Max and the Magic Marker T-Shirt Winners Announced

Well guys, it's time to announce the winners of the Max and the Magic Marker contest.  The following readers will be able to do their best Max impression and I would like any of you that receive the shirt to send us a picture of you or a family member wearing the shirt.  We'll post any of them that you want on the site for all to see.

Malouff
Philip Reed
Matthew Pitt
Charlie
Trist1214

Congratulations to each of you.  Send me an email with your mailing address and as soon as the shirts reach our office I will get them sent out to you. 

Time's Almost Up

To enter the Max and the Magic Marker T-shirt contest.  You have until 6:00 pm CST tonight to enter.  Head on over to the contest post, leave a comment with your shirt size and you'll be entered to win.  The winners will be announced tomorrow on the site. 

New Max Contest Announcement

Okay folks, since no one appears to be biting on my drawing contest idea for Max and the Magic Marker we're going to change it up a bit.  From today on all you have to do is comment in this space and you'll be entered for a chance to win the shirt. 

Make sure you add what size you would like to have. As pointed out in the comment below, because I forgot to add it to this post we have 5 T-shirts available.  1 small, 2 medium and 2 large.  When you post a comment make sure you add what size you want.  The contest runs until 6:00 pm CST on Wednesday the 28th.  Winners will be announced next Thursday.

The contest is open to readers in North America and Europe.

Max and the Magic Marker Contest

I told everyone last week that a new contest was coming up and that time is now.  Press Play, the developers of Max and the Magic Marker are sending along 5 shirts, based on the one that main character Max wears in the game.  You can see the photos to see exactly what I'm talking about.  Anyway, we thought it would be a good idea to give them away in a contest and here it is.

The rules of the contest are as follows. Each person gets one entry. No exceptions. If I find out you've loaded multiple pictures you will be disqualified.

You need to provide one picture of your best interpretation of Max and the Magic Marker. Draw a level, draw Max or the Purple Monster. The fan art can be from anyone you know. I don't care if it is yours, your kids, your moms, your neighbors whoever. Just make it fun.

Head on over to the forums and upload the drawings to this forum post. If you can't get them to load, email them to me at tonymiller@nintendo-okie.com and I'll post them for you.

The contest will run from now until next Monday, October 26th at 6:00 PM CST. The winners will be announced on Wednesday October 28th. You can check back here or on the forums to see who has won.

There will be 5 winners chosen, so you have a good chance to win. Just include the size of T-shirt you would like to have with your drawing. We have 1 small, 2 medium and 2 larges available.

Please keep it clean. Any profane, vulgar or just plain rude entries will be deleted.

Most of all have fun. We're just trying to enjoy the release of a fun game.

Here is a  list of links to articles on the site that have screen shots or video you can draw inspiration from.

Max Interview   Max Hands-On    New Screens

Note: All drawings will be sent to developer Press Play and could be used by them in future promotion for the game.

One of the Max crew, Bo Strandby, modelling the shirt for everyone.

Press Play Interview Part Trois

Our interview series with Press Play's Ole Teglbjærg continues.  This time we move a little away from the game and talk about Press Play and how they got started in the game industry.  We'll discuss Max a little bit, but thought it would be good to give you a little bit of the background of the company.  I'd like to thank Ole, once again, for joining us.

I’ve done a couple interviews now about the game, but I thought this time we’d do things a little different. Let’s just talk about Press Play for a bit. Can each of you tell us a little about what you do at Press Play?

Being such a small company we all have a number of different areas of responsibility. I’ll briefly go through the Max line up.

Mikkel is in charge of Max & the Magic Marker. He is the most technically minded of us, so he codes the more heavy stuff, and then he has the general overview of the project.

Lasse Outzen is the lead artist. As such he is responsible for all graphics, but he also has an opinion on everything else in the game.

Asger Strandby is the sound guy. The soundtrack was made along with the rest of Analogik, but all event sounds is his work. On top of that he is also responsible for having them implemented in the game.

Mike Akopyan is our Russian/American game designer. He has been taking puzzles from doodles to final implementation.

Along with him are Asgers little brother Bo Strandby and Kasper Kristensen, who are also designing and implementing levels.

Then there is Stine, who is helping Lasse out with the graphics.
Rune and I are helping out wherever we can.

You’re relatively new in the game development scene, you’re working on your first WiiWare game. How exactly did you guys get started?

In university Mikkel, Rune, and I wrote our final thesis in university together about managing creative processes. When we were almost done we agreed that it would very hard to find a job that would be as fun as making our own company, and so we did. In the beginning we were just the three of us and we made small flash games, but then our clients got bigger and bigger and we needed more people. During the last two years or so we have grown a lot, and now we are making games for consoles.

What sort of insider secrets can you give us about Press Play? Any embarrassing stories you care to share with people?

I wish I could come up with something really funny, but nothing really comes to mind. On the embarrassing side however, I hate to think about the first games we did for clients, when didn’t have an artist on the team. Rune and I did most of the art, and it was horrible – that was embarrassing. Luckily we quickly realized that we needed someone who could actually draw and then we found Lasse.

If you weren’t working at Press Play now, what would you be doing?

I’d probably be working somewhere in advertising or perhaps writing about games. When I started university, that was actually my plan. Then “by accident” I took a programming course and I found it fun. Then I met Rune and Mikkel and a few years later I’m here.

How did each of you get your start in the video game industry?

For most of us, Press Play is the first game company we’ve worked at. We’re pretty much all educated in university, but only Kasper has an actual game design degree from ITU (IT-university in Copenhagen).
So to be honest none of us have any big game experience but we have done a lot of small games in our time with Press Play, and that has given us valuable experience in taking games from the initial idea to the final execution. Of course we lack knowledge in some parts of the process, when making a game in the size of Max. But the experience you get from making small games is valuable even though the size of production is not comparable.

What one thing would you tell people out there who are interested in designing games? What’s the best way they could go about getting their foot in the door?

Make small games and make a lot of them. I see a lot of startups and dedicated game developers with no experience, who get excited about one idea: “I want to make an MMO, with elements from Call of Duty and tactics like in Civilization with a twist of Mario sillyness…” etc. Often they get nowhere, because they try to do too much. I think they would be much better off doing small games and learn from that. When you make a small game, it is a lot easier to get to something other people will also enjoy, and when other people play your game, that’s where you learn what you have done right and what you did wrong. Also when people apply for a job at Press Play, the single most important thing is their track record, and when it doesn’t say you have many years of experience a big company, the next best thing is to show a game or two, which is actually fully functional and fun to play. It shows that you can transform an idea into something real.

What’s the process been like for Press Play in getting Max from an idea in someone’s head to a fully featured game that’s ready to be played?

The process has been very long...
The first prototype was made in Flash, and demonstrated only simple core mechanic. This proved to us, that this was actually something. We then applied for funding through different public game support systems (Danish Film Institute, Nordic Game Program, and EU MediaDesk), and they believed enough in the project to support us.
This chunk of money brought us from having a very rough prototype, to a (somewhat) playable demo we could show to publishers, and so we did.
However the response we got from them was lukewarm. They all liked the concept, one of them also offered a contract, but the terms were too bad. So eventually we decided to selfpublish on WiiWare, and so far this has been a good experience. Now we just need to take the final step and get it out. We can’t wait…

What’s been the most challenging thing you’ve had to do working on Max?

The biggest challenge in making Max has been to make a game with a direction – you go from A to B on each level, while still maintaining room for creativity and open ended gameplay. It’s been a goal all along to preserve a playful atmosphere, where you as a player want to experiment with the game.
Also it has been a great challenge for us to take a game genre (drawing games) which has a tendency to appeal to nerds (like ourselves) and make it accessible for people who normally wouldn’t play such a game.

On the flip side of that, what’s been the most fun thing you’ve been able to do working on Max?

I guess it is the same thing.
But to be more specific it has been a lot of fun coming up with the “gimmicks”. On each level there is a gimmick – a thing which if you in do the right thing to it, will award the player with a secret.

What game systems do you guys play when you’re not working on Max? If we turned your system of choice on, what would we find in there right now?

In the last few weeks we’ve been playing Beatles: Rockband in the office – great fun. Also a few of us have a soft spot for Vector Racer (http://vectorracer.boschloo.net/).

How much work goes into creating a typical level for Max?

That’s really hard to say exactly because they go through so many iterations. But a rough outline on the process looks like this:
First there are the initial doodles of each puzzle. Very quickly we try to get a rough version into the engine. Once in there we can tweak it to match the physics inside the game. Then we play it over and over again, adding details and removing things that are not necessary. Then the puzzles are distributed into the levels to match a decent learning curve. We don’t want people to get stuck too early in the game.
With all the puzzles inside the levels, the refining of the level starts. We want to make a nice flow on each level giving the player the best experience possible.

Did you ever consider putting this on another platform, the drawing mechanic seems like it would work perfectly on DS or did Wii seem like the perfect fit?

We definitely considered the DS as a possible platform, but we eventually we had to focus on one thing, and that became the Wii – with our concept it is the perfect fit. Other platforms are not out of the question either, we just have to do one thing at the time.

Lastly, Are any of you actual Tupac fans?

Yes, we all are ;-)
We can’t wait for him to get back. Only five more years and he is here ;-)

Thank you, yet again Ole, for joining us.  We're looking forward to seeing more about Max and the Magic Marker in the coming weeks until the game is finally released. 
I hope you folks are enjoying this look at Press Play and Max and the Magic Marker.  You can stay tuned for for all the latest information about the game.

Max and the Magic Marker Hands On

I recently had a chance to sit down with Max and the Magic Marker and get some hands on time with the game. I played through a version of the game that featured five levels that highlighting some of the action early on in the game.

The first thing that I saw when I booted up the game was the overall colorfulness of the presentation and the theme song that would be stuck in my head, even now a few days after playing it. The world is presented through the imagination of the main character Max, and his drawings. Because of that you get a feel very quickly that you might be in for a very interesting journey through the imagination of a child. Each level begins with a very quick drawing of the level in magic marker before being presented with the very beautiful rendering of Max’s world.

The basic premise of the game is that Max’s drawings come to life and one drawing in particular, that of a purple egg plant type monster with a vacuum cleaner is causing havoc. It’s up to Max to use his orange magic marker to traverse the different levels of the game and stop his nemesis. The magic marker can be used to create platforms to reach high places, or draw bridges to get across large gaps. You also have to use this magic marker to create objects that will remove the enemy gobos from the world. If you feel like you are getting rushed you can pause the action draw the object you want and then resume play. This gives you the chance to think things out a little bit without being in danger of dieing.

The platforming in the game is very solid and I found it very easy to get from one place to another. The jumps all feel very natural. There wasn’t much Mega Man level difficulty, at least not in the playthrough I had. If there are gaps that are too high to reach simply draw a set of stairs, or make a see saw that can be used to fling Max high in the air. There was no limit to the creativity I could have other than the amount of ink in the marker. Each level started me out with little to no ink, but there were orange orbs scattered throughout the level that could be used to refill Max’s ink supply. Each drawing would use a small amount of ink, but could be erased and used to refill the marker once that obstacle was passed. The more ink that was used the heaver the object would be. There were some puzzles that took this into account and if it was solved I was awarded a black orb. The black orbs, I’m told are scattered in various places throughout the levels and if you find them all they will unlock a secret. Some of them are out in the open, but some will be achieved by solving different puzzles in the game. Along with the black secret orbs, and the orange ink orbs there are gold orbs that can be collected that I can only imagine are used to unlock even more things, though I don’t know for sure yet what they do.

The fun came not so much in the platforming itself, but finding different ways to solve the various puzzles in the game. The ink drawings can all be interacted with, both by Max and the gobos. There were times I found I would create an obstacle to keep a gobo from getting to me and they would shove the drawing back at me. I spent a lot of time with the game just trying to find different ways to dispatch the baddies. Some of the different things I tried were drawing a box around them and then pushing the box into a lake or creating a platform above them and when they pushed one of the supports out of the way the platform would fall of them and squash them. I imagine there is no limit to the different ways that can be created to eliminate them, other than your imagination.

Another thing the developer says they’ve witnessed is that bystanders can’t help but get involved as well. They’ve seen numerous times where someone watching would offer a suggestion on how to defeat an enemy or reach a platform. They also have seen that the game could be good for what has been referred to as “father-daughter” mode where one player controls Max and the other player handles the drawing.

Max and the Magic Marker is another in what is shaping up to be a long line of player created interactive games, but it could be the most memorable one that comes out this year. The bright visuals, insanely catchy music done by Analogik and simply engaging creative aspects of the game are coming together for a very unique experience that everyone will be able to enjoy later this year. Take notice, people, Press Play, is looking to make a splash with their first WiiWare title.

Programming Note

Hey guys. Just a bit of an exciting thing. I'm going to get my first look at Max and the Magic Marker this weekend. I've also been allowed to do a bit of a hands on preview with the game so you'll get some impressions of the game next week. I would look for that to show up on Tuesday. Max is a side scrolling platformer where a little kid's imagination begins to run wild. Anything he draws with his magic marker becomes real and can be used to help him in his adventures. Look for that to show up on the site next Tuesday.

Also the guys at Press Play have released some new wallpapers for anyone interested. Visit www.maxandthemagicmarker.com and head over to the media section to get those.

Interview with Ole Teglbjærg (Max and the Magic Marker)

Hey guys. Ole is back for Round Two with us. You can see the previous interview I did with him here as well as at Nintendojo. I suggest going back and reading that interview if you haven't, because the information there was quite impressive. Let's get right to it then, shall we?

What are some of the benefits of working on WiiWare as opposed to a retail style game?

Basically I think the whole business model of WiiWare or any of the other download platforms, is better suited for first time developers like us, who self publish and do not have a lot of money. On these platforms it is possible to publish a game without having the big investment needed to produce the physical copies or the logistic network required to get it out there. Other than that I guess the size limit provides some sort of freedom also. I know it sounds like a paradox, but it forces you to be creative with what you have and make the best of it. Eventually this means the emphasis is on creativity and good and "simple" game play, rather than fiddling around with some insane AI or spend years refining every pixel on every 3D model in the game. That said, retail of course provides another kind of freedom in terms of having all the space you want, but we choose to look at it from a positive angle.

We know there is a size limit of around 40MB for WiiWare games. Has this been an issue through the development of Max? What if any limitations have you had to put on yourself and has it been a hinderance at all?

As mentioned above, the size limit has given us a kind of freedom, but to be more specific it has also been a pain in the ass during the development. We've had to restrict the amount of graphics, reduce quality of the music, and cut out game modes and features, which otherwise would have made it to the game. So it definitely puts a limit to what you can do.

All of the screenshots we've seen featured an orange magic marker. Are there going to be any other colors that might have different effects on gameplay?

We've had long and hard discussions on this issue, because it seems like such an obvious good idea. However, we have eventually decided not to go for the multi-marker mechanic. But it is definitely relevant for a sequel.

One of the most talked about games right now is Scribblenauts, which seems to have a near endless amount of player created options available. How many different actions will you be able to perform in Max and the Magic Marker?


Scribblenauts, which I think looks like a fantastic game, had a team of designers going through Wikipedia finding words, defining behavior and categorizing them and they've ended up with "tens of thousands of words" as one of the designers told me when, when I talked to her in Madrid at the Ideame conference. That is a lot, but our approach is a lot different. What we did was to define a principle of "providing as much freedom as possible under the laws of physics". That meant we did not want pattern recognition like we had seen in a lot of other drawing games. We wanted actual drawing - the bumps on the line should be felt within the game. That also means that the creativity and the number of things to do, is only limited by the amount of ink you have collected and your imagination.


We've seen some shots of a large purple creature who wields a vacuum. What can you tell us about him? Are there any other villains in the game that you can talk about?

The purple monster is the one Max created with the marker before he knew it was magical. I won’t say too much about him just yet, but he has an irritating ability to turn Max's friends the "Gobos" into purple monster look-a-likes.
These will kill Max if they get in contact with him. The only way to make them good again is to drop things (or ink) on their heads, when they are not looking.

WiiWare now has a rather extensive library of games covering a large number of genres. What games have you been playing and what are some of your favorites on WiiWare?

My personal favorites are 2D boy´s World of Goo and Swords and Soldiers by Ronimo Games. Two very different games, both with qualities I admire. I don´t think anyone would disagree on the beauty and uniqueness of World of Goo. And Swords and Soldiers is just such a cool take on the RTS genre. I love it when games are boiled down to focus on one well designed mechanic, and this is in my opinion what both 2D boy and Ronimo has done in their games. Other than that, our game has been compared to LostWinds a lot, and I can definitely see the similarities. However I thought LostWinds was a bit slow. My hope is that Max will be a faster game, but still leave room for the puzzle part.
- Run, Jump, Think, Draw! As we say.


You recently gave us a sneak peak at some more audio for the game and how it will be integrated into the gameplay. What can you tell us about the music in the game and how exactly will it work with what's going on on-screen?

The music will be dynamic in the sense, that depending on where on the level you are, it will change accordingly. Asger Strandby who is working with the implantation of the sound, has along with the rest of Analogik recorded numerous tracks evolving around a unique theme for each world. The tracks can be played on top of each other creating new variations and that is what gives the dynamic feel. Furthermore, the ingame sound effects are synchronized to fit the music by a metronome. This means even the footsteps will end up following the rhythm of the music. This gives a really nice touch e.g. When picking up pickups.

The game was shown during GamesCom in August. Was that the first time it had been shown to the public? How was the reaction by people who got to see the game?

The reaction was overwhelming and people were very excited about it. It was only on display in the business section though, so consumers still have to wait.

Can you tell us anything about your other titles we've talked about in the past (Hard Plastic, Octoracer)?

Right now we've just entered preproduction on Hard Plastic laying down the art direction and basic rules of the game. We're pretty excited about it ourselves, but it still has a long way to go.

On Octoracer, I think we've skipped the "Racer" in Octoracer. We have done a lot of prototyping, and we love the basic movement mechanic, but it doesn’t work as a racer. So we'll have to can that part.

Max was announced to be in Alpha in July. Can you tell us how close you are to being able to announce a release date yet?

Sorry... no.


I'd like to thank Ole, once again, for joining us and talking about Max and the Magic Marker. Stay tuned to Nintendo Okie for all the latest information concerning this game as well as other titles in the future.