Season’s Greetings

Last day before we take two weeks off to sit back, contemplate and maybe enjoy a glass of cognac or two.

Way too much has happened in 2013 for us to start to list everything, so we’d just like to take the opportunity to thank everyone for making our year unbelievably great. We wish you all the best for holidays.

Much love,

Simon & Gordon

Year Walk is coming to Steam in early 2014

We are making Year Walk for PC (and Mac!), coming to Steam in early 2014!

…And “making” that’s the key word here: It’s not a straight port. We are making something between a port and a remake. We’re not quite sure what a “remaster” is, so that might not be the right word either. So, hear us out as we try to explain what is different and exciting about this new Year Walk!

And with that said, we are not looking to make a better version of Year Walk. The ambition is to make the game feel right at home on the new platform. So we’ve taken a lot of measures to make that vision come to life.

As you might’ve guessed this version features a completely new control scheme. You’ll walk around with the WASD keys on your keyboard, while controlling a cursor with the mouse. With the cursor you’ll be able to interact with the world (and it’ll quite neatly show you what things you can interact with when hovering above them), but we’ve also added a very subtle “look-around”-feature. You can move the camera slightly depending on where the mouse cursor is on the screen. Imagine a classic first person PC game mixed with a point and click adventure, and you’re somewhat close. It feels really good!

Speaking of controls, those of you who played Year Walk for iOS knows that a lot of the puzzles were deeply tied to some of the features of the iPhone, including multitouch and tilt. Some of those puzzles have been redesigned, while others have been completely exchanged for brand new puzzles and interactions. So, redesigning puzzles not only means that we’ve changed the way you interact, many of them have new art and sounds as well. We even had to create one entirely new location in the forest for one of the new puzzles.

Visually, we quickly realised that the forest needed to feel more dense on bigger screens. So we’ve given all scenes in the game a visual overhaul – there’s more snow, nice animated fog, and a lot of neat effects. Behold, Year Walk in all its 1080 HD-glory:

Here’s a big comparison pic of the iOS and the Steam version, so you get the idea:

As you know Year Walk for iOS was an experience in two separate apps; the game and the companion. In Year Walk for PC we’ve integrated the Companion into the game. It’s been given a visual overhaul to feel home on PC as well. Take a look:

With the addition of a small, discrete menu (that you can completely hide if you want to), we simply couldn’t resist to add a few bonuses. There’s now a map that you can check out while playing, which should come in handy if you feel too lost in the forest.

We’ve added a hint system as well. If you’re stuck, you can get a cryptic hint just to get your mind going. If the hint is too cryptic, you can get another, less cryptic, hint. These hints are completely optional!

So while it might seem like a cliché, we feel that this version of Year Walk will be exciting and hold surprises even if you have played it for iOS. And that’s not to say that we think the iOS version will be inferior when the PC version is out – we simply want this version of to feel fresh and completely natural on PC, while still feeling “Year Walk”.

So, to sum it up:

– New control system (which feels super good)
– New and redesigned puzzles (including one new location/scene)
– Remastered art (more snow, fog, more effects, post-effects including color correction, vignetting, blur, a very subtle bloom effect and more!)
– Companion now integrated into the game accessible all the time via a small menu (that can be hidden!)
– A map reached via the menu
– An optional hint system, also via the menu.
+ a little bit of this and that.

So! Mark 2014 in your calendar. We’ll get back to you with a more exact date at a later time!

Top 10!

Simogo is one of the top 10 game developers of 2013. So says Gamasutra:

The Top 10 Game Developers of 2013

“These are the developers and studios that left their mark on this year in some shape or form — the leaders that the industry will be watching in the years ahead.”

How the heck did that happen?

100 000 x DEVICE 6

DEVICE 6 has sold 100 000 copies on the App Store.
We’d like to express our deepest gratitude to everyone who bought and enjoyed the game, and also everyone who has contacted us with kind words about it.

We simply can’t express how encouraging it is to see what we considered to be a somewhat niche experiment reach so many people. And it brings us great confidence to continue to make different and unique things!

So thrice again:
Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Wallpapers (and posters!)

Exciting! We are working on making two (2!) DEVICE 6 posters ready for sale in early 2014. The first one is with art by the amazing Junkboy, and is inspired by vintage paperback books (and more specifically so, those lovely Nancy Drew covers!)

We thought you might enjoy a sneak peek of these posters … So for the first one we’ve created a special wallpaper, with the poster art displayed as an actual paperback on a dirty old teak table (how meta!). Get downloading (these can also be found on DEVICE 6’s mini-site, if you want to link to it: WWW.DEVICE6.COM)


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iPhone 5 lockscreen
iPhone 4 lockscreen
iPad lockscreen

We made a little test run for ourselves and here’s how it looks. The poster which will be available for sale might have slightly different proportions:

The other poster digs a little a deeper into the lore of DEVICE 6. But it’s not quite done, so you’ll just have to do with this little preview with four small ultra-zoomed in portions of details from it:

We’ll DEFIINTELY let you know when and where these will be available!