a game option to alter the game speed.

There are several game speeds that reside in S&S. The entire game will be affected by this option. This setting can be altered at any time and can be found in the options menu (obviously).
Here is a quick list detailing each game speed:

-Slow-

If you are having trouble playing at normal speed, you can switch to this game speed. It will make it easier for you to target spells and you will have more time deciding what units to build.
Please note that with this speed enabled you won't be able to get ANY achievements.

-Normal-

The default game speed u will start with. Designed for the medium skilled players of S&S.
We recommend you starting with this setting first. From there decide what speed suits you best.

-Fast-

When your skill level grows and you feel like the action could be a little bit faster, this is the option for you! Try beating all campaign lvl's on this setting if you have cleared it on normal.

-Turbo-

This option will be available when u finish all campaign levels.
This option is designed for those that want to get the most challenge out of the game. It will require some insane uber micromanagement to play with this speed but if u want to impress some friends or even us,
this IS the way to do it.

Now with all this revelating information go forth and battle at your leisure u diabolical warmongerers!
Thou still has a chance to be a proud owner of a Swords and Soldiers goodiebag!

And the winners are...

2009-05-20T05:21:00.000-07:00

The lucky guys who were hardcore enough to be the first beating all the achievements in the game are!

1. Henryk Huhn, Germany
2. Jesse Hartog, Netherlands
3. Marcel van Duyn, Netherlands
4. Denis Tessier, France

Big surprise! We have 4 European winners instead of 3. The last two guys send their codes in almost at the same time, so we decided to give them both a goodie bag :)
We will send you the goodie bags as soon as possible, it will probably take a couple of days because of the holidays here.

As for all the other guys who send us their codes, we will keep collecting codes for the second goodie bag extravaganza! In the second round we will randomly pick a bunch who we will send the package. So keep sending in your codes you might win a goodie bag after all!

Euro-Australian Launch Aftermath

2009-05-19T07:27:00.000-07:00

So, Swords & Soldiers has now been out in Europe and Australia for some time and so far we've been blown away by how good the game has been received. We already posted a link to the IGN review, but there's a couple more out there now:

Gamingunion.net

Edge-online

Nintendolife.com

Oh, right, you've probably seen it somewhere already but at the top of this post is our releasetrailer, enjoy!

Out now!

2009-05-15T00:38:00.000-07:00

Swords & Soldiers is available in Europe and Australia in the Wii Shop Channel! All hail Aztecs! All hail Chinese! All hail Vikings! It is the completion of a cycle! Omega! Full circle!

This actually is our first released commercial title and we're proud of it beyond words. We hope this is just step 1 in a long journey. For us, one of the most exciting parts of making a game just begins: seeing how people like it. So far the response during development of the game has been great and we can't wait to hear how people feel about the game now that it's finaly out there. The first review is up on IGN and they awarded the game with an editor's choice award, omgbbq!!!11one.

We would like to thank all of the blog visitors for being patient with us, providing us with feedback and a good laugh here and there. Worthy of special mention are the playtesters, who contributed immensely to the realisation of Swords & Soldiers! Another roar goes out to Sonic Picnic, for breathing life in the sounds and music of the game and to U-trax for their outstanding translation! Wait a minute, you shouldn't be reading this! Get back to your Wii and kick some serious Realtime Sidescrolling Strategy butt!

Secret Code!

2009-05-14T03:03:00.000-07:00

As you may know we have added a secret code to the game. It unlocks after you get all the 25 achievements. We added this code to do something special, as this is our first big game and we want to celebrate it! Yay! :)

In the last few weeks you guys got the opportunity to send us ideas for the code and we have chosen some really cool stuff and combined them into a Swords & Soldiers Goodie Bag!

We are giving the first 3 European/Australian people who send us their secret code this awesome goodie bag. Because the American release is a bit later, we'll also give goodie bags to the first 3 guys from the States.

Depending on how many people actually manage to achieve the code we will send more goodie bags later on, so keep sending in your codes as you may win big in the second goodie bag extravaganza!

Here is how you submit the code:

1: Achieve your ass off in Swords & Soldiers, getting all 25 achievements.
2: Go to the achievement menu, at the top you will find the code.
3: Send the code to SECRETCODE@RONIMO-GAMES.COM
4: Don't forget to add your postal address in the email, otherwise we don't know where to send the goodie bag :P

happy achievement hunting!

Discuss this on the forum

Chinese Faction Update

2009-05-13T05:11:00.000-07:00

As the day of judgement draws near, the full might of the Chinese empire is revealed. 'Tis the day of the dragon, the day of the Monkey and the day of Zen. All hail the Chinese empire!

It is the last of the last updates, and it's a big one. As we've only shown you half of the capabilities of the Chinese there was still a lot of unrevealed stuff. We're making up for it now by releasing it all at once, finally completing the Chinese faction page!

Head over to the factions page and read about Invulnerability, Ninja Monkeys, Dragon, the Monk, Terracotta Warriors and the Zen Master or discuss 'em on the forum! Go go go!

Release date for Europe!

2009-05-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

The artists are done painting, the coders wrote their last lines of code and the designers finished their last level tweaks. We finished our titanic struggle and the result is a beautiful lump of bits and bytes containing some of the most epic battles ever to grace your screens.

And now you have one week to prepare. One week to sharpen your battle axes. To enter Rocky style montages where you run against the backdrop of a setting sun and go into a blank stare as you hit your punching bag. Then you will be ready when te game gets out!

Or you could just hang on your couch untill Friday. Probably just as effective.

So, let's get to business: in Europe and Australia Swords & Soldiers will be unleashed Friday the 15th of May and it will cost you 1000 Nintendo points. The US release will follow soon. Discuss it in our forum

Challenge mode: Berserker run!

2009-05-05T04:17:00.000-07:00

Challenge modes!

After fighting your way trough the campaigns, every swords and soldiers player wants to relax for a while. For this occasion we got exactly what they need, and no, this is not a backrub from Olga.

We included 3 different challenge modes, gametypes which are a little different from your average swords and soldiers game.

The first of these modes is:

The berserker run!

As Arnie the berserker, strolls trough his own backyard thinking about his lovely olga, he gets lost. While finding his way back Arnie, always in for a good rumble, encounters several foes from a long time ago.

This is not the only one of his problems Arnie also develops a multiple personality disorder which makes his quest all the more interesting.

The Goal of this challenge mode is to make Arnie run as far as he can, overcoming hordes of enemies using magical spells.

This may look like a simple task at first. However the more distance Arnie covers, the more diverse adversaries will try to ruin your game along the way. Fortunately for Arnie by running further and further he will unlock magical spells for u, which u can use to aid him in his efforts.

The sheer diversity and quantity of these adversaries will test your resolve in a game of wits and reflexes.

Feel free to discuss it in our forum.

The towers of powers!

2009-04-28T06:39:00.000-07:00

As Chinese tacticians, Viking warlords and Aztec emperors keep commanding their forces into new territory, defending these lands becomes a must. In protection of those newly acquired lands, structures are popping up almost as quick as they'll be getting razed by bands of warmongering competitors!

No war can be fought without defensive emplacements and Swords & Soldiers is no exception to this rule! Every faction in the game has it's own tower. These buildings can be build on special building spots in the levels. Towers are a great way to conquer land and hold on to it. Using them defensively or offensively is up to the player, making this choice wisely can make all the difference in the course of a battle.

Head over to the factions page! to learn about towers in S&S, and discuss it in the forum!

Swords & Soldiers' growing web presence!

2009-04-24T07:43:00.000-07:00

Since yesterday you know that the Aztecs and Vikings no longer rule the battlefields alone. The Chinese are the third faction struggling for dominance, and today you can see them in action!

Swords & Soldiers at IGN.com

As you can see, the Chinese pack quite a punch. Did you catch the suprise at the end?

On the game itself, we are inching closer and closer to the final release. It shouldn't be too long for the game to come out! And that means of course you guys need some place to comment on the game. To post your highest scores and discuss the finer strategies of the game. Therefore added a brand new forum to the site!

In other great news, we have our own site on the official Nintendo website! There's some content on there that's not (yet) available here, mostly about the Chinese!

So check it out here:
http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/games/wiiware/swords__soldiers_12235.html

The Chinese Empire Arrives!

2009-04-22T00:43:00.000-07:00

At long last the veil of our secrecy is lifted! Emerging as the third contender for world domination is the CHINESE EMPIRE! Ruled by their child emperor, the Chinese care little for Viking barbecue feasts, or Aztec Vegetable growing contests. The Child Emperor tasks his subjects with gathering the the most exquisite toys from the corners of the world. Of course this will lead the Chinese empire onto a collision course with the other two factions. The Child emperor's army consists of disciplined warriors, ranging from martial arts specialists and spiritual zen-masters to firework-strapped rocketeers, and will prove to be evenly matched to the brutish Vikings and insidious Aztecs!

It has been a long wait for some, but your patience has been rewarded! As we introduce to you the Chinese empire, you will find we have updated the factions page with a sample of their military might: say hello to the Footsoldier (putting the swords in Swords & Soldiers), the Rocketeer, Yin Yang and Arrowrain. Check it out on the factions page! And when you're done with that, feast your eyes on some new screenies and wallpapers featuring the Chinese in action!

And if you're still hungry for info, check out the new "meet the team" video up on the Nintendochannel. The video features an introduction of our studio and an interview where Jasper, me and Fabian talk about the hows and whats of S&S. So head over to the NintendoChannel on your Wii and look for We Are Wiiware: Swords & Soldiers.

2 days left...

2009-04-20T05:02:00.000-07:00

Lost in the dry hills of the desert an uneasy friendship between Viking Arnie and Aztec Dave is tested to the extreme when they encounter an unknown adversary!!! Oh who might it be, appearing from behind the shroud of shadowy darkness???

Yes! A new challenger is entering the ring! Keep your eyes on this blog... only 2 days left!

Best for last: Slave and Skeleton

2009-04-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

The dream of every Aztec slave is to be once sacrificed for the gods and to be resurrected from the underworld as a skeleton, to fight as a real warrior in the armies of the jungle.

Just a few days until the reveal of the third faction, while you wait, enjoy the story of the slave and skeleton!

With all the hectic final testing and rounding up development of Swords and Soldiers, we forgot to post the real last two units which are the Aztec slave and the special skeleton soldier raised by necromancers in the game.

Boulder & Sun Giant

2009-04-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

Huge vegetables means hard work for the harvesting Aztecs. Large giants carry the vegetables from the fields and when the harvest is done they plough the ground with a huge rolling stone, life is good!

Here is the last faction update until the reveal of the third faction. Introducing the super spell of the Aztecs: Boulder, which also is made into a challenge with the same name. This huge stone crushes anything on its path. In the boulder challenge you need to kill 100 Vikings without squashing one of your own units.

You can also read about the giant, a slow ground pounding unit that knocks every enemy back with his smashing fists. Go to the factions page!

Third Faction ETA + GDC

2009-04-07T06:39:00.000-07:00

In far away lands an ancient power stirs. Drums of war echo in the distance. Crimson banners held high, a third faction readies itself for the coming conflict! Swords shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered... a sword day... a red day, the dawning of the...

...yet to be revealed third faction will be on April 22nd! 15 more nights of sleep before we will release those guys, and you bet your mother on it they're worth it! ;) And, uhh, yes... for those of you who didn't get it yet, that means the space marines were a cleverly-thought-of april fools joke...

This year's Game Developer's Conference was great. We did a lot of business stuff, talked to a lot of press, and still had time to go to some parties, eat some hamburgers and bike the Golden Gate bridge. Everyone liked S&S a lot and we can't wait to get it into the WiiWare shop...

Some of GDC's press coverage on S&S is already up on the internetz. Check out these three hands-on reports! And oh, by the way, these links are all 100% guaranteed rick-roll free (only the finest for our blog-followers!):

http://wii.ign.com/articles/968/968399p1.html

IGN hands-on

http://blog.wired.com/games/2009/04/preview-swords.html

Wired hands-on

http://www.infendo.com/all/gdc-wiiware-hands-on-swords-soldiers/

Infendo hands-on

That's all for today, keep checking the blog for updates, we still have some Aztec skills to show you before we release the third faction! Skøll!

Show and Tell

2009-04-03T01:41:00.001-07:00

As some of you might've noticed, we have some fresh footage of Swords & Soldiers! This time it's more direct footage of gameplay. The first video shows off some single player gameplay in one of the later levels of the Viking campaign.

And second video shows a splitscreen multiplayer match in which two skilled opponents do battle!

Hopefully you'll now have a better idea of the depth that goes into humiliating your opponent in Swords & Soldiers.

Next week we'll deliver the promised battle report on the GDC. We're also finalizing the revelation of the third faction and that includes the actual date we're going to reveal them. And don't worry, there's still plenty of other cool stuff heading your way.

(April fools) Hell, it's about time...

2009-04-01T05:54:00.000-07:00

...to release Swords & Soldiers' 3rd faction!From beyond the galactic nebulae comes the Space Marine Galaxial Confederation Force to oppose the brutish Vikings and nefarious Aztecs. They are armed to the teeth with turbosteel plating and have technology far superior to any other faction on the planet! High up in orbit around the planet the Space Marines have watched the various undertakings and insignificant struggles of the pathetic Vikings and Aztecs.

Determined to rid the planet of this ridiculous barbequeing and vegetable-growing, the ever-steadfast Space Marines decided to engage their enemies in an all-out planetary offensive. Charge up your Ion Cannons, put on your power armor and load your machineguns, for the Space Marines have landed! To find out more about the space conquering, turbosteel plated, chaingun wielding Space Marines check out the factions page! Or check out some of the new screens at the media page!

Achievement: King of the stone age!

2009-03-27T08:06:00.001-07:00

Danny our marketing monster has managed to get the epic score of 100 in "Boulder Mode". This mode is one of the three special modes in the game. Danny "cool" as we call him, thought he was the first to manage this perfect run of the mode, BUT I already did manage to achieve it 2 times before him, unfortunately for me I was disqualified because I made the mode...

In the meanwhile everyone is getting pretty addicted to this “spicy Aztec sauce”, the small handy flasks weren't enough so we sized them up a bit :)

The guys at the GDC have been very busy spreading the word on Swords and Soldiers, they will be back with all their news next week, so expect a full update on that including a special treat!

GDC09

2009-03-23T15:37:00.000-07:00

Hellooow Califorgnowgnaw

Again, the annual Games Developers Conference is being held in the city of The Rock and a red bridge that's called golden. Like true Vikings, Jasper and me have traveled the arctic to get here to spread the word about S&S. We'll be doing some interviews and other media stuff. Also, in San Francisco, for the first time, the final version of the game will be playable! (without including the 3rd, supersecret faction ofcourse, har har!)

What's that? Swords And Soldiers Hotsauce? That's right! From the cauldron of Aztec commander in chief Poisonbotl comes the spiciest sauce the Aztecs have ever made. Rumor has it that the secret ingedient has something to do with a ridiculously huge pepper. We'll be handing out these bottles of win to anyone San Francisco brave enough to face the spicyness of Swords And Soldiers Hotsauce!

Olga & Rage

2009-03-17T04:46:00.000-07:00

While the Viking men are busy organizing barbecue parties and fighting wars, the fierce viking women provide the Vikings with gold to fund their endless pillaging campaigns!

Yet another Factions update! This time, learn about the Viking worker, or Olga as we'd like to call her, and the Viking Rage spell. Watch out for their obvious charms as these Viking ladies are real golddiggers!

In the meanwhile the game is now all but finished. At the the moment it's going through a thorough last playtesting pass. We want to make sure the game is spotless before we send it off to Nintendo ;).

Anyway, to check out the new updates go to the factions page! Skøll!

New Interview

2009-03-13T01:48:00.000-07:00

TWG news recently put up an interview with Fabian Akker, one of our game/level designers. The interview focuses on the who, what, why's of Swords and Soldiers. Go check it out!

Fresh screens!

2009-03-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

Deep from our development pit, we extracted some fresh screens! These are actual shots from the near-final version of the game showing plenty of new details. Now you can see all the individual units from every faction in all of their glorious details.

Apart from ones in the mysterious, secret third faction, of course. But don't let that annoying fact stop you, check out the media page and take your time to soak it all in.

We also got our first rating back, and it's from PEGI. In all PEGI regions, the game will be rated 12+, as we expected. So get the toddlers out of the room if you want to play Swords & Soldiers, because these battles are obviously far to epic for their innocent eyes.

STOP

2009-03-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

Hammertime!

Unleashed is the power of divine fury when Thor smites down Mjollnir to crush all who would anger him!

No this is not from the lyrics of a heavy metal song, it's an excerpt from the latest update to the factions section. Added to the list is the mighty Hammer of Thor, handy to have when those pesky Aztecs need crushing! To learn more about Hammer of Thor and other units/powers head over to the factions page!

Thor himself is also featured on this brand-sparkling-new wallpaper that we've added to the media page! Get Jessica Alba off your desktop and adorn your screen with the pure awesomeness of Thor's cloud of ruggedness and manliness. Wait, is that a rubber ducky in the cloud? What would you like to see in our next wallpaper?

We have also been receiving some media attention, most noticably a two-and-a-half page coverage in EDGE magazine. If you have the opportunity, be sure to check out the articles! It's nice to see that our little Vikings and Aztecs look as good on print as they do on the screen ;). Ok, thats all for now. Don't hesitate to post your comments! We will try to keep an eye on them as much as possible and answer your questions wherever we can! Skøll!

Catapult, Sacrifice, Podcast

2009-03-05T04:21:00.000-08:00

On the battlefield, sacrifice stands as the epitomy of Aztec cruelty and affinity with the hereafter, while the Vikings bring mighty wooden contraptions to rain destruction onto their enemies!

Hear hear! We have yet again updated the factions section! Added to the list are the Viking catapult and Aztec sacrifice ability. To learn more about these and other units head over to the factions page! Which unit do you like most so far?

Joost van Dongen, our local lead programmer has done a 46 min. podcast interview over at The WiiDS Podcast. In this interview he talks about Swords & Soldiers and the past, present and future of Ronimo Games. Head over to The WiiDS Podcast to check it out! Cheers!

Smile, we've been caught on camera

2009-03-02T06:59:00.000-08:00

We've done an interview for Kim Phu. She's an ex-Kotaku writer, so she knows what she's doing. It's mostly us, babbling about our game in front of a camera. There isn't that much news in there for avid followers of Swords & Soldiers, but there is some footage taken from a live Wii build. So you can see it runs pretty well on Wii nowadays! And rest assured, it runs this way even with lots of units on-screen. It's been locked at 60fps.

We're also very proud to have been a part of the latest press release by Nintendo of America. Now the world knows what we're doing!

Rated A, for Aztecs

2009-02-26T07:30:00.000-08:00

Good news! We just sent out reviewable versions of the game to all relevant age rating offices. That's ESRB for the US, PEGI for Europe, USK for Germany and AGCB for Australia. They will check out our game, and then tell us how old you will have to be to enjoy our game. Hey, we think it's fun for everyone, but they might disagree.

We're estimating it will be rated at 10/12+, depending on the rating system. So now we'll have to wait for those to return back, while we polish up the game a little more. It's mostly our coder, hammering out the latest bugs and implementing the messages required by Nintendo.

So hang in there! We're nearly done!

User testing done!

2009-02-20T00:56:00.001-08:00

Well, for now. Maybe we'll hold another round in a few weeks.

But first we're going to try and break the game ourselves. Just to see what happens if players only build one unit and then eat the Wii Remote. Those players should lose pretty badly. Well, after the first two/three levels anyway. Those are meant to ease people in.

We also want to make sure that there aren't any cheap tricks, cheats or shortcuts through our levels, that our Achievements are actually achievable and simply that our game stays stable enough to be running for hours and hours of use. So for us that means playing playing playing playing playing playing playing play... Oh you get the picture.

Last week we also decided that we'll be going to the GDC to promote our game! It was a pretty tough decision, since travelling to San Fransisco doesn't come cheap. But we recieved some help from the kind folks at the Dutch Game Garden and the NLGD. Now we'll have to think up some crazy stuff to do there so we can get some attention for our game. Maybe you guys have some ideas for us?

And finally, we got a look at the article about us in Edge magazine, and it turned out awesome! It will be featured in the March edition, which should be in the shops soon. I've always been a big fan personally, so it's nice to see us featured pretty big in there. And the game also receives half a page, filled with praise so that should help getting the word out.

BAM!

2009-02-16T15:29:00.001-08:00

We have just put a brand new trailer up on the yootoobz to feast your eyes upon. It took some work to put it together, credits to the spielberg-esque editing qualities of the Ralfinator. Thats the guy in charge of all our promo-vids (amongst other things), and this won't be the last you'll see of his work! This new trailer showcases the campaign story mode that will be a big part of the game. We're very excited to give you all a taste of what the campaign is going to be like.

Looking for a job in the games industry?

2009-02-16T07:03:00.000-08:00

Then take a look over here. It's a new site made solely for jobs and internships in the Dutch games industry. Last friday we were at the modest but nice launch event hosted by the guys at control, which is a magazine about game development in the Netherlands.

It will probably take a while before the site takes off, because it has a fairly specific task. But once it does, it should be extremely useful to us as a developer. We already get the occasional job or internship request, and we love those, even though we can't take in everybody.

At the moment we're only looking for art and coding interns. So if you're in one of those fields, and looking for an internship, send us an email. Maybe we ought to put up some adverts for those positions on that site.

Tien voor taal

2009-02-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

We recently got our ingame texts back from the talented Multilinguinies™ at U-trax. The first thing we did was paste the texts into our game, to see how they work. Unfortunately, some texts turned out a little too long, so we'll need to enlarge some of our buttons and text balloons to fit it all in. It's our own fault, since we just recently decided to make the ingame font a little bigger for readability.

But apart from those small technical niggles we're very happy with the results! It's funny to see your own texts back in a language you hardly comprehend. You know what he says, you just can't read it. But thanks to our high school language classes and some help from google translate, we can conclude that the translated versions of the game will be just as fun as the original languages we wrote them in. Here are some highlights from the French and German translations:

French - English

1. Roc fort - Rick rolled

2. Tour operator - Fourtification

3. Roc'n'roll - Boulder mode

1. An achievement you get for destroying the enemy castle using the rolling boulder spell. (see our trailer)

2. An achievement you get for keeping four towers alive during a level where you're flooded by enemies.

3. A special mode around the boulder spell.

German - English

1. Kochen mit Knochen - Cooking by the book

2. Behalt doch das doofe Heer - Keep your lousy army

3. Artenschutz für Wikinger - Lost vikings

1. An achievement you get for finishing the campaign about hot sauce.

2. An achievement you get for not mindcontrolling the enemy army in one of the campaign levels.

3. An achievement you get for saving some Viking units from getting sacrificed.

Good luck figuring out the translations!

Local WiiWare meet

2009-02-11T01:21:00.000-08:00

Last night we met up with the guys from Two Tribes, the same guys responsible for the Wiiware game Toki Tori. We were introduced to them at last years' GDC by our audio partner, Sonic Picnic. They are doing the audio for their games as well as ours, so that's a nice coincidence.

If you haven't played Toki Tori yet, you should. It's a puzzle game in which you need to guide a small chick through levels filled with puzzles and enemies. Luckily he carries some tools that help him along the way. Every level has a solution, but finding it becomes pretty hard, pretty fast. So bring your brain, because finally finding that solution is immensely satisfying. The press gave it pretty rave reviews, and rightfully so. The first version of Toki Tori was a Gameboy color game, which was a bit overlooked because it came out around the time that the Gameboy Advance came out. So it's great that everybody got another chance to play it on Wiiware. They also made Rubik's world on Wii and Worms 2 on DS, amongst other things. Anyway, Two Tribes has been around a lot longer than Ronimo games, so they also had some cool insights and fun stories about the early days. Luckily, they also seemed to like Swords & Soldiers a lot and they gave us some really useful technical tips.

While speaking about Swords & Soldiers, it's really getting close to finished now. We recieved the translations back from our translating partner, U-trax. We made the English and Dutch versions ourselves, but now our game is playable in French, German, Italian and Spanish, too! They also did a great job on translating the jokes. Most of the times this means that the translators have to think up new jokes, so we're lucky that they have some very funny people working at U-trax. We'll give you some examples in a future post.

Look into me eye...

2009-02-06T07:22:00.000-08:00

Today we have a new update for you: the Axethrower unit of the Vikings and the Mindcontrol spell of the Aztecs. Both of these offer viable alternatives to brute forcing yourself through the enemy defenses.

Axethrowers are especially powerful in packs, and are also able to enter the defensive towers built by the Vikings, making them a powerful part of the Viking defenses. Mindcontrol, on the other hand, is a nasty trick which provides the Aztecs with the ability to take over any enemy unit they desire. So don't be surprised if your own units turn out to be your worst enemies in a battle against the Aztecs.

Head to the factions page to check them out!

Come try and balance our game

2009-02-04T08:04:00.000-08:00

We've played our game as much as humanly possible in an attempt to find those imbalances. The balance between the factions needs to be right at the first go, we wouldn't want to find out that the one of the factions really is to strong after the game has been released.

By now we feel the balance is pretty good. But we've also completely exhausted our ideas for tactics and strategies. So now we need some fresh faces to try and do things differently. We prefer people who already played the game before, because they can jump right in. But new testers are also still very welcome, since our campaign levels also needs a lot of tweaking based on the latest balance changes.

We always recieve testers on saturdays, and for the coming weeks the schedule is as follows:

Saturday 7 Februari 11:00-14:00 (8 spots open)
Saturday 7 Februari 15:00-18:00 (5 spots open)
Saturday 14 Februari 11:00-14:00 (8 spots open)
Saturday 14 Februari 15:00-18:00 (8 spots open)

If you're interested, please fire off a mail towards testers@ronimo-games.com . We hope to see you here soon!

All jammed out

2009-02-02T06:48:00.000-08:00

After a long week of hardcore game development, the thing we really needed was... Some more hardcore game development at the Global Gamejam! Well, not really, but this was an event which we really couldn't pass up on. After getting locked up in our old faculty building, we had to compete with 20 other teams made up out of other Dutch game developers and students. We ourselves were also paired with a great audio designer, the one thing we couldn't bring to the event ourselves.
The goal was to create a game in 48 hours. And it was a worldwide event! So everywhere teams were slaving away, trying to knock out a decent game in a weekend. Lots of hours of sleep were lost around the world. The results can be seen over here:

http://globalgamejam.org/

We created a little game called Insanity Grab Go! A crazy game where two players struggle for control of one character. It can be played on PC, but requires XNA 3.0. And two Xbox controllers if you want to play against eachother. But you can also check it out using your mouse, though that's singleplayer only. The game can be found here:

http://globalgamejam.org/games/insanity-grab-go

Special mention needs to the crazy soundtrack which suits the crazy action and theme prefectly. Try the widget here to hear it, and get a taste of the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, we didn't win. But we did receive an honourable mention! And the crowd seemed to like it, some maybe we'll use some of it's ideas in the future. What do you think?

De Blob gets a sequel!

2009-01-28T01:07:00.000-08:00

They took our baby! And turned it into a really cool "man". Or a full disc based Wii title, depending on which way you look at it. We're talking about De Blob, as you might've guessed. As we said earlier, we're really happy how THQ's version turned out. But it's always hard to predict what the public might think of it.

But it turns out that you like it enough to warrant a sequel! It's more of a sleeper than a monster hit, but still. We're very glad that the game turned out to be a succes.

The actual game is pretty close to what we feel we would've done, if we had a lot more resources and experience. So we still feel pretty closely tied to it, even though we hardly had any direct influence on the current version. It will still be a while before we will be able to tackle projects of that scale ourselves. But until then we're having very much fun gaining experience and developing smaller games like Swords & Soldiers!

Unit update!

2009-01-26T04:37:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to inform you all that our faction page has received yet another update!

Valhalla's heavenly light shines upon the stout, bearded warriors of the north while the Aztec empire commands bands of sneaky dartblowers to cripple their enemies with venomous darts!

To learn more about the Aztec dartblower and Viking heal, head over to the factions page! Skøll!

Game balance

2009-01-20T09:49:00.000-08:00

Hello thar! This post got a bit longer than anticipated. Anyway, just print it out and read it infront of the fireplace accompanied by a fine wine and a good piece of french cheese;). Ehm... onto the subject:

Swords and Soldiers is getting closer to completion every day, one thing most worth mentioning is the campaign mode, which is almost done and shaping up to become really nice.

An ongoing process during the entire development of the game has been balancing the three factions. S&S will be a fun action-packed game, but underneath all that we also try to add a layer of strategic depth. We started out macro-balancing the game, defining the role of each unit and skill until all elements felt like they had a fitting role in the game. This was an iterative process that repeated itself every time something got added to the game. One of the rules of thumb we used during that process was that every combat unit had to be unique, and we have maintained this during the course of development.

Right now we are micro-balancing the game, which means that we are trying to make sure that there's a lot of variety in tactics and there are no dominant strategies or never used units/spells. Each faction needs to have interesting tactics available to it that are cool to use. We try to have every unit and skill having some feeling of being overpowered, yet be balanced and counterable when actually playing the game.

Balancing also means tweaking the flow of how games play out. For a while we had the problem that building workers, which collect the main resource: gold, was not a real choice. Every game people just built the maximum amount of 'em and they were always replaced instantly when they were killed. Consequently, players would always remain at their maximum gold-income and almost every game every upgrade got researched. The game was still fun to play but we felt that it needed more strategic diversity.

The solution to this problem was upping the cost required to produce a worker and upping the cost of all upgrades a bit. Suddenly players were forced to stop building workers if their opponents tried attack early in the game. It also became a viable tactic to invest in upgrades early on, while building fewer workers. The game got less predictable, and good strategic choices were more noticable. This is but one example of how tweaking a couple of values can influence the entire flow of the game.

The key in being a great S&S player lies in timing which skills and units to use when, choosing on which units to spend your gold, and using your spells to their maximum effect. We hope that people will want to get good at our game.and can't wait to get the game out there and have people duking it out against eachother in brutal multiplayer clashes!

A new year, a new blog-post!

2009-01-12T07:04:00.000-08:00

First of all: happy new year everyone! May this year bring lots of blog updates. Oh wait, here's one already:

From the darkest tombs in the jungles come the Aztec necromancers, adept at raising the bones of fallen allies and enemies alike, while the Vikings have mastered the elements, calling upon mighty freezing snowstorms. The time of glorious battle, epic quests and giant vegetables is on the horizon!

Head over to the factions page to learn more about the viking snowstorm and aztec necromancer! Skøll!

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T04:08:00.000-08:00

Our studio's closed for a few days, but we have one more thing to send you off.

Happy holidays everyone!

See you next year!

Surprise!

2008-12-17T07:08:00.000-08:00

Well, here it is! We promised you a surprise, and it's a biggie. The first official trailer for Swords & Soldiers! It took a bit of work, but we really like the way it turned out. Everything you see in this trailer is ingame footage!

A bit scary really, finally showing it in motion. We hope you like it!

Some fresh bits for those cold nights

2008-12-15T06:03:00.000-08:00

Hang tight! We're preparing a Christmas surprise! Well, it's a bit less of a surprise now. But anyway, something is coming! *ominous sound*

And to help you guys get through the wait, there is also something new RIGHT NOW! We managed to squeeze out a little more faction info: the fearsome Poison Bomb and powerful Frost Hammer are up for display, so head out to the Factions section and check it out. We also whipped up this little gadget on the right, to let you know what this mysterious 'Frost Hammer' type character will sound like in the actual game.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who stopped by for testing the last few weekends. Thank you for every bit of constructive criticism to help us improve our game! Especially the last weekend was extremely hectic, but we got some great feedback and everyone was generally very positive. We enjoyed seeing you play the game, and we hope you'll be interested in testing again in the near future!

HME aftermath: Gamers, Groupies & Battleaxes!

2008-12-03T08:01:00.000-08:00

The HME weekend is over and done with, and I think we can all look back on a successful couple of days.

We had a small stand in the corner of a bigger one, which itself was drowned in even more giantesque stands. Nonetheless, people found our little Gladiatorial Corner of Carnage™ and we were pleased to see that those people really enjoyed themselves.

We had two setups where several players could duke it out in multiplayer matches. Vikings versus Aztecs, we saw a lot of glorious battles. Most people stayed for a rematch or even a re-rematch! These were also the greatest skirmishes to watch as the game is quick to pick up and players learned to use skills and units fast and effectively.

It wasn't just fun and games for us though, as the matches progressed, we made note of some bugs and considered some tweaks here and there. This was the first public appearance of Swords & Soldiers after all and we wanted the game to do good. Luckily, at the end of the day, everyone enjoyed themselves and S&S didn't disappoint!

As a bonus, we put up the first spells for the Vikings and Aztecs on the Faction section, so be sure to check those out!

I leave you now with a world premiere: WiiWare Boothbabes!

Ok... so we borrowed them from another stand, but it still makes for a great shot!

The shinyness... it's so shiny!

2008-11-27T10:05:00.001-08:00

A brand new site for Swords & Soldiers!

And with it come a few changes and some new goodies, huzzah! In the Media section you will find the already released screenshots, instructional video and wallpaper, but now you can also find some fancy concept art drawings!

The Unit Spotlights have been moved to the Factions bit where we'll release new units and spells regularly. To celebrate the new site, we put up the first Aztec unit for you to enjoy and marvel over.

There's a FAQ, because, well.. everyone has one and we want to hang with the cool kids! This blog is now included in the site as the News section, so to everyone who links the blog directly, update your links to the brand new and PETA friendly Swords & Soldiers site!

As Joost stated, we'll be at the HME starting Friday, so be sure to drop by our humble stand and play the game!

In other news, now that the site has been updated and S&S will be shown to the public for the first time, we'll start with the hotly anticipated in-game trailer. So be sure to keep an eye out for that within the next week or so!

I feel like I haven't linked to the new site often enough.. so be sure to go to Swords & Soldiers....!

Swords & Soldiers playable at the HME 2008!

2008-11-26T00:49:00.000-08:00

Next Friday, Saturday and Sunday Swords & Soldiers will be playable at the HME 2008 in Utrecht! We will be located in the so-called 'Utrecht Booth' (Hal 11, 11D056). We are looking forward to hearing the reactions of the public to the game, as this will be the first real public showing of the game! The game is not yet finished, though, so we will also abuse this chance to spot new bugs in gameplay, graphics and code. You are all welcome to be our beta testing bunnies, live at the show floor! We expect only Viking and Aztec casualties, though...

The HME 2008 is one of the largest game events in the Netherlands. It is located in the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht, The Netherlands, next to Utrecht's central station. You can find more info on www.hme2008.nl.

Big little things

2008-11-22T04:28:00.000-08:00

Lots of them. And then some more.

It's funny to see how many small things need to be done to make gameplay smooth and polished. Months ago, most units and spells were playable, so we thought the game nearly done. But if I look back at the amount of things we added since then, then I see how wrong we were. We were only halfway. We added some really big things, like lots of graphics and a campaign with a real story and varied missions and such. But also lots of really small things that are in fact very important, although most players will not even notice them, except in that fact that the game plays much better.

Here is a little example of that. Swords & Soldiers can be quite hectic, with lots of units in combat at once. Because the game is 2D, these units often overlap on the screen. That is okay, but their healthbars tend to overlap as well. So yesterday I programmed a system that adds forces to the healthbars, so that they move away from each other when they overlap. It is almost a real physics system, and that only to make the healthbars more visible! It works very well and the only thing players will notice, is that the healthbars are always nicely visible.

We added dozens of such small, hardly noticeable, incredibly important features. Which is why the game has been delayed from a release in 2008, to a release in early 2009. This decision will only make the game that much better, though! I hope. Soon you can see more of what I am talking about: a first real in-game trailer will be released within one or two weeks.

-Joost out

Testing done.. for now!

2008-11-17T00:35:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all the testers who helped us with the game over the past weekends! Your feedback will be incorporated into the game to help make it even better.

If you didn't get a chance to come by this round, keep an eye on this site for new dates!

Swords & Soldiers testers needed!

2008-11-05T13:23:00.000-08:00

We're looking for testers who would like to come and play Swords & Soldiers and rigorously test both the multiplayer and singleplayer experiences!

We will organise several testing days during which candidates can come to the Ronimo Games office in the middle of Utrecht. To apply for one of these testing days, send an email containing your name, age, game experience (how long have you been playing games and what sort of games do you prefer?), current (or last) education and preferred date to testers@ronimo-games.com. If you are picked, you will receive an e-mail with further information.

The next available day for testing is:

None at the moment but stay tuned for new testing dates to get your shot!

Unit Spotlight #1: The Berserker

2008-11-03T06:11:00.000-08:00

Today we're starting our unit spotlight series. Every now and then, we will be showcasing one of the units of the three factions. Today's spotlighted unit is the Viking Berserker.

Berserkers are the first and last line of defense in any Viking raiding party. These battle-hardened warriors display all the brutishness the Viking clans are famous for. Berserkers like nothing more than to wade onto the battlefield and introduce their mighty battle-axes to their enemies. Any warlord would be wise to bring a couple of these guys to whatever battle or barbeque!

Leaders: Blood, Sweat and Spittle!

2008-10-31T05:41:00.000-07:00

What would a base be without a hyperventilating leader showering his troops with spittle as he bellows them on? Well, just a big empty building really. So here they are!

Leaders are a proud breed and are known to have a deep rooted fondness for their base. They can really get annoyed if anyone builds a base nearby just to show off. It's not entirely uncommon therefore to find two leaders duking it out over their bases' bragging rights. Unsurprisingly, they will use any means necessary to protect what is theirs and send dozens of troops out to make the opposing base a whole lot flatter.

Apart from treating their army as their personal battering rams, they will fulfil a few worthwhile tasks for you on the battlefield. They will warn you as soon as an upgrade is completed, yell at you when your gold is running low or seethe with fury when their beautiful base is under siege.

As a fun extra, here's a shiny wallpaper featuring the Viking and Aztec leaders. Perfect for decorating your personal S&S fan shrines. It even comes in different size flavours!

But who is that dastardly figure in the middle? Only time will tell!

800x600
1024x768
1152x864
1280x960
1600x1200
1680x1050 (wide)
1920x1200 (wide)
2560x1200 (wide)

Vikings, New Additions and Roasted Swine!

2008-10-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

As the days are getting darker, and the temperatures colder, 12 brave souls march on to save Wiiware from evil puzzle games! Shields shall be shattered, spears shall be splintered, swine shall be roasted!

So... right now we're working really hard on getting all assets of the game together. A working menu, the campaign missions and all sorts of graphical tidbits are being introduced in the game, while old unit- and spellgfx get revised to be up to standard with how we want the game to look and feel. Things are going pretty fast right now as everyday there are cool new additions to the build we're running.

The best thing is: We still love to play the game ourselves! Playtests always are a lot of fun. My favorite faction right now is Vikings. It's always fun to brute-force-crush the insidious tactics the other two races can throw at me. The Vikings are also definitely the easiest faction to get into and the campaign will start off with them as the main story focus. Although the Vikings will allow for elaborate tactics, they always have the good ol' axe and a bad temper to rely on.

K, signing off, but not before I leave you with an all new screenie of the game, showcasing the freshly added Viking Warlord and devastating Aztec Statue: laser-eyes, pew pew! Expect more updates in the coming days! Skøll!

Instructional video!

2008-10-14T07:38:00.000-07:00

To show everybody what Swords & Soldiers is all about, we created an instructional video. It basically shows you how to play the game, using some basic examples. Of course, the final game will contain lots more units and spells. And I'm sorry for all the fans, but the final game will not contain any stick figures.

The game itself is coming along nicely, the core gameplay and balace is nearly done! But there's still lots of work to be done. So, if you'll excuse us, we'll get back to work!

Two new interviews

2008-10-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

Two new interviews I did for Swords and Soldiers:

Pewnem

1Up

Update on the status

2008-10-02T09:06:00.000-07:00

Currently Joost, Maarten, Ted and Machiel are working on the port from pc to WiiWare. The game is already running on pc.

Gijs, Ralph, Olivier, Martijn and Marlies are making particles and visualisations for the campaign.

Myself, Jasper and Tom are building the campaign levels.

Tonight it's thursday so that means gamenight at Ronimo, probably some Rockband and pizza :)

The Ronimo Team

2008-10-01T06:50:00.001-07:00

So let's introduce the team, from left to right: Joost, Marlies, Machiel, Jasper, Ralph (...The Ring?), Olivier, Fabian (the one sucking blood out of Olivier's neck, Martijn, Maarten, Tom, Ted and Gijs

De Blob is out!

2008-09-26T09:42:00.001-07:00

As some of you might know most of our core team consists of guys who worked on the original PC version of de Blob (this version) And today is the day the new de Blob game came out for the Wii here in Holland! So we already checked it out in during lunch and we're very happy with the results. We would like to congratulate the Blue Tongue guys for handling our baby so incredibly well. And we're very grateful THQ took the time to really polish the game.

For us de Blob was a great project. We needed to build something of that scale to know if our team was ready to stand on its own after we graduated. The intial assignment was pretty baffling. An information centre at the heart of the Dutch city of Utrecht wanted a game. The station area of that city is going to be a construction mess for years to come, and they wanted us to put it into a more positive light. To show them how lively and green the city would be afterwards. And we thought it would be nice if people were able to make the future city lively themselves. So we made de Blob. And for us it was a great way to get some good grades and prove to ourselves we could do it. But then came THQ.

It was a bit of a shock, being mailed by THQ with their request to buy the rights from us. We knew the game was pretty fun but we never expected this to happen. It gave us a massive boost in starting our own studio. It delivered five us some personal money and our studio lots of very useful contacts. All of which helped us to deliver you Swords & Soldiers!

Opening Dev Blog on Swords and Soldiers

2008-09-24T03:28:00.001-07:00

Hi Everyone,

The guys here at Ronimo thought it would be cool to make a blog on the development of Swords and Soldiers, because of all the positive reactions that we had. I'll try to keep you all up to date on the development!

For everyone who missed the first news on the game:

Homepage Swords and Soldiers

Interview WiiWare World

Interview Start Select