2009, IGN awards, see y'all next year!

21 dec 2009, 12:27


As the design and coding team here at the office have let the freezing cold get the better of  'em, the brightest and bravest of the art team are bravely soldiering on on our next game... But it won't be long before we too turn off the lights, lock the door and feed the sharks (hammerheads offcourse, with frikkin' lazers attached to their heads) for the last time in 2009, only to come back bigger and better than ever in 2010. 2009 was the year that saw Ronimo's first commercial release, the first time we hoisted our mainsail, and set out for bright shores. We'll be adding more sails to our ship along the way. Hopefully we'll catch some good winds in 2010... Ok, that's enough metaphore abuse for a day.

IGN is looking back on 2009 and compiling a list of Best Of 2009 Games. Swords & Soldiers scored runner-up for best WiiWare (gratz LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias!) in IGN's editors' awards. But IGN is also hosting voted awards! Cast your vote here (click "cast your vote now"). S&S is nominated for "Best Downloadable" in the Overall category, and "Best WiiWare" in the Wii category!

K, this is probably the last you'll see from us on this blog this year, see you in 2010!

OMG Christmas!

17 dec 2009, 17:32

Hi there, I was asked to write a blog-post this week. So... I'll do that then! My name is Tim, and I'm the art-intern at Ronimo Games. I bet you're expecting me to write something about being an art-intern at Ronimo, well then I've got news for you... I will!

Before I got here, I did some game-projects at school, and learned a lot there. I thought I knew what it was like to work on a full-fledged game-production... but boy was I wrong. There's so much more than meets the eye when it comes to creating art for a videogame: aspect ratios, color values, contrasts, blurry details, whiney designers, know-it-all programmers... the list goes on and on. The concept-art phase is all without worries; just scribble down what you want and try to come up with a cool design for character X or vehicle Y. But once you have to prepare the in-game graphics for the design you made... Well let me tell you:

I was not prepared.

But at times like that I'm glad I got an internship at Ronimo, the other artists are always willing to help out with guidance, advice or tips. And thanks to that, I've learned so much in these last 4 months here. When I look back it really amazes me how much it really is. At the moment they're still looking for new art-interns. So if you're an art-student, want a chance to greatly improve your skills and get to know this bunch of raving lunatics; this is your chance! (No seriously... go for it!)

So, time to show you something I've made then It's become some sort of tradition at Ronimo to let the art-intern make the Christmas-card. So the intern being me, I ended up making this years card. It took me way longer than planned, I had a bit of a hard time getting it right actually. But after some help Gijs gave me, I finally came up with the final result. I must say I'm glad how it turned out.

So on behalf of the entire Ronimo team:


(Just don't blow them fingers off with fireworks, because you don't want to miss our next game )

Winterfun!!

11 dec 2009, 14:36


Last friday we headed out with a small gathering of industry monkeys (and friends) to the largest indoor ski resort in Europe to hit the slopes.

After gearing up it was time to slice the white powder.

Whilest everyone was taking it easy and trying not too hard to fall, one of us (JP) was hammering the slopes like a madman. When the rest of us strapped ourselves in at the top he would already be sitting in the Skilift heading up for his second run.

Being the good guy that he is, the veteran also gave us some nice tips on snowboarding and helped some of the beginners out.

We had SO much fun that we've already booked a snowboard trip and decided to make this a regular event with MANY more people.

Bottrop and Landgraaf are going to be our main targets for these events.

So if you are in the industry and want to join the fun just email Winterfun , dont worry about being a beginner (it is possible to hire a group instructor fairly cheap).
See you on the slopes soon!!!

A video

1 dec 2009, 13:01

As you might know, right now we're working on our next game. It's not anywhere near a state where it can be released to the outside world, but we do want to share with you a little bit what you're in for. Now I could show you some work in progress screenshots or maybe a written explanation of the game's mechanics, but none would explain as good what the game will be about as this video:

First tests of Ronimo Game 2: Done

24 nov 2009, 12:14

This week we decided to have our game design intern, Eric, write something about his dazzling experiences during the last playtest round at the Ronimo offices.  So Eric, take it away:
"Testing your game is one of the most important and time consuming parts of game development. As a game design intern at Ronimo Games I spend about half of my time each day playing and tweaking our next game. The other half I spend on taking out the trash, crying in a bathroom stall and building furniture. Every second of a game must be designed, tested and tweaked until it feels and plays perfectly. When something doesn't play right we change a few variables, test it again to see if the changes were the right ones and move on. Because of all this testing we've become quite adept at the game. But this is often more of a burden than a blessing. For example, in order to figure out if the difficulty of the game is up to snuff you need players who don't know the game that well. Sure, we could use artist to test the game. But I'm afraid their mutated Wacom fingers will try to fingerpaint lens flares on my glasses. And that's why we held a playtest session with real people last Saturday.


About a dozen people showed up at our office near the canals of Utrecht to test the new game for a few hours. Some of them had played the game previously, others got their cherries popped. Here at Ronimo Games we like to treat our playtesters like popstars. As such each playtester got his own bowl filled with the most delicious types of candy we could find on short notice. Pepernoten, Mars & other chocolate covered sweets named after Greek gods. During the test Fabian & I took notes on everything the players stumbled upon. We also asked testers to explain certain aspects of the game to see if they understood it. Together with a five page long questionnaire this generated quite a lot of information. Information we will now use to better our game.
Soon we'll be doing more playtests. If you're interested in testing send us an e-mail at Testers@Ronimo-Games.com . "

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Europrix!

16 nov 2009, 19:57

Martijn and me went to the Europrix this year.  After a nice flight over the Alps, with a good view on the slopes (can?t wait for the  holidays in Tirol ) we joined a big group of young producers and talented students for some fine beer and wiener schnitzels at the prestigious event. With 7 categories and with one called ?games?, we were invited to come to Graz Austria to show our game and hopefully win the price in our category. After our presentation on Friday we were feeling good and had some extra schnitzels to get ready for the award show on Saturday. With ground shaking rythm from the beatboxer the winners were unveiled one by one and at the end of the night we were going home with a pack full of awards. Not only did we win in the games category but also the overall prize!  I have ony one word to say ...OMGWTFBBQ!
Check out the pictures on our Facebook page!
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Critical strike!

13 nov 2009, 13:53

Yesterday evening the Dutch Game Awards were held in Amersfoort, which is a couple miles from our office. There was a total of 11 awards to be distributed amongst Dutch games, and an award for "Best Eurogame". S&S was nominated in a grand total of 5 categories, and the competition was tough. It's hard to expect much from even so many nominations when considering we were up against the likes of  the face-melting-graphics-powerhouse that is Killzone 2 and Overlord 2's supreme-evil-minion-expending-commander-in-chief (what is that guy's name anyway? ehmm...let's just call him saurun for now).

In the end we were able to take home these 2 awards: "Best Original Gameplay" and the "Control Industry Award". Epic loot! The Control Industry Award was handed out by game-guru Peter Molyneux (I have fond memories of me and my bro playing "syndicate" back in the day, I'm still hoping for him to one day revisite the series - pretty please? ). I hope he enjoyed the event and that handing out awards and showing up at these kind of events isn't just part of his weekly routine.
Ronimo congratulates all Dutch Game Award Winners, especially Nyxquest, winners of the "Best Eurogame" awards (well deserved guys!).
On a side-note (but almost equally awesome), EDGE magazine mentions S&S in their November issue, once again calling it "one of the best console RTS games to date". Win.

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We LOST!

9 nov 2009, 15:19

Ok, so last friday were the European Innovative Game Awards 2009, and Ronimo Games wouldn't be Ronimo Games if some of us weren't there, in Frankfurt, to cash in on the free drinks, mini hamburgers and salmon rolls that use to accompany such events.
Luckily Swords & Soldiers was nominated for a "Best Innovative Game Design Award", which made getting past the doormen a lot easier. We didn't win though, as Pressplay's soon-to-be-released-on-WiiWare Max And The Magic Marker eventually took home the prize, the bastards!  It was very much deserved so though, as MATMM is looking like it's gonna be a ton of fun, Gratz!

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For the hardcore

30 okt 2009, 13:29

A while ago, we posted some statistics about our melee units. Since Swords & Soldiers is a strategy game, the most fanatic gamers will probably want to see more of those, and behold, today your dinner is served!
The entire game is controlled by some 600 numbers that define all the strengths and weaknesses of each unit, and today we show the settings for the entire Aztec army. To keep this post from being too long, these are just those for the Poison Cloud spell. I will post the rest of the Aztec settings in the forum topic at the link below!
aztec_poisonCloud_width = 3

aztec_poisonCloud_cloudDuration = 4

aztec_poisonCloud_poisonDuration = 6

aztec_poisonCloud_damagePerSecond = 8

aztec_poisonCloud_walkSpeedMultiplier = 0.4

aztec_poisonCloud_price = 65

aztec_poisonCloud_coolDownTime = 15

aztec_poisonCloud_upgradePrice = 120

aztec_poisonCloud_upgradeTime = 10
If you have any questions about what certain settings do, then go ahead and ask about them in the forum topic.
So, have fun! What interesting lessons can be learned from these settings?
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Still more award nominations!

23 okt 2009, 13:19

Such a small world, so many awards to compete in! Yesterday the nominations for the Dutch Game Awards have been announced and Swords & Soldiers has been nominated in 4 (four!) categories. Wow, that's a lot! Cool! We have been nominated in these categories:

Best PC / Console game
Best Visual Design
Best Audio
Best Original Game

Especially the Best PC/Console nomination is really cool: the other nominees there are Killzone 2 and Overlord II. We are greatly honoured to be nominated together with those two awesome games!
Sonic Picnic, the guys who made the audio for Swords & Soldiers, have actually picked up two out of three Best Audio nominations: they also made the audio for nominee Rocket Riot.
Here you can check the complete list of nominations.
Ow, and as for Cinekid: unfortunately we did not actually win the award yesterday. Instead, we congratulate Kinderen Voor Kinderen Karaoke by Lost Boys with their New Media Award!
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