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New team member Philipp & EU funding for our next game!

The new team formation, now including Phil (on the right).

Hey everyone,

Long time no see. Which is totally our fault, but, you know – video games. Ain’t nobody got time for writing lengthy blog posts. Despite this, we now wanted to give you a small update on two important things that happened recently:

First and foremost, we got a new team member: Philipp! He joins as a full-time programmer to support our increasing development projects. Because, while we are working on new (and bigger!) stuff, we also still have to maintain the Orwell games. Phil previously worked at Daedalic Entertainment and Behind the Stone on multiple projects in a programming capacity, and we’re delighted to say his technical skills now bolster our own team! We are very glad to to have you on board!

Secondly, recently we have received (or rather have yet to receive, but have been greenlit) funding for our next project! The EU funding called Creative Europe MEDIA is intended to develop innovative narrative games, so it’s kinda perfect for us, and it allows us to creative a new prototype entirely independently. It’s awarded annualy among any applying EU-based gamedevs and “competing” with all those high-level studios in Europe, we are truly honored!

As for the corresponding project, that’s right, we’re working on something entirely new and unannounced! We hope to be able to reveal something about the project later in 2020, but as we are still very early in the project’s development, we can’t be too sure yet. Also, a potential release is still faaaaar away. Nonetheless, we are very keen on working on the new game as it is something very different from Orwell, only that it is once again a narrative-heavy single player game, and we certainly hope you are looking forward to hearing more about it.

I’ll hope to write on here more often now, but, as I said… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cheers
Dan

New team member Philipp & EU funding for our next game! Read More »

New team members Vanessa and Alex

Osmotic Studios now consists of four members (f.l.t.r): Daniel, Alex, Vanessa, and Michael

Today, we have great news for you! Two team members are joining Osmotic Studios:

Vanessa joins the team as Art Director. She will be in charge of the art style of our games and the production of graphical assets. Previously, Vanessa was a freelance artist. Among other projects, she supported us with Orwell: Ignorance is Strength. You can find her website at https://www.vanessazeeb.com.

The second new team member is Alex. He will take on responsibilies in Scripting and Quality Assurance, like he already did with Orwell: Ignorance is Strength. Alex joins as a temporary team member until December to help us out on our current project.

We’re very happy to have both of you on board! Let’s make great games together!

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Final episode of Orwell: Ignorance is Strength is out now!

Agents,

You have a job to finish.

Episode 3: Synthesis of Orwell: Ignorance is Strength is now available on Steam, GOG and Humble Store.

Episode Three: Synthesis turns up the heat and unlocks the Influencer tool. Not only will you be given the power to uncover facts, now you will influence the way they are presented.

BUY THE GAME ON STEAM: http://store.steampowered.com/app/633060/Orwell_Ignorance_is_Strength/

BUY THE GAME ON HUMBLE STORE: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/orwell-ignorance-is-strength

BUY THE GAME ON GOG: https://www.gog.com/game/orwell_ignorance_is_strength

We do hope you enjoy episode three, and the conclusion of season two. We’d love to know what you think of it all. Be sure to post your thoughts in the Community Hub on Steam or tweet us @orwell_game.

One last, enormous thanks to you, our fans. Thank you all so much for playing, for getting into the episodic spirit, and for being so incredibly supportive!

Protect The Nation!

Cheers
The Osmotic Studios Team

Final episode of Orwell: Ignorance is Strength is out now! Read More »

Orwell: Ignorance is Strength Episode 2: Antithesis now playable!

Agents,

you are herby urged to report to duty!

Episode 2: Antithesis of Orwell: Ignorance is Strength is now available on Steam, GOG and Humble Store.

Episode Two: Antithesis continues the investigation into controversial Pargesian blogger Raban Vhart. After the embarrassing events of Episode One, The Office is under pressure to get results. Prime Minister Blaine is organising crisis talks with Parges, which Vhart plans to derail. The clock is ticking and the gloves are off. Clearance has been given to The Office to scrutinize the personal lives of those close to Vhart for any information that might undermine him or distract him from his plans.

Have fun!

Cheers
The Osmotic Studios Team

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Orwell: Ignorance is Strength Episode 1 OUT NOW!

Agents,

the time has come to return to work. The Nation is in crisis and needs you now more than ever.

Episode 1: Thesis of Orwell: Ignorance is Strength is now available on Steam, GOG and Humble Store.

Set parallel to the events of the original game, Orwell: Ignorance is Strength places players in the shoes of a government official recruited to “The Office”, a top-secret department of the Orwell program. Through surveillance of phone calls, messages, websites, computers and mobile phones, the player chooses what information is added to the Orwell system and what is not, influencing how characters are perceived and how the story unfolds.

In season two, the player has access to an enhanced build of Orwell, able to go further and influence what information goes out to the public. Given the power to both uncover and fabricate “the truth”, players will ultimately have to decide whether the truth is sacred or ignorance is strength.

 

We hope you’ll enjoy playing Orwell: Ignorance is Strength!

Cheers
The Osmotic Studios Team

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Announcing Season Two of Orwell — Orwell: Ignorance is Strength

Investigators,

you are going to be needed once again. Today we are very excited to finally share with you what we’ve been working on for the recent months: The second season of Orwell, “Orwell: Ignorance is Strength.”

Inspired by the rise of fake news, the social media echo chamber and the death of “truth”–Orwell: Ignorance is Strength places the player in the shoes of a government official in a top-secret department of the Orwell program. A political crisis has arisen across borders, threatening to plunge The Nation and Parges into violent civil unrest.

Given the power to both uncover and fabricate “the truth”, the player must decide for themselves how far they will go in the service of their country and whether the truth is sacred or ignorance is strength.

The fact that we are able to produce a second season is due to the tremendous success of the first one that all of you who played Orwell made possible! Thank you for that!

We hope, you stay tuned and follow us on our journey to complete and release the game. Over the following weeks we’re going to tell you more about Orwell: Ignorance is Strength and the new features (yes, it does have a couple of them in fact!) it is going to introduce.

You can wishlist the game on Steam over here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/63306

Stay truthful!

The Osmotic Studios Team

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Berlin Games Week: Two Awards, Two Talks and an AMAZING Indie Festival

It is one of the most important highlights of the German games industry: Berlin Games Week. The various events taking place in several locations across the vibrant city, such as Quo Vadis Game Developers Conference, Making Games Festival and A MAZE Festival, attracted more than 15,000 visitors this year.

We spent last week talking about, playing and celebrating games in Berlin. Not only did we win our very first award for Orwell, but also met inspiring new people, had interesting conversations, talked about our own experiences and then won our very second award for Orwell! Here comes a brief summary and a few pictures for you to see what we have been up to over the course of the week.

 

Quo Vadis Conference

Daniel and Mel gave a long talk about founding Osmotic, developing Orwell and everything else.

Photo credits: Uwe Voelkner / FOX.

 

German Computer Games Awards

On Wednesday, 26 April, the German Computer Games Awards were given to the best Games in the German industry. We were very honored and happy to receive the award for “Best Serious Game” for Orwell, which won the trophy besides the really cool looking “Debugger 3.16: Hack’n’Run” by Spiderwork Games, a game that teaches object-oriented programming.

Thank you so much for this!

BERLIN, GERMANY – APRIL 26: during the German Computer Games Award 2017 (Deutscher Computerspielpreis 2017) at WECC on April 26, 2017 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Franziska Krug/Getty Images for Quinke Networks).

 

A MAZE. Festival

Orwell was not only in the indie exhibition, but also nominated for the A MAZE. Award. After Mel gave another talk, this time about how we created emotionally impactful moments in Orwell, we were finally told that we had won our very second award for Orwell!

 

Orwell at the A MAZE exhibition. Photo credit: Mel.

Mel talked about how we managed to make players feel like assholes. Photo credit: Jana Reinhardt (Rat King Entertainment).

We could not believe we had won the coolest Indie Game Award ever! Photo credit: Micha.

Berlin Games Week: Two Awards, Two Talks and an AMAZING Indie Festival Read More »

Meet the Orwell Team: Philipp Swoboda

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

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Meet the Orwell Team: Clemens Kügler

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

Please meet: Clemens Kügler

image_clemens

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.

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Clemens designed the user interface for Orwell.

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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

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Meet the Orwell Team: Mathias Fischer

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

image_mathias

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.

 

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Mathias did the artwork and animation for the cinematic opening scene at the beginning of Orwell.

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Concept Artwork of the Freedom Plaza – An important reoccurring location.

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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“..:)

Meet the Orwell Team: Mathias Fischer Read More »

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