September 8, 2008 – Mystic Mine, a new game under development by Koonsolo, contains levels with an impossible structure. An optical illusion makes them seem like real. Just like the endless stairs of Penrose or M. C. Escher, you are able to infinitely go down and yet arrive at the same starting point. Impossible in the real world, but not in Mystic Mine.
If all this confuses you, better take a look at the following screenshots, they will make everything clear:
To successfully play Mystic Mine, you will have to navigate through these impossible labyrinths, which will be quite a challenge.
Remember those old arcade games? Plenty of them used isometric tiles to build up the levels. But impossible figures or optic illusions were considered a bad side effect. In those days they didn’t exploit this to give the player a whole new experience.
Thanks to the popularity of mobile devices, old arcade techniques are being reused. Koen Witters, the founder of Koonsolo, programmed plenty of mobile games, when he realized that the disadvantage of isometric tiles was really an opportunity. Being a fan of impossible objects and the works of M.C.Escher, he wanted to create such a cool game. And so Mystic Mine was born.
Mystic Mine puts those old 2D techniques back on the map. In an age where 3D is considered superior to 2D, it’s great to have a game using a 2D concept, impossible to represent in a 3D environment.
As you can see, Mystic Mine will be an innovative game unlike anything else you’ve ever played. More info will follow gradually in the coming months. Don’t miss it, because the best is saved for last :).
You can keep yourself updated by subscribing to the Koonsolo newsletter at http://www.koonsolo.com/newsletter.php or news blog (RSS) at http://www.koonsolo.com/news.
Mystic Mine will be available for Windows, Mac and Linux. More info can be found at http://www.koonsolo.com/mysticmine
About Koonsolo
Koonsolo is a small independent game development studio committed to create games that are original, amazing, and most of all, games that provide pure carefree fun.
Koonsolo was founded in 2006 by Koen Witters, who has been creating games for fun as long as he can remember. It first started out by inventing board games, and after playing Commodore 64 and those early arcade games, he was completely sold on this new form of entertainment. At the age of 14 he learned how to program, with only one goal in mind: to create computer games.
After receiving his Master’s degree in Computer Science, he started working as a professional game programmer. This was extremely fun, but the passion of creating his own original and exciting games never went away. So in 2006 he finally started up his own company, Koonsolo. After finishing some contracted game projects, Mystic Mine will be the first indie game developed at Koonsolo.
1 Comment
xot · September 14, 2008 at 12:17
“It’s a game unlike any other game you have seen or played before.”
“Remember those old arcade games? Plenty of them used isometric tiles to build up the levels. But impossible figures or optic illusions were considered a bad side effect. In those days they didn’t exploit this to give the player a whole new experience.”
Those of us who used to play Mike Edwards’ Realm of Impossibility (aka Zombies) would probably disagree with those statements.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/zombies_
And we’re probably all salivating at Mystic Mine as well. Being a big fan of Escher, I’m looking forward to learning more about it. Good luck with your game!