Hoodownr - a few Ways to play

In the modern world, playing mobile games tends to be a solitary affair. With this in mind, we decided to take a different approach with Hoodownr. Here are a few ways to enjoy the game:

Discover with your friends

Do a run with a friend or two. Call / skype / message them and ask them to join you for a walk. You can easily share hoodownr runs with friends by scanning their player badges. You don’t have to start the run from the same point; you or your friends can join in at any time! The distance you walk together with your friends accumulates on the global map.

Conquer with your clan

Has somebody taken over your hood on the global map? Hell-bent on acquiring some more liebensraum for your clan to rock the hoodownr clan charts? Then plan a run together with your clan! You can use the built-in clan tool to prepare a nice adventure for everyone. Clans can spread the word on whatever networks they want to plan trips. Facebook groups, blogs, forums or even a real life meeting somewhere. Use the networks that best suit your clan’s needs.

Discover inside an event

Events are generally thought of as bigger gatherings of people. So why not join up together with new people and boot up a run? On an event, players share a similar goal in order to experience a truly tailor-made adventure. Event attendance awards special event badges and achievements. Show the world where you have been and the great things you've been part of!

Discover with a stranger

Clock up those ‘walk a mile in my shoes’ achievements and extra trustpoints by sharing a run with somebody you don’t know. Hoodownr encourages players to go out of their comfort zone and share runs with players not on their buddy lists or in their clan. Hoodownr player badges make it easy to spot other players on the street. Plus you can let other people in the locality know that you’re ready to share a run if you want to. Walking and talking together is a good way to meet new people and encourage further social interaction.

There are a few other ways to enjoy the various social aspects of the game. We’ll write about them in the near future.

Spanking new logo!

Thank you for your continued interest in Hoodownr, please follow us on twitter or facebook for more updates!

intuition, arranging club events and why it all makes sense (hopefully)

Today I read a most interesting article by this guy who's a serial entrepreneur. He gave a 13 point list how to do it right when you're a fledgling startup.

Many of the points are just common sense and can be found on any business guide so I won't go into those ones at all. The one that caught my eyes was indeed Intuition.

The writer said that intuition is all you've got. Your feel of the flow of things, your projections of the future based on your experience, your faith to the yet unseen realities. The shape of things to come.

I remember my first forays into event production from like 10 years ago. All these impressive people were doing events and things and that set me off thinking, I'd like to that too. But I was very shy and felt it's never going to happen unless I find someone who's more talkative and would take care of the things I couldn't. That guy never appeared. And never will.

Why's that? Because people like that are too busy chasing their own dreams, that's why. =)

So there I was (and maybe you, dear reader are now) with all this ideas and plans but it didn't look like it would never work out. Everything is expensive, I'm shy, self-doubt, blah blah blah, the list of excuses kept growing.

At some point I had a moment of clarity. Actually I got quite pissed off about things not going the right way and I set into motion. I had a word with Kasai-san who runs this tiny little bar about having a club event at this place called Booty nearby. Kasai was really excited and said let's do it.

At the time, booty was the classiest joint in Sapporo. Maybe even now, I haven't been there for a few years now (anybody need a bilingual skiing guide in Hokkaido? will work for food and tickets). The advertising was the coolest and some of the DJ's I saw there were really hot shit. So I was a bit nervous to contact them about something I felt was nothing yet. Anyway, off I went.

The proprietor, Sebastian guided me to the back room with all these club posters and the DJ equipment, beer cases and things. We agreed on a rent, the top floor lounge area was too pricey for me so we stuck with the basement floor disco. Cash advance. I walked out with a receipt. That was pretty much all there was. Into the promotion. It was bewildering, I'd just talked to this guy I didn't know at all (and who parties with all the nice chicks in Hokkaido), do I have to talk to more people I don't know now? Gasp.

club owners can be friendly too =)

Next goal was to get some art for the flyer. I wanted to approach Mr Kujiramori who's an established artist. We came to know each other via his restaurant (Talk about pervasive art man, he'd designed the lights, the sculptures, the tableware.. the works) where I spend many afternoons trying to communicate about photography with my then quite broken Japanese.

Talking to Kujiramori-san about doing an inexpensive illustration was no easy feat. The guy eminated sort of an Ernest Hemingway ouvre with his Canoes, freshly picked dead wild flowers and trips to Bimini. Sir, could you possibly design a party poster for us for next to nothing please?

'the sea is my teacher'

Kujiramori said he'd come up with something. And he did. He painted a curious image of an owl with some of his signature characters beating bongo drums. The title said 'PARTY'. It was the most awesome piece and also the furthest thing from a 'normal' club event poster.

The next thing was finding staff. I had never had anybody working for me ever. Who would like to join in with a broke-ass operation like this? Back to Kasai's bar that had become the unofficial event HQ (with opera singers). Kasai recommended this guy called Silver. We had a chat and silver was happy to join in. Now there was staff! Woo-hoo!

There were many twists and turns with the first event, trouble with printing, sponsors, advertising and so on. At one point I felt like just canceling the whole thing but I didn't. There was a date looming and people interested to have a good time. Pushed on.

And we did have a great event! Booty staff was super friendly, the DJ's were awesome and we actually got a nice crowd despite/because of the strange, strange, strange party flyer =)

Observe our sponsor logo, Timmion records!

The guys threw an afterparty as well (surprise!), a night to remember. Message I got was 'Now you've done something In sapporo. Keep doing more'. More work after just surviving that one!

Looking back at the thing now, I acted fully upon my intuition there. And it worked. In games business, you're presented with all kinds of ideas and suggestions about where to go with your game and your audience. It's easy to get distracted. Who's game are you making eventually? And the guy in the article said: Intuition, baby. I felt more resolved to follow mine.

Last night we had a fun bunch of guys at the camp. They're forming the first roleplaying group at camp Hastur starting tonight. I'm really happy about that. We also talked about having a mini-version of assembly here in northern Finland, one of the guys is very keen to set things in motion. In a way I saw him as the guy who I was all those years ago walking up the stairs of Booty.

When in doubt, do something!

Sami
Hastur

blog installation 2. Hoodownr in more detail

Hello again! First off, thank you for the continued interest in our game! We got a number of questions about the gameplay itself so we’d like to elaborate Hoodownr’s features in more detail.


your personal map

The basic objective of the game is to take over “hoods”. On the Hoodownr world map view, you can toggle between two different maps: your personal map and the global map. After elapsing some play time, your personal map could look a bit like this:

authentic unrefined footage from our alpha. TCA/TTH? whatta..?

The personal map shows where you have already been. You can track your individual area coverage and also plan your next run. Try and cover as much of your locality as possible! Your friends can even recommend places to visit and craft personalized adventures for you; all great opportunities to expand your area and discover more!

the global map

Once you’ve gotten a taste for personal discovery, why not have a spin on the global map? The global map shows hoods currently owned by you, your clan and other clans. The idea here is to expand your horizons by taking over uncharted territory, joining areas together and stealing other peoples hoods. Bigger hood wins!

Le map Globale. Your territory is green and the reds belong to someone else. 

More intense shades of hoods are difficult to takeover. Get rid of all of that enemy territory on the map!  It’s as simple as channeling collective power.  Here’s how.

Moving alone grants you a takeover power of “one”. Once you circle an unclaimed hood on the global map it becomes your hood (to the power of one). When somebody else conquers the hood that belongs to you (and you alone), the overlapping area becomes a vacant no man’s land. Please observe this on the animated GIF below.

two players competing

Going out there with a friend (or two) makes a lot of sense in Hoodownr. Your takeover power is determined by the number of people that are moving together. In the next image, we’ll show you two players: Taro and Kana. They’re going to be taking over Player Barry’s Power One stronghold.

Teamwork triumphs : Barry is humbled!

So the basic basic basic idea is to build and defend your hood. Joining a clan and playing the game together with a bunch of people just makes sense!

There are a few other surprises relating to the taking over and retaining of hoods… but more about that stuff later! =)

See you next time!

Hoodownr!

Here's a little number we tossed off recently into the Caribbean isles. I mean: here's the intro video for the game we've been working on for quite a few years now. Presenting to you all in glorious Jo-jo the dog-o-vision: Hoodownr.

So how does it work?

• To begin, start the app, login, and click play. Then simply put the phone back into your pocket and start walking. Go out into the wild and return to civilization again. And that's it!
• Form clans with your friends and claim areas together.
• Compete to capture areas with other players and clans.
• Create adventures and challenges for your friends. Like "Hey, bet you’re too scared to capture all the cemeteries in our home town!". Or "Here are three cryptic clues that lead you to some points of interest. It only counts if you take a picture of ‘em!"

Hoodownr is a game that encourages real-world social interactions

We feel that most games today don’t do enough to encourage people to interact in real life.

Our aim is to bring people together to plan,discover and play. Hoodownr is built in a way that incentivizes and rewards social behaviour by leaving your comfort zone. Get out there and find something new and exciting!

We also believe that people need tools to downshift and alleviate the stress that comes with all the digital noise and countless notifications. People need a way to tune out once in a while. With Hoodownr you are primarily interacting with real people in the real world. You  now have the opportunity to opt out from social media bombardment (at least for a while).

Hoodownr is a great tool for people who are not into counting calories. You are not running for the sake of running. You are moving to capture areas either with your friends or on your own. There are other exciting features unique to Hoodownr that we’ll reveal over the next few weeks. They will promote exploration, searching and add advanced social functions to the experience.

Hoodownr takes you away from your routines to make discoveries.  

THIS IS BIG NEWS

because we are pushing social gaming to the next level with Hoodownr. Our game is designed to take you away from your everyday experiences to put a unique spin on your familiar environment.

The game is scaleable from a series of basic hood-takeover battles, to live-action-roleplaying and psychogeography/deep topography experimentation on the other end. Whether you are a loitering teen skater, young urban drifter, commuting parent or a gnarly space cadet looking to tune in to your surroundings, our game gives you the freedom to do what you want. And our game is called Hoodownr.

Over the next few weeks we will publish frequent updates about the Hoodownr project. Please follow us on our blog and Facebook page at facebook.com/osuuskuntahastur. We’re also on Twitter under @camphastur.

WÄRK is my Fest!

Hello all, busy week behind! Last week we headed to Helsinki to attend WÄRKfest. After a day or two of coding and cat-keeping (R.I.P poor pussies), we jumped on a train towards souths to Helsinki that reminds me of a city when I'm really stretching my imagination.

We got invited thru SITRA after participating their Gesundheit-health game competition. Us runners-up (5 companies out of 120+) were invited to hone and improve our ideas and present them to the general public. We decided it's time for another alpha test version and grinded hard to put out a WÄRKfest build of Hoodownr.

We planned a special party-mission called 'Taking of Vallila 1-2-3' and created many things to enable the happening. Towards the end of the week we had a spanking new droid build with all the bells and whistles, had walked 50km in total when testing and preparing for the mission and had no trouble at all falling asleep at night of sheer exhaustion. Healthy!

On saturday we went to the venue, it was very different from Assembly where we got invited in august. Very DIY, hippie, anything-goes type of a situation where the main point I feel was of expression and creation rather than established brand names and the usual work-consume-obey tradeshow thing. I felt we were in the right place.

After some haggling we got a booth to present our wares and distribute alpha builds and to radiate the Osuuskunta Hastur spirit. No rainbow rugs this time but we did find a fluorescent magenta paintpen on the streets and rocked the informational signs in three languages. Situated between the t-shirt booth with a loud man and the BDSM-equipment-out-of-recycled-material booth with a considerably quieter man, we got a lot of attention and people willing to test the game.

On the serious (SITRA) leg of the event we presented our video and concept to an all developer audience. People were impressed with the video and asked contact information of Jo-Jo the Dog films to have them working on their own projects. Cross-promotion galore!

Then there was a workshop with all of the teams. Judging of the icy feeling of the presentation round, I wondered how will the workshop turn out as the 5 companies involved are in direct competition with each other. Will we just sit down silent and talk about the weather?

The workshop worked out just fine. Visitors of the event were invited to join different idea groups and everybody mixed and mingled, idea bubbles were drawn on huge sheets of paper and we got ideas about where to focus in the next coming months. Out of the information we managed to acquire at the workshop, it became apparent that most companies there did not have a clear focus on who to sell to and why would people would buy their product. I felt a bit like Jean-Louis Gassee in mid nineties, promoting hoodowner while everybody else is basically lost at sea or copying each others ideas. Whatever happened to JLG I wonder.

We got a good idea of our focus group. The thing with hoodownr is that it can be done in so many different ways and to so many different audiences. And with the help of our playtesters and everybody who came to our table, we nailed down our focus group. The idea thrown on the table is absolutely brilliant. More about that later.

We learned many things with the new alpha and the playtesting that took place and know our next goal. And we're going for a beta now. It's going to be sweet. The coding backbone is working on the thing as we speak. Hoodo project is kicking into the next level of grooviness, there'll be something really interesting happening at the end of the month.

The trip to Helsinki was great, we met a few friends and managed to talk about arranging visiting exhibitions to Camp Hastur, drink and even chill out a bit. The 13h drive from Hel back to Tornio in the middle of the night was a total killer so the beginning week went by in a haze of tiredness and skyping to England.

We were intervieved by a local newspaper about Camp Hastur yesterday and there's going to be another interview by a bigger paper next week. New people are joining the hoodo project and to Camp Hastur, the invisible numb leg of our co-op.

There's a lot of things to tell, promote and the thing but I'm going to save it for a bit later. Tech meeting tomorrow, gotta give those design docs a bit more LUV.

All the best
Sami
Hastur

Florentino setting up the booth

X marks the spot. Looks like a proper meeting eh?

Live painting at wärkfest

Some interesting iconography from Rosa Liksom