Gemibears must bring happiness and tune you to positive mood, so we change their faces from these ʕ·ｪ·ʔ to these ones ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ. By the way, closed beta-test is really close, so check our Facebook or Twitter for upcoming news.
Historically, cool twizzle games was developed either in Russia or in Japan. Russians made Tetris, Color Lines and Hexic, and Japanese invent Lumines, NumBlast, Bust-a-Move and so on. But no one knows that the world hit, one of the best-selling games in the twizzle history — Bejeweled — also invented in Russia.
In 1994 Russian programmer Evgeny Alemzhin developed Shariki game (“Balls” in Russian) for DOS, whose rules are simple and well known to the whole world. You earn scores by matching three or more balls of the same color in vertical or horizontal line, then the balls disappear and new ones appear on their places. The game is over when there are no more possible moves on the game field.
An article about Shariki was published in a local newspaper — this is the only one remained game mention in press. Evgeny start developing Windows version, but when it was almost ready, his apartments was robbed and computer with all sources was stolen. But time has put everything into place: the game has a whole museum, which contains all existing versions — the first for DOS and all sorts of variations for Windows, which made by fans.
The Shariki spread around the world — not in it’s original form, but thanks to numerous variations and clones. And in 2001 PopCap company make web-based Flash game called Diamond Mine, which inspired by Shariki gameplay. The name Bejeweled was suggested later by Microsoft, who thought that the original name Diamond Mine was too similar to that of an existing game, Diamond Mines.
UPD. Thanks to twitter we know official version from Jason Kapalka: Bejeweled was ripped off from Colors Game (1999). There is no any screenshots or versions of Colors — maybe it was inspired by Shariki, maybe not.
Gemibears test sample by pistongames
While we rendering animations, programming new game modes and fill bears with fruit-jelly sweets and sugar hearts, Luke Thomas writes soundtrack for Gemibears. Here is test sample.
Good news everyone! Now we can reveal title of our next game — Gemibears. As you can see there are a lot of bear and it’s just small part of them. Now you can like Gemipage and follow Gemitwitter. Each day you can learn something new about Gemibears universe, so stay tuned.
Last Sunday I and Alexis Bonte were at Life in Technology conference in Moscow and discuss why games take so important part in our life. The name of this lecture — “Games: #1 in Entertainment?” was just formal — of course they are. So we talk about games mechanics, types of monetization (Alexis sure that games must be totally free) and so on. You can take a look at our discussion on LINT homepage — just choose it from sidebar menu.
Color Lines is one of the first games in twizzle genre, along with Tetris. Hundreds of clones and games inspired by Color Lines were released for almost 20 last years. However, very few know the history of original game. We decide to change this.
Color Lines twizzle game for MS-DOS was developed and published at 1992 by Gamos company. Original idea belongs to Oleg Demin, who was programmer of the game. Graphics made by Igor Ivkin and Gennady Denisov.
In first version of Color Lines as programmer was listed Olga Denisova. In fact it’s a fictional character, alias of Oleg, who was working in the governmental structure, mayor’s office of Moscow, and by law had no right to engage in commercial activities.
Garry Kasparov, Russian chess grandmaster and former World Chess Champion said about Color Lines: “There is nothing better for warming up brains than this game”.
Color Lines has been sold about 150 copies, due to the extremely high level of piracy in Russia. Anyone can give game to a friend by just copying it on floppy disk. As a result all countries from ex-USSR played in Color Lines. Almost every personal computer has a copy of Color Lines.
Color Lines also known as Lines or Balls (Russian: Шарики).
The Role of Color Lines in the history of the game industry can not be overestimated. There are hundreds of clones around the world, with new graphics, sounds and modified rules. But nowadays very few people know that Color Lines was a founder of this popular game mechanics.
1992 — first version of Color Lines.
1993 — new graphics and music on first screen.
1993 — Disappearing balls: in this version you can choose a pattern according to which the balls will disappear from the field. So the “lines” word has gone from the title.
1995 — version for Windows.
2009 — version for iPhone. This is original Color Lines without any changes at all. There is 100% authentic copy of the original game, the old sprites and soundtrack kept completely untouched.
We have finally choose from great number of variants how will look the character for our new game. After experiments with the look, we decided to do handmade bears, so next step is modeling.
We are surrounded by a lot of stressful situations every day, in theory games must be fun and reduce stress. Nothing like this: remember the last time you tried to pass the level in the Angry Birds. Dozens of replays and a new stress — because you can’t pass difficult level. Again and again. With puzzle-games situation seem to be easier — but they quickly come to the end. You pass all levels and solve the puzzles and chance that you will replay them again are really low.
Twizzle is not just a genre, this is a new way to reduce stress, because twizzle games are endless by the core mechanics, or at least have a special endless-mode. Moreover, the charm of twizzle games not only in achieving the result, but also in the gameplay process. When you play Drop7 or Screetch, you’re not hurry, just enjoy the game and thinking about your next move. This helps you relax and reduce stress. One of the best examples – Zen Mode in Bejeweled 3.
PopCap make really great work to develop this trend: they take Endless mode and call it Zen, and now they lead the idea of relaxation to its logical conclusion. Relax and play twizzle!
