A few months ago, we started work on a new action/puzzle game for the iPhone and iPad.

The main character in the game is Bruno Anaconda, a goofy and extremely over-confident explorer on a secret mission in a slightly twisted version of the Amazonian jungle.

We are currently testing a few new game mechanics and playing around with the artwork a bit. The main focus is on Bruno himself – we want a combination of goofiness and macho appeal, as well as a character that people can relate to and remember.

As this is an internal project with (currently) no deadline, we are using some of our spare time to work on it. We are aiming to get a working demo out there soon.

In spring, we were asked to develop a Facebook game prototype to help promote Ancestry.com’s new site Mundia.

Like Ancestry.com, Mundia is a site where you can build your family tree and research your family history. Our challenge was to come up with a game design that would be fun and engaging and at the same time incorporate the family tree metaphor.

Our client was looking for a Farmville-style mechanic with virtual goods, so we built a game where you can tend to your crops in the garden and decorate while growing your family tree by adding family members.

When the family tree reaches a certain level, you build a tree house. At this point, most of the gameplay moves into the tree house – using your family members and energy points, you play games and cook dishes, which gives you experience and energy points.

Using the energy points, you can look under mushrooms growing outside in the garden. Mushrooms usually hide cash, fruit or items that you can use to complete collections.

We had to complete the working prototype in two months, which included designing the gameplay, building the engine, the backend, producing the art (with all the decoration items and character customization, we ended up with a LOT of assets), sound effects, music and testing and balancing it before launch.

In the end, we had a pretty successful launch and crunched a lot of numbers to tweak the final design. Some players reached impressive levels and we saw a lot of nice decorated tree houses.

We are going to be in San Francisco from March 7-15 for the Game Developers Conference 2010 and the Flash Gaming Summit.

We will be reconnecting with friends and looking for new opportunities.

If you are in San Francisco next week and interested in discussing casual & social game development, design and marketing or potential projects, contact us.

Direct contact details:

• Tadej Gregorcic (CTO / Creative Director) – twitter.com/tadej, blog: tadej.eu
• Jernej Kocjancic (CEO) – twitter.com/jerrnej
• E-mail: tadej@motiviti.com

See you next week!

We are giving a presentation on building casual and social games with Unity this Friday at the ITShowOff conference in Zagreb.

You can preview the slides below.

For people interested in Unity development, here are a few links to help you get started.

• Download Unity (free)
• Official Unity.com Tutorials
• Amir’s shader programming course
• Unity Forum

Motiviti is hiring!

If you have experience with Unity and/or Flash and are interested in landing a cool part-time game development job or just looking to publish your games, let us know! We are also interested in great web developers. Everyone is a potential full-time hire .

We are skipping the usual greeting card this year and would instead like to invite you to play our 3-minute holiday game.

Play the game online (requires Unity) or download the full resolution version for free!

There is a special offer hidden in the game for you if you collect 5 presents in the online version .