You’ll recall last time we talked about how Chime had matured into something beautiful, like a fine, full-flavored cheese. Oh cheese, beautiful cheese. This time round, we’ll talk about OneBigGame and take a peek at the challenges we’d face to make the game ready for release. So Zoë had a game that they really wanted [...]
Welcome back to the Chime designer blog. In this installment, you’ll learn about Chime’s formative adventures through Zoёland, the magical world where all of us game elves live and work. To recap, Chime had started life as Cascade, a fun musical puzzler on the PSP. It was the first project of the Lab, Zoë Mode’s [...]
Puzzle games have enjoyed a long tradition, and have been entertaining people and stretching minds for centuries. There are many different types of puzzle game, but they all share similar traits that make them attractive and enduring. Games like Chess and Draughts rely on moving different pieces to a proscribed set of rules, which result [...]
I remember starting on Chime way back when. It was called Cascade then and still only tiny, but you could tell there were big things ahead for the little rascal – something about the way its shiny blocks sparkled in the light and the soft patter of its first musical notes. We were all very [...]
Parlez vous Français? Every single message, menu item, tooltip, and pop-up has to work in multiple languages. The idea is to get all this text into a table and look it up when you want to say something. Then, once you have all your text you send it off to get translated. Well, that’s the [...]
Going live! Now we had Chime working it was time to look through the list of all the things you have to do to make a game work in Xbox Live Arcade. You must have certain things in the main menu such as help and options and control instructions, and then there is entering player’s [...]
Where are my particles? A less obvious difference between PC and console is the way the files are stored. Games are made up of hundreds, sometimes thousands of files, containing things like level data, sounds, graphical elements such as textures, fonts, and 3D models, and so on. Game Studio provides a way of managing all [...]
Where’s the mouse? Once we had Chime building for the Xbox 360, it didn’t work straightaway as a playable game; an automatic port can only do so much. There are many differences between a PC and a games console, the most obvious being the controls. Chime was playing really well with a mouse and keyboard, [...]
I remember when I first saw a prototype of Chime. I was fascinated by it and how it created music as you played. When I was assigned to the project I was very excited about it and couldn’t wait to write some music for it. The original idea was that new music would be written [...]
Working on Chime threw up several technical challenges, which I will post about in the coming week. It was an interesting project — my first XBOX 360 Live game. First off, conversion to XBOX 360 Live. Windows to XBOX 360 Live Chime was originally developed in Zoë Mode’s Lab. The Lab is a great place [...]
Chime © 2009 Zoë Mode Entertainment Ltd. | All Rights Reserved
Chime Super Deluxe © 2011 Zoë Mode Entertainment Ltd. | All Rights Reserved
An exclusive Zoë Mode production for OneBigGame, the videogames industry-wide charity initiative.
XBLA version published by Easy Tiger & Valcon Games under license from Zoë Mode. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies and are used under license from Microsoft.
PC version published by OneBigGame under license from Zoë Mode.
By purchasing the Xbox LIVE title, you will donate a minimum of 5% of the purchase price to charity.
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