CONGRATULATIONS!
You have been offered the opportunity to take charge of the DIRAC mkII de-unfocusing vectorscope terminal. Keep your head cool as you progress through the increasingly challenging levels, untangling protons and keeping an eye out for the beneficial multiplier particle. Stay focused and don’t let the dizzying heights of fame distract as you rise from a lowly intern through the academic ranks. Can you reach the top?

DIRAC will be available as a premium game on Apple App Store and Google Play on March 10th.

Are you a games reviewer? We’d love for you to cover DIRAC!
Contact us at press(at)mediocre.se and we’ll send you a promo code!

From the inner workings of the research apparatus here at Mediocre, a new experience is taking form. Steady your hand, wipe your eyebrows and prepare to grapple a task of microscopic proportions.

The molecular mystery at the heart of DIRAC awaits you in Q1 2016…

Glass breakers and crystal crashers!
It’s our pleasure to announce that an update has been released for Smash Hit, including two brand new game modes; Versus and Co-op. In Versus mode you play competitively against another player on the same device, with brand new obstacles and rooms to help you make life more difficult for your opponent. In Co-op you play together with a friend, trying to help each other get as far as possible. Both modes are available for free to customers who bought Smash Hit. Go check it out!

Signing off,
Emil

Game gourmets!
It’s time for the second installment in our series of posts about the prototyping work we’ve been doing here at Mediocre. This time we will take a look at a project not quite as refined as the Garbatron prototype. We present to you…

[Unnamed multi touch prototype]

This prototype was a quick experiment in multi touch gameplay. The idea was that the player touched objects on the screen, and held the finger on each object until a timer indicated that the finger should be lifted for the object to be removed. With different sizes of objects requiring a different amount of time to be removed an intriguing gameplay mechanic occured, not entirely unlike playing a musical instrument. Fingers often ended up in intricate interlaced patterns messing with the players ability to correctly identify which specific finger needed to be lifted at specific times.

One of the most obvious problems was that the fingers obscured what was happening on the screen. This was mitigated by the ability to move the fingers away from an object while still keeping that object activated, visualized by a line being drawn from the object to the corresponding finger. While this problem was kind of solved, another one was that the game more or less required the device to be placed on a table (or other appropriate surface) due to the heavy focus on 2+ finger multi touch. And in the end we decided to scrap the idea since it wasn’t that fun.

Below you can see a quick gameplay prototype I whipped up to test the mechanics.

Signing off,
Emil

Hello game lovers,
Coming back from summer vacation we decided that we should spend a month or so to prototype different ideas that’s been floating around. That month has now come to an end, and it resulted in a strong and interesting concept that we will now develop further. But we thought you all would be interested in getting a glimpse of all the crazy stuff we’ve been doodling with. In a number of blogs we will take a closer look at these ideas. So, without further ado, Mediocre presents…

Garbatron!

One of the first ideas we explored was called Garbatron. A game where the player slices objects with the purpose of recycling the parts in return for energy. You got energy whenever you managed to get parts to fall through the holes in the floor, and you lost energy for the parts you did not manage to get through the holes. Red objects which explodes when sliced were added as a method to get rid of small pieces, which had a tendency to stack up in corners and other hard to get to places. However, getting any part of the red objects through a hole also mean a loss of energy. The idea was that this was going to play out in some kind of junkyard, and the player would be tasked with slicing up bigger and more absurd items the further the game progressed; Coffee cup -> Laptop -> Microwave -> Fridge -> Sofa -> Car -> Mini van -> Shipping container -> House -> Ferry -> Aircraft Carrier and so on. Also objects with different effects were envisioned; like a water tank dropping water when sliced which could be used to wash down leftover parts, propane tanks for explosions and so forth. Unfortunately, there was a couple of issues with the idea which ultimately led us to scrapping the concept:

• Slicing objects was fun and very rewarding but also very difficult to do in a controlled and predictable manner (from a gameplay perspective, not technically difficult). It kind of felt like the equivalent of button mashing in Street Fighter.
• A lot of pieces were stuck on flat areas and in corners. This was somehow mitigated by the exploding objects, but not completely. It felt unfair to lose energy due to parts the player had very little possibility of salvaging. Creating sloped floors was considered, but it would likely just mean that the game became a test of how fast the player could slice up objects small enough to automatically slide down through the holes.
• To retain long term interest the game would need to be very content heavy with lots of detailed objects of different kinds and sizes.
• It was difficult to see how the game could be expanded to retain interest after the first few levels.

Please enjoy this short video of an early prototype Dennis whipped up in the Smash hit engine:

Signing off,
Emil