Well, visibility is a completely separate ball game then putting your heart into the experience itself. TA has been an absolutely wonderful place for forums, etc. Its weird, we have these extremes on this project. On the one had, we get published about other aspects of this game in National Geographic (I mean a full dedicated video and article), The Washington Post, currently being interviewed for the New Yorker, emails from Ed Catmull (The President of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios) some tweets by famous people, but then the gaming people are slower to pick it up. That will change though as people play and learn and "feel" the experience. THe leaderboards are fascinating and some people are playing for hours on end. Crazy. I want to know more about why you cannot control it though. Its honestly the only case we've had thus far. What model is your iPad again? Once people actually play and take time - its a totally different story. But yes - we need to get the word out better. Its a very, very noisy world in mobile gaming. Standing out is hard. We will get there though. The reactions have been amazing.
Dude, you already had it! Oh wait you had a udid version didn't you. Ok, fair enough. But could you post your nice impressions on iTunes then .
What he said Although we have gotten a bit of love from gaming devs - people at Suckerpunch and That Game Company. It's just the gaming press giving us a bit of a cold shoulder, but it's understandable in this market, especially as a completely new IP.
I'm not a big site, but you guys still have my love. And I'm a terrible liar -- I can't really feign excitement.
I don't think we can ever thank you enough for that review And I think inability to feign excitement is wonderful - it really comes through in your writing that you actually love playing the game. We've been linking it to every other gaming press site we've asked to review us.
Cool I really do hope you guys have a lot of success with it. It's a special game -- like Monument Valley, the Room, Infinity Blade -- and I assume people just need to catch on. I wonder how many people look at it and think it's just a silly kids' game and don't realize that it can actually be brutally challenging?
impressions Before i start let me just say i have the upmost respect for the dev and what they stand for most people might just see the game and enjoy it but if you do a little searching you will see just how much love and dedication been put toward this game. I have been playing this game before the release and the first thing that caught my eyes at the beginning was the way the dolphin moves and the way the controls are implemented to make it move, you start slow learning to swim and the fishes are easy but the more you learn so do the fishes, the pace is just perfect, graphics are great, the A.I is perfect and it gets addicting very fast. Sadly we are living in a an age that most gamers are young and its either freemium or cool graphics or even a big publisher name that sells games but i'm talking to the real gamers out there look at this title, tell your friends about it, play it yourself. I am not getting payed by the dev and i don't have any connections to them, the only reason for my love for this game is because: 1) Its a new IP and we don't have anything similar on the appstore. 2) Its the first time i have seen a game that can connect with a broad audience, its just cartoony enough that children will love, its fun enough for kids, enjoyable enough for teens, it can be hardcore enough for perfectionist and adult gamers, relaxing enough for people that just wana play and relax, it can be therapeutic because the movements are so matched with the controls that it actually using many functions of the brain, and it appeals to both boys and girls. I am a 32yr old Graphic designer i started with Atari and played almost on all the systems after that, I spent more than $8000 on ITune card's since the opening of app store starting on my 2G iphone, i have all the top AAA games + the best of freemiums but this is the first time i have had this kinda experience with a game. I wish the dev best wishes and i hope the game will be updated to perfection and hope they get great results and make better games in the future.
For those of you struggling, here's a video that shows that sometimes it takes a few tries to win. And that even little fish can be brutal: http://youtu.be/FoTm4OnjgKs
So it is scientifically possible for Zoey to talk to Bandit in real life. Fascinating: http://www.livescience.com/48231-killer-whales-talk-like-dolphins.html
Fish Battle Strategy Once you're skilled enough to control Bandit in the red cards, you will come across some of the most treacherous swarms of fish. They are the hardest ai-protocols, and they are multiple species - so the mastery over individual protocols doesn't necessarily confir an advantage. So im going to give away a big piece of strategy - but one that is hard to master. The way you joust here is the gut reaction of how to play - but as the first few attempts show, most of the time you will lose. The swarms are very hard to penetrate and require many tries to win. You're unusually skilled but I don't think most players will come anywhere near that (you're currently the worlds best player). So you're torpedoing through - and its very hard. Once you're bitten you slow - so escaping becomes even harder. Its a true swarm. Now lets say you're lucky and you manage to nail one - you cannot be bitten while you're eating (I played with turning this on and off but in the end the game play is smoother with it off), and your momentum can carry you through past the swarm. Each subsequent kill through the swarm becomes easier - this is how you win in the end. It can work, but its very difficult because the probability of not getting bitten from a massive swarm is very low. There is another technique, that combines an off angle turn-up or turn-side right at the last moment, with staying just on the edge. Dart out - just like you are about to joust, turn around - but then don't boost. Be a more subtle predator. Wait for the first fish to appear, and don't go head on - try to curve in on him in a non-linear trajectory. This way once the bite occurs, you will be already angled to leave the swarm. Its very difficult - but very elegant if you can master this. You end up picking off fish at the periphery. Its a lower risk attack. This technique will also be necessary for an update soon to go in where there is a central leader fish - that you cannot joust-through to beat. The fish will have a very very advanced protocol to detect that maneuver and get you 100%. You must pick them off and then go in. But that will be Black-pearl card, and very high reward.
This is one of my favorite things about I Am Dolphin - working on it, we learned so much about the animals. Not only through research (I did loads of research on dolphin behavior when the game was going to be about a pod) but through our own interactions with those at the National Aquarium. Some of you have probably seen the gif that was floating around from the Nat Geo article (also on Kotaku). It's a split screen, where DJ Flipper is interacting with Foster on the left, and Bandit is swimming in much the same way on the right. The day we shot that footage, we had gone to the aquarium hoping to get some video of at the glass interactions. Sue brought us out to Foster and she used hand signals to get him to do a few key interactions. Then, she passed him over to DJ Flipper, and what happened after that was magical. Foster, with no real prompt (we weren't familiar with Sue's hand signals) simply started following DJ Flipper's hands, trying to understand what we wanted. It was exactly what we wanted to film, and those interactions and the emotions we felt from them played a key role in the game's controls. One of my favorite stories is from my time in the pit. Like I said before, I'd go down there and sketch a lot, and one time, I brought my laptop down there. I'm primarily a digital artist, and I was specifically working on the dolphin's orthographic design (the tail wasn't looking quite right). I was studying the girl's tank when I noticed a reflection in my screen. I turned around to the other window (into the boy's tank) and found Foster staring at my screen. He was so intently fascinated with what I was doing that he didn't even break away to get air (when dolphins are really intrigued by something, they'll just float up to the surface to breath, then float back down, never breaking eye contact). He watched me draw for the rest of my time there, which is something I've never had a non-human do.
Yeah, I think in the back of my head I know that approaching them more relaxed is more effective (as it's proven), and yet I still boost a lot out of fear that they'll catch me if I'm too slow. Sometimes I take your approach from the get-go and the result is much better. Sometimes it takes me a few tries to get all the darting out of the way and finally I relax into it. I still haven't beaten the group of 6 fish. That one extra fish makes a huge difference!
Fosters mind reading This actually happened on a number of occasions. I don't think I told you two about the whole story - but there was a period of about 3 months almost 2 years ago where I spent like 7 hours a day at the Aquarium, including weekends. Foster could spot me if he was in the front tanks (which they are rarely) and would come by himself to the window, as if, "what do you want to do today". I swear it was as if he could read my mind. Whatever I "needed" to see that day, he would just... know, and do it. Whether it was flipper movements, or extensions, sounds.. you name it, its like they have a sixth sense. Foster was still a "baby" around then - he still seems playful but its a bit less. Diana told me that what they are extremely good at is looking at your whole body, your gestures, motions, and subtlety, and they can kind of infer what you want to do, or what you want them to do. Mark and Cindy have had tons of similar experiences. And finally, the greatest part of that experience was when we spent 20 minutes or so at the window, I looked at Sue (who had spent most of her life around marine mammals) and said, "wow I didn't know they could respond to my intentions and do those things", to which she replied, "Huh... I didn't' either" The dolphins will always amaze you, no matter how hard or often you study them. But it takes time and patience. One of the goals of "I Am Dolphin" is to inspire people with that majesty. To make them get a small glimpse of their majestic beauty, and to hopefully be inspired to learn more about these friends of ours on this beautiful planet.
So it looks like the game got pirated and is spreading in China. It's not that we're surprised, and we didn't attempt to take any anti-piracy counter measures. Still kinda sucks to see that though. I think they just automatically crack every game that gets published. Maybe we'll become one of the popular "free" games in China
