Relocate

We've relocated our blog to the main website over at http://smerc.com. All future updates will be made there.

thanks!

God of War as Inspiration

It should come as no surprise that we’re huge God of War fans. I mean that sort of goes with the territory if you’re making a third person 3-D adventure game set in the mythic past. It is sort of THE standard, right?

Check out the full post here: READ MORE

Rundlc.com - Hercules: Curse Of The Hydra Preview (Apple iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch)

The fine folks over at rundlc.com just posted an amazing preview of Hercules: Curse of the Hydra. Be sure to check it out! http://bit.ly/i2nTqx

Hercules Blog: It's complicated being Hercules

Everybody has a rough time explain their family to others. This is only exacerbated when you are a half god. So it goes without saying that it's complicated being Hercules, even in a digital format.

You'd think it would be getting easier when you're on the iPhone. Hercules could call up his Dad Zeus and be like, "Hey Pop - My stepmom, your wife, is trying to kill me again. Can I jsut mail her a fruit cake and maybe she'll calm down." But no, you end up having to go on an epic quest and kill lots of myythological beasts. It's a pain.

You can read some more about family and friend tensions on the Hercules: Curse of the Hydra Blog's recent post. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Hercules Blog: Game Balancing - Why won’t she die?

Whether your fighting the Scorpion King, Medusa or a lowly undead berserker it is important to choose the right weapon. Everyone knows this. As a game developer it is the challenge of balancing difficulty, skill, ease of understanding and the all important fun quotient. Does it makes sense and seem fair that a single swipe of the scorpion king takes half your life? These are the questions we ask our selves on a daily basis.

You can read all about it from the horse's mouth, so to speak, on the Herc log as the main programmer talks about balancing Hercules.  CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Side note: as a game dev try recording yourself talk about your game and the listening to it later in another environment. It is difficult to take yourself seriously. My favorite me quote is this sphere: "Ninjas are way too mature for this game". 

damn it, I guess we're going to be suckers for Journey, too

Every year there are games that get ridiculous buzz way before they come out. They're the unexplained media darlings of the game world. A good portion of the time we're left wondering what everyone was smoking.

So we were skeptical about Journey, the upcoming release from That Game company. Yeah, Flower was very pretty and elegant. But have you seen the Journey trailer? A game about loneliness? That's just inspired. Count us in as fans.

That Video Game Blog: Test Drive Unlimited 2 gets second dev diary

That Video Game Blog just posted a video of new dev diary for Test Drive Unlimited 2. We're excited about this game. We can't tell you why quite yet but we'll let you know soon. Its a secret and stuff.

Hercules blog: A Unity 3D Memory Solution

We've spent over a year creating Hercules: Curse of the Hydra and we've used Unity 3D to do it. That has exposed us to many joys and pitfalls of the platform. Memory usage on a phone is tricky enough as it is. Add a layer of abstraction and it becomes more diabolical still. Read our article on one such memory oriented issue and our creative solution on the Hercules blog.