Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Screenshots, Weekly Screenshot, Wii U eShop | 1 Comment

Alas, after seven weeks now Shin’en’s run of exclusive screenshots for us has come to an end! We’ve seen quite a bit of Art of Balance, and now, fittingly, we’re seeing the ending of the game. Take a look above for the background of the credits screen, and read below for what it is, why it is, and how it is. Thanks to Manfred from Shin’en for giving us all this stuff to show you, and we hope you enjoyed the run!

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Screenshots, Weekly Screenshot, Wii U eShop | 6 Comments

Keeping things light this week, Shin’en’s Manfred Linzer returns to NintendoEverything with a nice summary of the game’s lobby system and how implementing online for Art of Balance on Wii U was tough because it was the team’s first time ever doing an online game. Aside from what he told us, we can glean that the game will keep track of your win/lose record, as well as display your country of origin when matchmaking. The rest remains mysterious… for now.

Read on past the break for Manfred’s own words about what you see above, and the development of the game’s online mode:

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Screenshots, Weekly Screenshot, Wii U eShop | 3 Comments

Hey everybody, we hope your day is going well/went well/etc! Manfred Linzer from Shin’en has given us another exclusive screenshot from their upcoing Wii U puzzle game Art of Balance, and within it we’re getting a look at the game’s “Challenge Mode” as well as the setting, which– for some reason– is an abandoned house. The real question is who used to live in it before people started playing block games in the attic…?

I guess that’s not for us to say! Here’s Manfred’s description of the screenshot:

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Screenshots, Weekly Screenshot, Wii U eShop | 1 Comment

Have you guys ever heard of Art of Balance on Wii U? I have, because for 3 weeks we’ve been showing off exclusive screenshots of the game, complete with discussion and inside-info from the game’s developer Shin’en! The feature returns with a look at something we haven’t seen before: The game’s newly added multiplayer modes. Manfred Linzer from Shin’en describes it best below, so check out what he has to say and enjoy the warm rays of sunlight in the above screenshot.

Hello there! Time for another screenshot from Art of Balance (AoB), our upcoming Wii U game. Today we will show you an image from one of the many multiplayer game modes.

Everyone loves playing against a friend via split-screen, and AoB allows you to play locally or online using split-screen. The best part: it’s not only one on one but you can play with up to five people locally or up to eight people online. The players get arranged into two teams that try to solve the puzzles in parallel.

Although the single-player mode is great fun, we had the biggest laughs and enjoyment when playing the game in split-screen mode with a few friends. You simply play for hours and hours…

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Screenshots, Weekly Screenshot, Wii U eShop | 3 Comments

As we’ve done for the last two weeks, today we have another exclusive screenshot of the upcoming Wii U eShop game Art of Balance from our friends at Shin’en. They’ll be showing off some genuinely neat stuff this time around, including some changes to the core user-interface and some of the small graphical touches that their known for putting in all of their games. Like before, the following quote comes from Mr. Manfred Linzer over at the developer, and you can look at the screenshot he’s talking about above:

Hi guys! Another week, another screen from our upcoming beautiful Wii U game called “Art of Balance”. This time I’ll show you a screen from the 2nd world.

When creating the Wii U version we thought about how we could make the game feel more ‘real’; a subtle but nice change was how to pick the shapes. On 3DS and Wii, the shapes were simply picked from a 2D HUD Layer and then projected into the 3D screen. On Wii U, we placed the shapes directly on the table, so you can select them with your GamePad or Wii Remote. This feels very natural and gives a more ‘solid world’ feeling.

Also we wanted the game to feel ‘gemuetlich’ as we say in German, so the levels should feel warm and inviting. Besides choosing the correct lighting and props, we figured out that it was important not to have that typical ‘clean’ computer rendering style, so we tried to give everything little imperfections. Just look at the table – all of the little scratches and variations in particular. This is used on every asset in the game. It’s very subtle, but gives that little extra touch we wanted.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Screenshots, Weekly Screenshot, Wii U eShop | 4 Comments

Hey all, it’s Brian and Austin from Nintendo Everything here to re-welcome Manfred from Shin’en back with yet another screenshot from the upcoming Wii U release of Art of Balance! He’s got plenty to say about what graphical details they’re implementing for the menus in the game, so revel in the relaxing room where you select your levels and read up about how it came to be below! Unless you’d rather simply revel at the picture. That’s okay too.

Hi guys, it’s Manfred from Shin’en again with another fresh shot from Art of Balance Wii U. This time we’ll show you one of the the level selection screens.

When developing the original game on Wii, we realized that a simple 2D grid would be good enough for a level select menu, but that in itself was too boring. So we came up with the idea of stacked boxes in a lush 3D environment. We think coming back to the this beautiful menu gives players a nice break after solving a level. On Wii U, we had tons of performance to waste on this screen so we implemented quite a number of effects.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Screenshots, Weekly Screenshot, Wii U eShop | 7 Comments

Nintendo Everything is introducing another new developer-centric feature called “Weekly Screenshot”. Each week, developers will share new photos from their games and talk a bit about what’s going on in the image, how it was made, or what it means for the experience of playing. You know how Masahiro Sakurai shares new screenshots from Super Smash Bros. for Wii U/3DS every weekday? Our feature is similar, though again, new images will only appear each week.

Art of Balance developer Shin’en is kicking things off with weekly looks at their title, which is coming out on the Wii U eShop in the near future. The studio will share one new image each Tuesday and intends to briefly discuss some of the tech being used.

In any case, on with the screenshot!

Hi guys, it’s Manfred from Shin’en. First of all, thanks to Brian for the opportunity to show our fans on Nintendo Everything some images of our soon to be released Wii U eShop game “Art of Balance”. The “Art of Balance” series is known on Wii and 3DS for its perfect gameplay. For the Wii U version, we wanted to create more then just an HD update. So we added new local and online mutliplayer modes, along with a complete new look for the game that makes the Wii U really shine. 200 levels from the Wii and 3DS version are included, but now you can even play them with your family, friends, and even online.

Each week, we will present a new shot and will talk a bit about the game and tech we’re using.

Above you can find the first shot featuring the hub for the eight worlds you can play. We used high dynamic range rendering– which gives us those nice sun sparkles on the ocean– and the ocean uses a dynamic wave simulation. Soft shadows are also used to connect everything, and if you look closely you can even see real-time reflections. Volumetric sun rays have been implemented to give an extra touch of softness.

That’s all for today. See you next week!

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