After the first two games, the head of the Ice-Pick Lodge studio felt that he had told this world everything that he wanted. A creative crisis began, during which Dybovsky restored mental strength. This is how Nikolai himself described the situation: “I was squeezed out of the Mora and Turgora,“. I felt that absolutely everything I wanted to tell humanity, I said. This required a very large calculation from me, energy return, as if I had some things with my vital force, and that’s all. I lay like a corpse, I drank a lot then … I didn’t want anything. He left for Petersburg ".
However, they did not give the chapter to sit idle. As a result, Eureka appeared! – The game that the majority has already forgotten, and no one noticed it at the start.
How the "unloved child" was born
In the period after Turgora, Ayrat Zakirov and Peter Potapov began to create a designer, since they could not sit idle, they were like that by nature. But the programmers did not know how to create a plot, as a result of which the first asked Nikolai to come up with peace and so on. But, as mentioned above, Dybovsky did not want anything, therefore he did not help (for which he, judging by some interviews, is ashamed). As the leader said: “I just helped Ayrat (it was his plan) and, confessed, helped very unimportant”.
From the very beginning, the game does not even try to be serious or gloomy.
Ayrat did not hide that Eureka! Created, including for making money, believed that the game would bring a lot of money. Employees wanted sonorous coins, “because there were seven hungry years … well, how hungry. We had a salary, of course, but still we were engaged in survival ".
Zakirov wanted to create a children’s fairy tale. “I don’t know how to come up with a plot. Come on, you [Nikolai] is strong in this, come up with a plot, peace, and so on. But the game should be once – funny, two – for children, three – about tidy men, four – about transport, which must be assembled. Let’s make a children’s fairy tale ". For Dybovsky, this became a kind of challenge, because the studio had not done funny games before. But it did not grow together: there was no integrity in the creation of the project, everyone was doing their own business. Moreover, Ayrat and Nikolai could not agree. “It doesn’t matter to me what will happen there, decide everything yourself. The main thing is that there is a designer, ”the programmer said. Actually, that’s why Eurica! Dybovsky and calls "an unloved child".
Here is such a vessel was built by me. Not the most controlled, but flies. Well enough.
I must say that the designer was made very soundly. It was possible to create various modes of transport: ground, underwater, sea, air or their combinations. It was also necessary to take into account the weight of the created structure, since due to improper distribution, the machine could roll in one direction or another, which would prevent movement. However, you will not be full of one designer, and therefore we must tell me what happened in the end.
Gameplay and plot of comedy
The game begins with the main character Flox and Captain Borkin flew to their airship “Hippo”, as they are knocked down by some small fat people in a frenzy of a solemn meeting. A little after us they will tell us that these dwarfs are the so -called dwarves who are perfect people. The gods created them, as they were disappointed in humanity and decided to arrange perestroika. I planned the flood, and then decided to reduce a little gravity. So slightly that all buildings from the ground flew into the stratosphere. So now the gods (in fact, God is alone, the name of his manipu, and he is one in three faces) think how to normalize all this.
This is how the name https://pirate-spins.uk is written. I hope your eyes will not die.
Dwarfs, divine creation, produce ivy – something that can return to all objects weight. This thing is generated when the dwarfs have fun, not without reason in the English version the substance is called Fun. And joyfully “ideal people” in the following cases: when they are kicked (in the literal sense) or they are carried on gnobovozhovs, and even with dancing for which music is needed. It can be turned on if you collect notes and violin keys, which will increase the number of melodies and the main character. Ivy is also a currency for which you can buy various details from God or return various objects from the stratosphere: at home, pieces of land, Big Ben, a statue of freedom, and at the end – huge earth axes that will return gravity.
Here are the dwarves that chatting with poems, here is the freedom of the statue that has fallen from the stratosphere. And with her, not Big Ben, but Chrysler-Building (thanks Arton).
Of course, the best way to produce ivy is to skating gnobs in transport. This requires rescue circles and weight. Without the first, the dwarfs will not be attached to you, and the second is responsible for the number of gnobs that can be on the car. But remember: the greater the weight, the more powerful engines you will need. There are 3 of them in the game 3: the eternal engine and its two improved versions. With their help, ground transport, aircraft and helicopters, boats and submarines are set in motion.
And there is practically nothing more to say about the game. It lasts only four or five hours, stuffed with high -quality humor, leaves pleasant, but short -lived emotions. Physics is not the most convenient, but quite working. There is a reference to the turgor when tanks with color, which is the prototype of ivy, fly to the small archipelago on which the game takes place. It is felt that, although they worked on the game, but not like the mor, for example. Therefore, many are forgotten by many. Partly the publisher is to blame for this. He simply laid out the game on Steam (now it can be bought for 250 rubles), put an unreasonably high price tag of $ 30, and there was such. There was no question of promotion or PR.
In the background – the earth’s axis. It looks strange, but not as much as it could be.
Cold is an ambitious project with a huge scale that was frozen.
After an unsuccessful Eurica! (sales were extremely small) Nikolai thawed a little and began to think about the cold – truly a huge game with a multimillion -dollar budget. After the voice of the game, the publisher of the game, Atari, really liked The Void and the reviews about the sea, and therefore offered to do something similar to the first project of the studio, but more.
Here are some sketches of the plot: “There are two kingdoms, two royal families, two rulers, and one has a son, and the other has a daughter. For diplomatic purposes, they decide to combine children in marriage, although their kingdoms are in a state of secret war. And we seem to get a almost Shakespearean love story of Romeo and Juliet, but with a nuance: a boy and a girl do not love each other, they can’t even stand, but are forced to live with childhood from childhood. However, over time, they are imbued with feelings to each other, something big and great arises in them, while the rulers are weaving intrigues and spy games behind them. Nikolai retold a completely cinematic sketch: “Imagine the wedding palace, such a long corridor as a secret room with a basilisk in the second part of Harry Potter. The boy and the girl go to the altar, holding hands, their faces are sad, and along the walls lined up on different sides to the line opposite each other’s families. The sun shines, rose petals are pouring on top, glare on glasses play … And then the camera shows us that each of the members of both families holds naked knives behind him, and someone even trembles with his hands, and all this is under the music in the spirit of Rammstein … ".
Maybe it would be really good. We are already unlikely to learn this.
However, the cold was not destined to go out. Atari went bankrupt, and ice axes began to look for another investor. There was a trip to Cologne, where the studio drove the cold work on the cold, the mora remake and the unusual idea of the MMO game based on Eurys. Then they were given a huge number of compliments and assured that everything was fine, serious people said that they would be lined up with a huge queue of investors who would be happy to sponsor the game. Reality was much more prosaic: after six months, no one spoke.
However, the cold was still trembling. Nikolai tried to turn a huge RPG into an indie project, but to no avail. For some time (after the tuk-tuk-tuk, about which later) negotiations were conducted with Mail.ru about the creation of a multiplayer game, in the genre of which Dybovsky has long wanted to try himself. And there was also a failure here, and the cold still lies in the untimely (or even endless) frost. In the future, Nikolai will say that this project has already burned out, “… in the“ cold ”the main of the chips was supposed to be – you switch from the character to the character and see the story from different points of view”. However, we already have a game of thrones in which this is realized (as – I will not say, because I did not look).
A mysterious letter and several prototypes. How they did the tuk-nryuk-stroke.
Early prototypes of some guests. Were changed in the final version.
The cold was frozen, but at least something is needed. “In the end, Ayrat said: let’s do something already! And my friend Dima Lyadukhin (also such an indie-developer) told me about Kikstarter, ”said Nikolai. As a result, ice axes went to Kikstarter.
It all started with some letter that Ice-Pick Lodge came in November 2011. It is interesting that the studio has not yet published it, and therefore some doubt its existence. We will allow the letter to. It was attached to it an archive of 19 files called "Letsplay.EXE ". Its contents, according to the studio, were quite alarming. "At first glance, they did not contain anything terrible, but something evil was felt behind this.".
The sender of the letter asked to "complete the begun", which meant to make a game. At the same time, the author left great space for creativity, but the materials from the archive should be included in the game, "otherwise everything will be in vain". Thinking, the ice axes decided to still put an experiment and see what happens from this.
One of the early prototypes. Inventory was located below, apparently.
There were several prototypes of the project. The most famous is the first, in which there were equipment and the ability to close the breaks through which forest creatures fell into the house. This version of the game is only on early developments. There are prototypes of some guests (as hostile creatures), which were changed in the final version of the project. The reasons were quite ordinary: some possibilities were simply not needed by the game.
At the beginning of the development of the tuk-free-stroke, it was planned very small, "Game-Grandma". “But, as usual, the plan began to live on its own and demand answers from us to all sorts of questions – and grew several times,” said Nikolai. The project was about the mind, not madness. At that moment, Dybovsky was worried about the mystery of thinking. As a result, the head of the studio came to the conclusion that his mind is “really misery and limited to extreme”. Because of this, Nikolai does not see a huge number of things. Tuk-tuk-tuk-a game of dialogue between man and the world, as Dybovsky said.
By this time, a master of brush, which Dybovsky admired, came to the studio – Meethos. It is he who should thank the art design of both the TTT and the Moral Nervous.
On Kikstarter, ice axes requested 40 thousand dollars per month. Despite the rather weak (if not, almost absent) PR, the studio gathered a thousand more. Among other awards for 1147 rubles, it was possible to access a certain “cat in a bag”. It turned out to be a car 47. Why is she not entirely clear, but I can’t enter her, because I did not support the game on crowdfunding. For 15 thousand rubles, developers planted a tree in the Dead Desert, and our seedlings will create a forest there ". The name of the plant will be like that of the superior. They promised to take care of the grove. I wonder how she is there?
From the very beginning, they wanted to make the game very simple, so that you could play from mobile devices. Then Nikolai had an idea to make a socialist any. But, as often happens, the idea remained for them. Interestingly, for the tuk-tuk-tuk, a specially trained game designer was invited, and not even one. At first it was Kirill Litovchenko, after – Alexei Shunkov. Only lightning remained from one of them, which sometimes thunders in the game. Nothing is heard about the other. So what happened in the end?
The exit of the game. Different perception from players and most critics. What happened?
The release of TTT was planned for December 2012, but, according to a long tradition, after several transfers, the game was released only on October 4, 2013. And most of the critics drove around the game, without understanding anything and placing quite low marks-in the region of 5-6 points. Most did not like the monotony and monotony of gameplay, the lack of a clear explanation of what is happening and the obscure plot. At the same time, Evgeny Baranov, who then worked in Gamemia, was clearly imbued with a tuk-tuk-tuk, putting 9 out of 10. I will give a review from him at the end of the article.
Information from developers when starting the game. Better to observe their tips. But the choice remains for you.
I must say that the assessment from users is much higher – 8.3 on methacritic against 5.7 points from critics. The developers explained this by the fact that all their projects have a high level of entry, “to which the project is estimated exclusively negatively, but after it the game is given maximum grades”. In this case, perhaps, I agree with the approval.
A little about the plot.
I’ll start a description of the game from the plot. In the middle of the forest stands a house. Three generations of residents have already found their housing and laboratory in it. All of them are peace -relays – people observing nature and make various tests. The results were recorded in the diary. It is possible that every tenant had his own, but this is only an assumption. The last of the inhabitants of the house recently notes that something strange in his house is happening: things disappear, unusual sounds are heard. At night, guests penetrate the dwelling-strange creatures that clearly require something from the tenant. He, in turn, thinks that these terrible monsters are nothing more than hallucinations.