Last week we’ve posted our first Concept Blog for Galaxy on Fire – Alliances. And those of you who’ve taken the time to read through it will have gotten quite a bit of first-hand information about the ancient artifacts, which you can use in the game to level up your command ships and respective fleets. And that’s where we continue today with the second concept blog for our red-hot mobile strategy MMO. This time, however, we’ll no longer talk about the artifacts themselves, but rather will we introduce you to the so-called citadels, which contain almost infinite amounts of the said artifacts underneath their high-tech shells. Designed by a highly advanced civilization and scattered all over the galaxy by the devastating shockwave of a cataclysmic cosmic event, the citadels could best be described as monumental structures that melted into the surficial areas of their host planets millions of years ago.[full]
A first idea sketch of the artifact mountains (also known as citadels) on the one hand and the mysterious treasures they contain on the other...
With the aid of their integrated auto-repair mechanisms and survival technologies, the citadels had not only been able to keep their key functions intact after crashing onto the concrete surfaces of the orbs in question, but they also managed to stay fully operational through the aeons. Therefore, these age-old retainers of an ancient civilization’s long-forgotten legacy are now being discovered and claimed by contemporary explorers and entrepreneurs, eager to take possession of the mysterious secrets and tremendous powers within their cores.
The final concept artwork which served as guideline for the actual 3D renderings of the citadels in our upcoming mobile multiplayer strategy game Galaxy on Fire - Alliances.
Despite their high-tech composition, the look of the citadels is rather inartifical and natural. We ultimately agreed on a “mountain”-like design, because it illustrates the complete merging of the advanced technology with the planet they crashed onto. Instead of remaining to be foreign objects, the citadels have deeply merged into their surroundings over the centuries – to the point where they’ve become an inseparable part of the planet they’ve once landed on. Consequently, they can also not be moved away from the crater site, but rather do the players have to take the whole planet into their possession, if they want to take hold of a citadel and harvest the valuable artifacts it contains. And considering the nice bonuses you’ll get from equipping your ships with red, blue and yellow artifacts, claiming dominion over as many citadels as possible might not be the worst of options.
Welcome to the very first Concept Blog for our upcoming mobile strategy MMO Galaxy on Fire – Alliances. Like a “light version” of the Developer Diaries, the Concept Blogs will focus on one particular asset or aspect of the game and introduce it to you in more detail. In addition, they’ll also feature some cool artworks, scribbles and graphics that (in most cases) have not been published anywhere else before. The first assets we’re going to talk about in more detail are the so-called artifacts, which are remnants of an ancient civilization that bear enormous powers. In GOF-A, they can be harvested from special planets and used to increase the stats of your command ships and their respective fleets. In total, there are three different kinds of artifacts, all of which have different qualities and grant different bonuses.[full] While the blue ones can be used to improve your ships’ defense, the yellow ones can be used to increase their speed and the red ones can be used to boost their fire power.
In the past couple of months, it’s become a little quiet here on the blog. But that’s (hopefully) going to change very soon. Why, you might ask. Well, because it’s Dev Diary time again! Yes, that’s right! We’re very happy to present you the first Developer Diary for our upcoming mobile sci-fi strategy MMO Galaxy on Fire – Alliances today and we’re eager to announce that from now on we’ll be posting an exclusive blog about the development and production of the most ambitious project that Fishlabs has ever tackled every single week until launch day! We’ll post a Developer Diary every first Thursday of the month and a so-called Concept Blog on all subsequent Thursdays! While we’re going to tackle a selected variety of bigger and more elemental issues in the Dev Diaries, we’ll introduce you to smaller assets such as structures, planets, characters and space crafts with the aid of the weekly Concept Blogs.[full] Sounds good? Of course, it does. So let’s not waste any more time and cut to the chase right away. Because I’m sure a lot of you would like to find out how the title Galaxy on Fire – Alliances came about.
Ever since we’ve ported Galaxy on Fire 2 HD to the PlayBook in July 2012, we’ve really enjoyed working with BlackBerry. Not only do they offer excellent tools and a lot of support to indie studios like us, but also do they produce excellent devices with high-performance capabilities, slick designs and intuitive user interfaces. Therefore, we didn’t need much time to make up our minds, when BlackBerry approached us regarding a potential porting of GOF2 HD to their upcoming hardware and operating system. So today we’re proud to announce the official launch of our flagship title for the BlackBerry Z10, the first-ever BlackBerry smartphone with a touch-display, powered by the company’s brand-new BlackBerry 10 operating system. Thanks to its 4.2” screen and 1280 by 768 pixel resolution as well as its 1.5 GHz dual-core CPU and 2 gigabytes of RAM, the BlackBerry Z10 is one of the most high-performance smartphones that money can buy these days![full] And this makes it a perfect match for one of the best-looking and most-engrossing mobile games you’ll ever lay your hands on!
Almost the entire Fishlabs team had been eagerly awaiting this moment for weeks and even months. And yesterday it had finally happened. At round about 10 o’clock in the morning we got a call from the transport company, telling us that a pretty big package had just been delivered to the foyer of our office building. Weighing more than hundred kilograms and measuring about two-and-a-half square meters, this giant cardbox monster contained a brand-new and feverishly anticipated addition to the Fishlabs team: our very own foosball table! We already had one in the old office in Hamburg/Winterhude, but according to those daring (or desperate) enough to give it a try, that older table wasn’t exactly a quality product. The new one, however, is a high-class, pro-quality Leonhart table that leaves nothing to be desired. So there’s a good chance that quite a few Fishlabs employees will stay a few hours longer at the office from now on and score a couple of goals after work[full]
Cheers, GOF fans. With Galaxy on Fire 2 SD being available for free for good and Galaxy on Fire 2 HD being temporarily offered free of charge, in-app-purchases have meanwhile become our most popular title’s most important way to turn in revenues. Hence we’d like to reward all those of you who like the idea of buying in-game credits by launching a 5-week-sale, in the course of which all five credit packs in GOF2 SD (for older iOS devices) and GOF2 HD (for iPhone 4S or newer, iPad 2 or newer and iPod touch 5G) will be offered at a spectacular 50% discount! We’ll start with the biggest credit pack today and the remaining credit packs will follow one after another on the weekends to come. To help you keep an overview over the individual steps and stages of the sale, here’s a table that shows you the new prices as well as the days on which they’re valid.[full]
If you’ve kept at least a halfway careful eye on the developments and progresses of the digital entertainment industry over the past couple of years, you will surely have noticed that mobile gaming is currently booming like never before. And even though there are already hundreds of millions of smartphones and tablets in circulation all over the world, there is still no end in sight for the mobile revolution. No matter what country you visit or what city you roam, you will hardly find a place on Earth anymore where you can pivot 360 degrees without seeing at least a dozen people with a smartphone or a tablet in their hands. And that somewhat-bold-yet-accurate statement is not only valid for established markets such the USA, Canada or Western Europe, but also for up-and-coming growth markets such as China, Russia or South America. Ever since the first iPhone hit the retail shelves in 2007 and changed the mobile landscape from scratch, mobile usage has been skyrocketing beyond our wildest imagination![full]
If you’ve followed our story over the past couple of months, you will have noticed that we’ve recently added quite a lot of new talent to our team. Consequently, office space has more and more turned into a rare and highly treasured commodity at the Fishlabs headquarters. But that’s no longer the case. Because in late 2012 we’ve signed a rental agreement for an additional open-plan office on the fifth floor of the same building at Roedingsmarkt, whose first floor we’ve been occupying since our relocation to the very center of Hamburg in August 2011. And today the marketing and QA departments have finally moved to their new place of work.[full]
Let’s just assume the calculations of the Maya have been just as wrong as Khador’s early assumptions of how to stop the supernova in the correspondent second add-on to the GOF2 saga. If that’s the case, we’ll still be safe and sound tomorrow and I haven’t wasted some of my precious final hours on this blog. And honestly… the last 12 months have simply been too awesome and we still have too many aces up our sleeves to just call it a quits tomorrow. So let’s not waste any more thoughts on that stupid end-of-the-world prophecy and rather focus on the here and now instead. Since we’ll have company holidays from December 22nd to January 6th, this will be our final blog for 2012 and hence I’d like to take the chance to look back at the previous year and recap some of the most interesting, important and entertaining happenings and events of 2012 for you. After all, quite a lot has happened at the Fishlabs headquarters in the course of the past 365 days. So here we go.[full]
