Continuing our series “Meet the Orwell Team”, we would like to introduce a very charming person to you today.

Please meet: Philipp Swoboda

Here is a short interview so that you can find out more about him and his work:

What are your favorite games?

Games with a strong and emotional narrative, like The Last Of Us or Beyond Two Souls. I’m also a big fan of games with beautiful artwork, like Botanicula, Limbo or Samorost.

What kind of work did you contribute to Orwell?

I worked on the sound design, so basically all sound effects you hear while you’re interacting with Orwell and stalking other people’s lives. Apart from the electronic sounds of the interface in the game itself, I also designed all the sound effects in the cinematic intro scene and the effects you can hear accompanying the events towards the end of the game, where … well, I better not hint at, spoilers here 🙂 I had a lot of fun with the mixture of working on synthetic sounds and recording natural sounds needed for Orwell. Designing bleeps and Interface sounds one day and recording crows and angry, yelling people the other day made for a nice variation!

Excerpt from the sound design for Orwell by Philipp Swoboda.

What other projects are you currently working on?

I have just started working on producing sounds for a documentary, which will be completed soon. Working on Orwell has been a really great experience for me, so I’m definitely looking forward to working on more projects in the game industry.

Find out more about Philipp here:

https://www.facebook.com/PhilippSwoboda9

Continuing our series “Meet the Orwell Team”, we will introduce a very special person to you today.

Please meet: Clemens Kügler

Here is a short interview so that you can find out more about him and his work:

What are your favorite games?

Ah yes, that question. Let´s see: the first game I played on my C64 was “Street Surfer”. I still remember the pretty cool music and the sound of drinking an in-game soda. It holds a sentimental place in my heart, but I liked “River Raid”, “The Last Ninja”, “Pirates” or “Mafia” much better. None of my friends owned an early console, so I skipped that chapter until PlayStation (the “Burnout” series, “SSX3”, “Tekken”). Later on the Mac it was tough, since only few games were released for this system (“Heroes of Might & Magic 3”, “Alpha Centauri”, “Baldurs Gate 2”, “Warcraft”), but it got better with the years (“Limbo”, “The Binding of Isaac”, “Travian”). More recently, I turned to mobile games and like “Tiny Thief” or “Trials Frontier”.

In general, I like turn based games and roguelikes, games that have a high replay value and the challenge of figuring out the perfect strategy. There are a lot of great and classic games I have never played … most of them probably. And more and more are released every day with less and less spare hours at hand. Hard times.

What kind of work did you contribute to Orwell?

My task was to design the interface from a prototype state to its final form. The general appearance had to be practical and functional, similar to an operating system, yet entertaining.

At the beginning, quite some time was spent discussing the general layout, possible moods and tool functions. Still, throughout the development, the interface had to adapt constantly in order to match needs for changes in tool behavior or function. Here are some examples of alternative design directions that did not make it for various reasons.

The problem child of the project was the commenting and guiding feature “Symes” – where to place him so that he does not interfere with the flow of the gameplay on the one hand and would not be overlooked on the other. The version that made it into the game is a compromise between these two aspects. He still is a bit of a bugger.

Clemens designed the user interface for Orwell.

What other projects are you currently working on?

I have been a professional graphic designer for about 13 years. For the last few years I have been working part time for motorsport-clients, mostly from the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC), designing everything from autograph cards to 40-foot-trailers. During the rest of the time in the last few months, I worked on Orwell. Apart from that, I have to write my master thesis in game design – a running gag. As a side project, a friend of mine and I are developing a small one-button-game for mobile that is in its prototype state and I also try to keep my drawing skills up.

Can you tell us more about awesome projects you have worked on in the past?

Graphic designwise I did a whole lot of projects for Audi Motorsports and Volkswagen Motorsports for all kinds of racing series including the Formula 1, WRC, LMS, VLN, DTM, Rally Dakar. That includes interactive e-magazines, apps, print magazines, tickets, posters, websites, business reports, corporate designs, books, illustrations … you name it.

Gamewise that would be “Scherbenwerk – Bruchteil einer Ewigkeit” (Shardworks – Fraction of an Eternity). Our student team of five spent 1.5 years developing this 3D adventure game around the main character of Kester Featherstone who accidentally ends up switching between two states of existence, being able to manipulate the very layout of the city he lives in and dealing with strange lifeforms while trying to get everything back to normal. It is fairly complicated.

“Scherbenwerk” won four awards including the Deutscher Computerspielpreis (German Computer Game Award) in the category Best Newcomer Concept. My task was concept art, 2D and 3D game art, interface design and graphic design. You can check it out here (German only): https://scherbenwerk.wordpress.com

 

Find out more about Clemens here:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clemens.kuegler

Xing: https://www.xing.com/profile/Clemens_Kuegler

One week after having released the last episode of Orwell “Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree”, we are beyond happy that the complete game is finally out. The player feedback so far has been amazing and we are overjoyed about how many kind words, story analyses, soundtrack praises and inspirational quotes we have received so far.

Since all of this is not only thanks to our amazingly supportive players, but also to our wonderful team, we would like to continue our small series “Meet the Orwell Team”.

Please meet: Mathias Fischer

Here is a short interview so that you can find out more about him and his work:

What are your favorite games?

I have a slight obsession with the game Xenogears, over-analyzing it for almost 10 years, although it’s probably not as deep as I’m making it out to be. But still, a far beyond average Japanese RPG. Also, I’m heavily involved in old-school western RPGs like the Icewind Dale series and detective point-and-click, such as Gabriel Knight and Broken Sword. When it comes to outstanding experiences that do not fall into the former categories, then I can only think of „Disaster: Day of Crisis“, by far the most consequent game ever created, a mix of a disaster-movie adaptation, the Rock, wii motion controls, every gameplay mechanic you can ever think of and giant hamburgers as medipacks. It plays exactly as this sounds like and I would recommend enjoying it with alcohol on the side and a wii-zapper.

Regarding everything else, I could prepare a 3-days-straight lecture of how superior and experimental the gameboy color and the bulk of its games exactly is or that Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag is the most fun you can ever have in your life ever..:)

What kind of work did you contribute to Orwell?

I conceptualized the intro cinematic together with Daniel, Mel and Michael, which developed into creating concepts and storyboards. The following tasks were building and implementing the scene within Unreal 4, animating Characters (2D and 3D) and camera-direction / cutting within Unreal-Matinee.

 

What other projects are you currently working on?
Currently, I’m working as a freelance artist in Stockholm, Sweden for various companies.

Can you tell us more about awesome projects you have worked on in the past?
I spent almost half a decade as an artist with Daedalic Entertainment, helping to bring awesome point-and-click adventure games on their way. Games like „The Night of the Rabbit“ and upcoming superstars like „The Devil’s Men“ and „State of Mind“..:)

While we are getting closer and closer to releasing Orwell, we would like to introduce some of the amazing people who worked with us on our first commercial project.

Please meet: Hannes Flor

Here is a short interview so that you can find out more about him and his work:

What are your favorite games?
Well well well, where to start! I do have a soft spot for adventure games, so Telltale, Wadjet Eye, and Lucas Arts (of course) are responsible for a lot of them. Monkey Island 1-3, Indy 4, Grim Fandango, Primordia, the Blackwell Series, The Walking Dead, and The Wolf Among Us are all up there (though Myst, King’s Quest 6, and Beneath a Steel Sky shan’t be forgotten either.)

Then there’s a number of titles I can’t neatly store under an umbrella, like Vampire: The Masquerade, Arcanum, Gothic, GTA Vice City, Hotline Miami, LA Noire, Call of Juarez, Trackmania Sunrise, Hexcells, and 1000 Amps. And of course Prince of Persia (2008) is just goddamn perfection.

But my absolute favorite, the ones I could talk your ear off about their amazingness for weeks on end, is the Mass Effect series. I just love Mass Effect. Love them. All of them. Best games ever made. Ever. (God, do I love them.)

What kind of work did you contribute to Orwell?
I did the compositing on the intro cutscene, and I have yet to figure out a simple way to explain what that means exactly. But I basically took a video capture of the intro and placed all the 2D animations of people, birds, etc. over it in a way that makes it look like they’re actually in the scene, walking down the street and stuff. The “Orwell View,” where the citizens’ faces are tracked and matched against police records, was also one of my tasks.

What other projects are you currently working on?
I just started working on a small point-and-click adventure called AURORA. It’s a minimalistic scifi adventure about drive and obsession and its cost. I’m just about to finish up all the boring technical stuff, which means I soon get to start actually designing and scripting it.

I’m also involved in another project my company, Hypnotic Owl, is working on: a neat little math game about dividing numbers into their prime divisors. We call it Prime Division. But we’re still working up to an official announcement, so I shan’t say too much.

Can you tell us more about awesome projects you have worked on in the past?
I was Lead Compositor on Daedalic’s A New Beginning, which I think miiiiight have something to do with me getting this job, seeing as I met Daniel there and all that. I’m also very fond of The Wizard, a dungeon puzzler about Kevin, the most handsome wizard in the whole country, who gets his gorgeous face stolen and has no choice but to chase the wretched thief through the mazes beneath the wizard academy to get it back.

But the one I’m most proud of is called The Day the Laughter Stopped, a serious interactive fiction game about consent and choice. It’s somewhat difficult to talk about because it’s very easily spoiled, but if you have a few minutes and aren’t deterred by the trigger warning, I’d love for you to check it out.

 

Find out more about Hannes here:
Website: www.hypnoticowl.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/elCrabman

While we are getting closer and closer to releasing Orwell, we would like to introduce some of the amazing people who worked with us on our first commercial project.

Please meet: Frieda Sobiech

Here is a short interview so that you can find out more about her and her work:

What are your favorite games?
This is hard to decide! I have been playing Pokemon a lot recently, all kinds of generations. I played through Spiderman Dimension and One Piece Unlimited World Red. Saints Row 4 captivated me for a couple of evenings, but then it turned into a kind of love-hate relationship, since the story was nice and freaky, but the fights drove me nuts. My all-time favorites are: Spore, Black and White 2, Journey and Spiderman 2 for Game Cube.

What kind of work did you contribute to Orwell?
I was an intern for graphic design/art at Osmotic Studios and supported the team by designing websites and logos as well as creating artwork. The different kinds of websites were very interesting, for example social networks or even medical logs. I enjoyed working on the diverse characters most: young and old, slim or large, from average to crazy, all kinds of people are represented in the game.

What other projects are you currently working on?
I am currently working on my bachelor thesis, which is a graphic novel. The story unfolds around the topic “Space Adventure” and is about a space pilot named Arvin who runs into the most absurd situations and stories while travelling through the infinite universe.

Can you tell us more about awesome projects you have worked on in the past?
I collaborated with a friend on one of my latest projects, that covered the topic “Nation Branding”. We created a corporate design for the fictitious city “Asgard”, which is the home of the Germanic Gods. The design was supposed to give the city a new and modern look, including business cards, a website and even an app. Besides this, I also design invitation cards and yearbooks. At the moment I try to develop my talents further and practise a lot of different kinds of styles and character designs on DeviantArt.

 

Find out more about Frieda here:
Tumblr: www.yoshidie12te.tumblr.com
Deviantart: www.12teyoshi.deviantart.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Yoshidie12te

While we are getting closer and closer to releasing Orwell, we would like to introduce some of the amazing people who worked with us on our first commercial project.

Please meet: Stefanie Curth

Here is a short interview so that you can find out more about her and her work:

What are your favorite games?
I really like games with a fascinating, deep story and beautiful art style. So some of my favorites are Journey or Bastion/Transistor. I love the environment and character design of Rayman or Ori and the Blind Forest. I am also a big fan of the Dragon Age universe, of which I own all kinds of merchandise, from the games themselves to books, comics and art books which reveal the world lore. The Witcher, Bioshock, The Last of Us and Beyond – Two Souls are also some of my all time favorites. After work, I love to play League of Legends to relax ;3

What kind of work did you contribute to Orwell?
I worked as a concept artist and Illustrator for Orwell. The biggest task was to create recognizable recurring characters. The unique style I worked with was really fun to do.

What other projects are you currently working on?
I currently work as a concept artist and animator for Sir Eatsalot, a 2D Adventure-Platformer for PS Vita. In the remaining time I am working as „jack of all trades“ artist for Brutal Hack and writing my master thesis.

Can you tell us more about awesome projects you have worked on in the past?
I worked 1,5 years in a small team to create a vertical slice for the game idea of „Thirst“. My work contained concept art, 3D texturing and animation. I also participated in the last 3 InnoGames game jams and you will find me there at the next ones too.

Find out more about Stefanie here:
My homepage is currently under reconstruction, but will be available soon at
www.stefaniecurth.de

You can find me here too :
Facebook: www.facebook.com/PhySalisArt
Instagramm: www.instagram.com/physalisart
Twitter: www.twitter.com/PhySalisArt