Around August 2011, it was decided our next game was going to be Guacamelee. Lead animator Augusto Quijano was tasked with drawing some concept art to help the team get an idea of how Guacamelee might look. See how many actual locations from the game you recognize (click to enlarge).
There was also some concept art for levels that never went into production.
Once we had a better idea of what the scope of our game would encompass, it was up to Augusto again to do some storyboarding.
Hope you enjoyed looking at these. Be sure to check out our Facebook page, where we will post the rest of the concept art. Also follow us on Twitter!
It has been one month since the release of Guacamelee and the official blogs from Playstation Europe and North America confirmed yesterday that Guacamelee is #1 on the PSN charts! Everybody here at Drinkbox is SUPER PUMPED. It’s a bit surreal seeing Guacamelee above Journey in the PlayStation Store charts. Well, maybe not that surreal, but we’d be lucky to be going as strong as Journey one year after its launch.
Highlights of the month:
Guacamelee got 9/10′s from IGN, GameSpot, Destructoid, and Polygon. And there’s pretty much universal praise for the game on the Guac PS3 and Vita Metacritic pages. Some reviewers criticized the game’s difficulty spikes, which is a fair knock.
Video-wise, we got a ‘BUY’ verdict from SourceFed, a glowing review from Reviews on the Run, and VintageBeef is currently doing a playthrough (with stellar voice acting).
Guacamelee was also at the centre of discussions about how other cultures are portrayed in video games. Over at VentureBeat, Kotaku, and TechNewsDaily, it seems that more people than not were satisfied with how we used Mexican culture in Guac.
At PAX East, a.k.a. Boston, the guys made a day of the dead altar, and dressed up in popular Mexican attire, wearing guayaberas and bandanas (I checked with Augusto to make sure Wikipedia was correct in saying it’s popular Mexican attire), and Destructoid honoured Guacamelee as a ‘Must Play!‘ Hooray!
road trip food
Back in Toronto we were keeping busy showing the game off at Long Winter 5, a local music/arts festival put together by the band ‘Effed’ Up. We had a blast, especially Augusto, showing off Guac and helping our local game dev friends show off their games.
Oh, and we announced the release date for Guacamelee, probably setting a world record for shortest amount of time between the announcement of the release date and the release date. The game will be released on April 9th in the Americas, April 10th in Europe, and will support Cross-Buy for $14.99. Cross-Buy means you buy the game once and get both the PS3 and PS Vita versions. There’s also a Platinum Trophy!
Not much more needed to be said but that. Excitement doesn’t quite cover it. Guacamelee! arrives on PSN April 9th! Next week! Our newest trailer below.
Also – be sure to check out Graham’s post over at the Playstation Blog. He gets really depressed when no one reads what he has to say, so do it as a favour for us.
This morning Steph and I headed out into the winter madness to record a promo video that’s going to be shown on Gamespot.com for the IGF. It will be part of a montage featuring all of the nominees.
We did a little rehearsing before stepping outside:
Things took a bit longer than expected to get a working take (17 attempts!). Here’s Take 3:
Baby, it’s cold outside
Keep an eye on Gamespot.com for the final montage!
We have some amazingtacular news! Guacamelee is a finalist at this year’s Independent Games Festival for Excellence in Visual Art! A big congratulations to our art team who are working hard to make Guacamelee look so good. So to Steph, Augusto, Ben, Tameka, Jay, and Tanya: congratulations!
We still have a ways to go before Guacamelee is a finished product, but it’s great to get kudos like this to let us know we’re on the right track.
Would you like a closer look at the creative process here at Drinkbox Studios? Then take some time to watch Augusto and Graham chat it up in the short video we made for our 2012 Indiecade nomination.
Also, congrats to fellow Toronto devs Asteroid Base for Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime being a finalist for Excellence in Visual Art! All the finalists are so darned good-looking, what an honour!
We’re doing well, thanks for asking.. Been working hard towards getting a stable build of Guacamelee! that we can use for focus testing and balancing. Today we did it!
In celebration, here’s some candid footage from the office today:
What does this mean for you? Not much really.. There’s still a lot of work to do to make the game as awesome as it can be.
Thanks for stopping by! As your reward, here’s a photo of chicken luchador with his pink cat entourage (Photo by Don Spiro):
Hola to all (especially skeletons!), Augusto here.
It’s DrinkBox’s favoritetest Holiday! I hope everyone got their Pan de Muerto and cempasúchil flowers for their altars.
We’ve been busy celebrating here, but somehow we’ve managed to take some time off from eating sugar skulls to finish BETA for Guacamelee! (almost there!)
Gotta go back now, those Mucbil pollos aren’t gonna eat themselves!
Well, our neighbors on the in interweb over at Polygon would have you believe it’s ridiculous things such as in depth, thoughtful articles on gaming, or even above average amusing podcasts like the Besties. The absolute gall. Here at Drinkbox, we’d like to really educate you on Polygons the Guacamelee! way:
Wait? What are the remaining names?! Well – this is a great time to start learning about Spanish (your responsibility), and Guacamelee! (our responsibility):
Hello Internet denizens. Three quick pieces of news for you!
First of all, just wanted to update everyone with our newest trailer:
Second, we’re excited to be part of the Gamercamp Magazine Launch Party tonight, 7pm at the Pacific Junction Hotel. Event details can be found here. Join us!
Next in the news, Juan Aguacate (the luchador from Guacamelee!) has been announced as part of the new Minecraft Skin Pack 3 coming out this Friday, Oct 19 on XBLA. Pretty awesome:
More details about the other characters in the pack can be found here!
love @
