Are you an America region Switch owner?
Then we’ve got good news for you!
Starting today until July 4th Black Paradox will be 50% off on America region’s eShop.
What are you waiting? Get your copy of Black Paradox now!
Get Black Paradox here:
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/black-paradox-switch/
Join our Discord channel and ask/chat about Black Paradox!
https://discord.gg/VvpQqD2
Our new game, Hero Express, will be available in early July for Switch! 🎉🤟🚀
Let’s study the levels together to be ready for that date. 🧐
Today we show you New York 🌉🌇, the only road layout in the game.
You can play 🕹️ the New York level in our demo available on:
Itch: https://fantasticostudio.itch.io/hero-express
Gamejolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/heroexpress/412652
Indiexpo: https://www.indiexpo.net/en/games/hero-express
Let us know what do you think. Visit us in our Discord channel: https://discord.gg/4jR6Uz8
Have Good Sunday! 🕺
Hi guys, My name’s Carlo, I’m a dev here at Fantastico Studio. Nice to meet you.
Starting today I’ll run “Simply Carlo” :D, a column about gardening… Yes, at Fantastico Studio we talk about stuff that’s not video games too.
I hear someone ask: “how did your gardening passion start?”
Well it was kinda by chance, I was trying to decorate my home and thought: “Why not put some green here?”.
So I decided to get some Pothos cuttings from the office plants, that I followed in their daily growth.
After some satisfying results I cultivated (pun intended) this interest by taking care and propagating some other plants.
Right now I have around 10 at my place and the office.
It’s a relaxing hobby and it helps me rest when I’m taking a break at work or from home chores.
So today I’ll be talking about Pothos and its propagation.
Pothos is a plant that spontaneously grows in tropical countries and are some of the most appreciated room plants thanks to their elegance, ease to grow it and tolerance to lack of light and water.
The Photos is also used in some tropical islands as crowns to garnish the head and neck of widowers that are about to remarry.
The plant’s vegetative stage, that goes from March to October (depending on the climate area), the plant grows really rapidly and climbs easily on a moss support.
The Pothos is a climbing plant with glossy and compact heart shaped leaves. These are green colored with white-gold shaped spots.
The perfect soil to grow the Pothos is a mix of garden soil, ⅓ of topsoil and some sand.
Other soils are fine too as long as they are sufficiently drained.
Additionally it’s possible to grow it in the water (hydroculture) with the help of some mineral salts tablets.
The Pothos should be placed in a well lit place, but not under direct sun light. More light means the plant will be more variegated.
As for irrigation, it’s enough to water the plant 2-3 times a week, depending on the temperature.
The soil should be kept moist but shouldn’t have puddles. It’s also a good idea to keep the leaves moisturized with a moisturizer.
The Cutting multiplies easily by putting it in water or a sandy soil.
It’s also possible to split the plant by cutting it with a sharp disinfected knife (maybe with a flame) to avoid contagion. Afterwards each part should be planted as if it was an adult plant.
I suggest to have the Cutting take root in water for a couple weeks. Once the roots have developed transfer it in the soil, caring not to cover the leaves and the new stalks with it.
Big news! Hero Express is coming soon.
It will be launched on June 25th on Xbox One.
Are you ready to save the world?
Hey guys!
We have received lots of feedbacks since the demo was released. Most of them were about the game being too difficult. We have thus greatly decreased the difficulty, and used the old tracks as a hard mode unlocked after beating it once.
So now the game allows both a chill experience for players who just want to enjoy the experience, and a real challenge for hardcore players.
What do you guys think about this? Let us know!
Have you tried Hero Express yet?
If so you probably know the game power-ups, but let’s introduce them anyway.
The Jumper, a powerup that allows the player to jump and avoid death, surpass obstacles, or reach otherwise unaccessible areas.
Also in some tracks it’s a necessary power-up to progress through the track.
Here in the GIF you can see an example of a jumper used wrong as the car’s speed was almost null when used.
To talk about the Cleaner we have to first talk about objects that soil your car first. These objects (that are different for every track) will dirty your screen while making your wheels slippery.
This is obviously a pain while trying to climb hills and rush to the next gasoline. The Cleaner allows the player to clean the dirt, getting things back to normal while playing a cool effect.
The effect was made using a normal map to distort the image to simulate a watery effect.
What do you think about that?
Let’s talk about game physics today.
We’ve given the game a realistic game physic to make it funnier.
Still there were some problems of course since the game is in 2D.
The vehicles start with traction only on the rear wheel, and get front traction only by powering up.
This created situations where the vehicle would go nose up too easily and make it hard to control.
We tried many solutions to try and resolve the problem, but in the end only one worked: pushing the nose up wheel directly back on the floor.
To do this we applied a force on the wheel perpendicular to the vehicle toward the floor, but only if the other wheels was touching the ground.
This way if one wheels is on the ground while the other isn’t this ghost force tries to re establish the balance. In the end it worked pretty great and the game is now playable and fun.
The force isn’t to strong, so doing wheelies is still doable and the player has control over his car.
What do you think of the way we solved the problem? Have you met similar problems? Would you have solved it in a different way?
Hi guys, today we want to talk about the tool we used to make the tracks in Hero Express, Unity Sprite Shape.
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/09/20/intro-to-2d-world-building-with-sprite-shape/
The tool is really cool and powerfull, although still in beta. It allowed us to take a sprite sheet and create any kind of shape with it while immediatelly adapting the collider.
We had to play around with it a bit before deciding to go with that, but almost immediatelly we realized it was the solution we were searching for to develop this kind of game.
Still there were some problems of course.
First, As we divided the track in blocks there were problems adapting the sprite sheet where the blocks were connecting and some small graphic holes appeared. Took a while to fix those.
Also where there were sharp corner on the track sometimes the sprite wouldn’t adapt well and holes would appear.
After working a bit around it we finally found a way to avoid both those problems and are pretty satisfied with the final look on the tracks!
There’s only one problem left. Sprite shape doesn’t work on Ps4!!!
The sprite shape object renderer just doesn’t work. We contacted Unity and they didn’t know about the issue. They are working to fix it right now, so fingers crossed!
Has anyone else tried sprite shape? Have you encountered similar problems to ours? let us know!
Reveal time!
Fantastico Studio is starting it’s own publishing work.
Our first game will be a simple yet charming game, Hero Express. A physics driven 2D driving game not based on racing against others, but on trying to reach the end line ALIVE.
Want to know more?
Try the demo on Gamejolt: https://bit.ly/2Yy5Mvl
Or on Itch.io: https://bit.ly/2WQ0v1K
Ready for some crazy driving action?
Black Paradox has finally moved to the next step. Leaving Early Access and launching on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Ps4 the game has been greatly expanded with a lot of new features.
So what’s new? Let’s start with the “big stuff”
A new game mode has been added. Once players beat the game they’ll unlock the “Darkness mode”, essentially an extra hard boss rush. It won’t be a simple boss rush though. Players will be playing in the “dark world” as the dark Black Paradox they normally summon with their ultimate move. The bosses will be a dark version too, with a lot more health and upgraded attack patterns. Beating them all will be a real challenge!
Next is the Chip Storage. Previously players could equip up to 4 chips at a time. When replacing an old one, this one was lost forever. This is no more. Now up to 9 can be stored in the player’s storage to be able to experiment with different builds and discover new unexpected play styles. Also, to be able to better select the chips to buy we implemented a restock function that lets players restock the chip shop for a small price.
Another thing worth mentioning is that the game’s been localizzed in Italian, German, French, Spanish, Simplified Chinese and Russian, letting lots of players all over the world finally be able to enjoy the game in their native language.
Those aren’t the only additions/changes/tweaks to the game, here’s a full rundown of the updates you’ll find in the full version:
-Level presentation map
-Level unique backgrounds
-Chip storage system
-Chip restock system
-Darkness mode (unlocked by clearing the game)
-2 new power-up combos
-New enemy drop (in addition to health pick-ups, enemies also now drop a blue tank that charges your ultimate move by 20% when collected)
-Visual upgrade on bullets
-Visual upgrade on enemies
-Bug fixing
-Typo fixes
-New achievements
-Balancing
-UI upgrade
-Improved performances
So…Are you ready to save the galaxy?
Watch the trailer: https://t.co/tcHoiA6hFB
NintendoSwitch
https://t.co/P17muTV1ES
XboxOne
https://t.co/3ZnpilfP7V
Steam
https://t.co/EfG20C1JKI