Prismata

Prismata’s Arena is Coming! 2

This entry was posted in News and tagged arena Prismata on by

Hey everyone!

Alex and I are finally revealing the design of the upcoming meta-structure we’ll be unleashing on top of ranked Prismata play. We’re tentatively calling this mode “The Arena” (I know; it’s a completely unoriginal name used by a zillion other video games… deal with it.)

Alongside this blog post, we’ve also created a Reddit thread in which we’re answering any and all questions about how the new mode will work. We’d love to hear what you think, and appreciate any and all suggestions, ideas, or concerns.

Before we get to the specifications (and screenshots), I want to mention a few quick things:

  • This specification is a work in progress. Not a single thing written here is set in stone. We may make further changes and make no promises that what we write here will even make it to the alpha.
  • Our design approach is highly experimental. We plan on trying a few weird things out “just for fun”. We’ll decide whether to keep them based on the feedback we receive. If the whole system fails to captivate people, we’ll scrap it.
  • The design is likely not perfect. Pieces of the design will likely require tweaking after going live. Even though we’ve written computer simulations and tested things like crazy, we don’t expect everything in the original design to survive contact with the real world.

We plan on making the updates described in this post sometime in the next few weeks, with further changes to go in regularly as we test new features and add more options.

With that out of the way, let’s check out The Arena!

 

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Five Awesome Hacks for Exhibiting your Indie Game at PAX or GDC 1

This entry was posted in Banter News and tagged PAX East Prismata SSXW on by

In the last few weeks, three huge North American gaming conventions have come and gone: GDC (March 2-6 in San Francisco), PAX East (March 6-8 in Boston) and SXSW Gaming (March 13-15 in Austin, Texas).

Prismata—our upcoming designer strategy game—was represented at all three conferences, so I felt like a good post-mortem post was in order.

However, after seeing so many other wonderful post-mortem articles go up (like Jotun’s and Juicy Beast’s), and having done one ourselves last year for our trip to FanExpo, I felt like doing something a little different. So instead, I’m going to highlight five small things that made a huge difference in the overall value we got out of our exhibitions, either by saving us cash, preserving our sanity, or by increasing the awesomeness of our booth.

Call them “life hacks for indie game exhibitors”.

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Celebrating Prismata’s Amazing Community 1

This entry was posted in Highlights and tagged community Prismata on by

Hey everyone, Megan here—your Prismata community manager.

The title for this article is pretty self-explanatory. With everything that’s been going on lately, a post like this is long overdue. It’s no secret that Prismata’s community is made up of many extremely dedicated, generous, and driven people, and that Prismata wouldn’t exist as it does today without them.

We don’t want you to think for a second that we don’t notice all of the wonderful contributions each and every one of you make to growing and improving our game, whether it’s through streaming the game, making videos, sharing the game, or other means. It’s time to recognize the individual behind those contributions, which is why we’re introducing…

 

The Ambassador Program

As a show of gratitude, this blog marks the launch of the Prismata Ambassador Program, an initiative in which we will invite outstanding community members to become Prismata Ambassadors.

Anyone can become an ambassador. The only thing you need to do is help spread the word about Prismata or create value for the Prismata community, whether it’s by streaming the game, creating Prismata content, giving away alpha keys, or recruiting new players.

 

What Become a Prismata Ambassador
Responsibilities Help build and grow the Prismata community
What you get An in-game Ambassador badge, plus alpha keys to give away (if you want)
Where to get it Contact me! You can email me or message me on reddit.

The only real requirement is to be enthusiastic about Prismata, and have an idea of something you could do to help the Prismata community. For some inspiration, take a look at some existing Prismata community members who are definitely worthy of the title “Prismata Ambassador”:

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Quick update: balance survey results are out!

This entry was posted in Banter News and tagged news Prismata update on by

Hi everyone. Just wanted to post a couple of quick updates.

 

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Hyping Skins and a Step-by-step Walkthrough of the Process 1

This entry was posted in Highlights News and tagged Prismata skins on by

Hey, everybody! This post will be covering a bunch of things to do with skins: how they’re made, how we come up with the ideas, and the process in between the time we think of a skin and the time we show the finished product to you. We’ll also be previewing some of the new skins we’ve been developing, like these pirates:

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Prismata’s History in Videos (and how *YOU* can be in the next one!)

This entry was posted in Highlights Insight and tagged contest lunarch studios Prismata on by

Hey, guys!

First up, a quick announcement: our Impending Doom contest ended Saturday, and we received the first answer just over four hours after the contest went live. Congratulations to MasN, who completed the challenge first. All of our top 10 finishers, alongside their finishing times, are listed here.

With one contest out of the way, we’ve decided to announce another. We’re calling it Prismata in 60 Seconds, and the goal is simple: make the best 1-minute Prismata video you can. Details are given near the bottom of the article, but the prizes include an ambassador badge, the chance to design your own emote, the much-coveted first edition Prismata t-shirt, and over $100 in Prismata rewards.

Before we get to the rules and prizes, let’s take a look at Prismata’s history, according to the various videos and trailers released on our youtube channel over the past year. Whether you haven’t watched any of them, or you’re a dedicated subscriber who literally watches every single video the hour it’s posted, there might be a few little things you never knew about these videos!

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Survey results, and our plans for Desktop and Mobile Distribution

This entry was posted in News and tagged Prismata survey on by

Hey guys,

First off, I want to apologize for the lateness of this week’s blog post. On Tuesday, we deployed a new version of the software with some huge updates that massively improved Prismata’s load times, AI speed, and server efficiency. We’ve received a ton of feedback (mostly quite positive) and have been tweaking things non-stop all week to really smooth out the Prismata experience. So the blog took a bit of a backseat.

This week’s post is also an important one, so I didn’t want to rush it. I’ll be revealing the results of our post-Kickstarter “What should we work on?” survey, as well as talking a bit about some of our future plans for mobile and desktop distribution.

Before we get to the survey results, I’d also like to announce that we have a NEW SURVEY out concerning the balance of Prismata units. If you’ve been raging about Apollo, Cluster Bolt, or Deadeye Operative, this is your chance to let your complaints be heard. It should take about 10 minutes, but you can definitely spend a lot more time on it if you want!

 

The Survey Results

Remember the “What Should We Work On” survey that we asked you to fill out a few weeks back? Well, the results are finally in! After nearly 500 responses, we’ve compiled the data and can now share the results with you. So, without further ado, here they are:

 

What Should we Prioritize?

If you took the survey, you probably noticed that we asked the first (and most important) question of “what should we prioritize” twice, in two different ways. We did this in order to ask you what you wanted versus what you felt we should do. Both answers are really important to us, and we thank everyone who took the survey!

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Mission Impossible: Impending Doom Edition (with PRIZES!) 1

This entry was posted in News Strategy and tagged impending doom Prismata prizes on by

Hello, everybody!

I’m here to announce your Impending Doom. Or, at least, your Impending Doom, should you choose to accept it. Eons ago, Will created a challenge that is said to be so difficult that it’s nearly unsolvable. It took founders Elyot and Shalev each over twenty hours to complete it.

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Our first stretch goal was met a few weeks after our Kickstarter campaign ended, thanks to Paypal donations at prismata.net/supporters

We’ll be publicly releasing the Impending Doom challenge and holding a contest to see who can solve it first. WARNING: it’s really, insanely, super-duper hard.

Event The IMPENDING DOOM “Impossible” Prismata mission challenge
Date Saturday, January 31,2014
Time 2:00pm EST
Prizes One-of-a-kind in-game badge, bragging rights, rare Prismata emotes

Now onto…

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The Future of Prismata’s Art 1

This entry was posted in Game Features Highlights Insight News and tagged Art graphics Prismata on by

 

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Hey, guys!

I’m going to jump straight into this post. It’s going to be about Prismata’s overall graphical look, and how we’ll be upgrading it as time goes on. We get a lot of questions along the lines of “Why don’t you have good art like Game X?”, where Game X is typically a work by a AAA developer with a budget in the millions. Even though these types of questions may be a bit tongue-in-cheek, we do intend to improve our graphics to the point where we are competing with the best-looking strategy games and card games out there. In the next year, you’ll be seeing big updates to our user interface, look and feel, animations, unit art, and tons of other aspects of Prismata’s appearance. Today, I’m going to explain our plans.

Before I get to that, let’s first take a look at the competition.

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The “What Should We Work On” Survey (Plus Kickstarter Final Results and Other News) 2

This entry was posted in Banter Highlights News and tagged Gaming Prismata survey on by

Hey guys!

Athough the weather outside is frightful (an “Extreme Cold Warning” in is effect with wind chills below -30 here in Waterloo), we’ve been huddled in the office getting tons of stuff done! We’re working hard on the Prismata campaign, new social and expressiveness features, improvements to graphics and sound, and all kinds of other stuff.

To help us determine how to best focus our efforts, we’ve prepared a quick survey. We want to know what you think, where our weak areas are, and what to prioritize. Your input is invaluable to us and we’ll be personally reading every single response. Take the survey now!

 

New Faces at Lunarch

The break has ended, we’ve all had a great vacation, and the Lunarch office is again filled with people busy working on Prismata. Our last interns, Whinnie and Rachel, have returned to school, and their shoes have been filled by two new faces—Tom (returning developer co-op from last summer) and Megan (who will be helping grow our community).

Please give a warm welcome to Tom and Megan, who will be getting us lunch and making our coffee for the next four months.

Please give a warm welcome to Tom and Megan, who will be getting us lunch and making our coffee for the next four months.

More news and updates below…

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