Leximan News

It's been a little while, hasn't it? We've been very busy, I promise!

We've been away these last couple of weeks attending to extremely important business. And by that, I mean traipsing off to the distant lands of Germany to give journalists a sneak preview of Leximan!

But it's not all work and no play. Our trip was quite an adventure, and one we thought you might be interested in reading about.

Once again, I'm Max, the programmer behind the magic, and I'm going to tell you a tale of undersea trains, exotic delicacies, and giant robots.




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As a team of three buffoons, we are incomplete without everyone here... So we convened the day before for a night of...

...Tabletop! Our studio got its start playing D&D, so it was only right that we played a quick one-shot. This time, Chris printed and painted a bunch of miniatures for a brief adventure in our homebrewed, over-the-top, anime-inspired sci-fi setting, Zenithal! We explored a derelict space station in search of a mysterious, magical artefact - but it turned out that we weren't the only ones after it! (More on that in another post...?)


...And ramen! I couldn't go without mentioning the absolute feast that Jake cooked up from scratch that night. Broiled pork belly and egg noodles in a tangy chicken-soy broth, served with Korean-style fried chicken and a whole array of toppings! It was enough to make CHEF himself proud...

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Travelling on trains in the UK is always an adventure, for better or worse. Even more so when you take one that travels at 200mph right under the Atlantic Ocean! We crossed three different borders, passing from the UK into France, then into Belgium and finally Germany.
We met with our lovely publishers in London, who thankfully guided us through the enigmatic twists and turns of the travel system.


A brief stop in Brussels lead us to seeking out an authentic Belgian waffle. We were not disappointed! Though, the guy did laugh at me for ordering fries with it... :')


Before we knew it, we had arrived in...! ...Köln, Germany! (We call it Cologne in English, I'm not sure why!) Having never been to Germany before, we were really interested to see what it was like. Having taken it upon myself to try lots of German food before I left, I was more than happy to spot an abundance of places selling currywurst and pretzels right around the station!

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The next day, up bright and early, we finally found ourselves at the event itself. This was... Gamescom! Not only was it our first time in Germany, but it was our first time at a convention this big. The scale really blew us away! Thousands upon thousands of people, and so many games it'd take weeks to play them all!

We took some time to explore, checking out as many booths, games, and merch vendors as we could!

I couldn't stop myself from buying a Gunpla set... I'd always wondered what it was like to build one! (I bought one for Jake too so we could build them together when we got home.) I hope you appreciate my taste in giant robots :>


We met a whole load of awesome devs walking around and talking to people at Gamescom, including one of the Dwarf Fortress brothers, and one of the Lisa: Complete Edition devs! We really hit it off with another Marvelous dev called Shawn from BattleBrew Productions. When we heard he was working on a cooking-based roguelite we knew we had to drop by!


We ended up hanging out with Shawn a whole lot over the course of Gamescom. His game, Cuisineer, really is something special! Give it a shot if you like that sort of thing... As someone that can't get enough of over-the-top delicious-looking food in games, well-... Let's just say, maybe don't check it out if you're hungry late at night.


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All of this might sound like a big ol' holiday so far, but actually we spent most of our time in the super-secret business zone at Gamescom. You needed a special pass to get in, and it's where everyone in the industry goes for meetings and presentations and all that jazz.

The media lounge here was our home camp throughout. It's a good thing that our publisher, Marvelous, sorted this out for us... Because they served free food and drinks all the way through!

We couldn't go without leaving behind a little bit of Leximan ourselves, though...

Back in our own little nook of the business zone, we would give interviews and demos of Leximan to all of the journalists that wanted to come and hear about it. I was pretty intimidated when I heard we had to do all of this! As it turned out, though, it was all very relaxed and everyone was very nice and was just happy to see the game.
Here's Chris with Alex Hopley from GameReactor, giving him the rundown while he plays a new, secret, unreleased portion of the game... 🤫 He ended up having a whole lot of good things to say about Leximan!

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And that's about that! Gamescom was loud, busy, exhausting, amazing, awesome and wholesome all in equal parts. By the end of it I was left with a strange feeling... I was glad I could go home, but at the same time I'm super excited for the next one!

Jake and I built our Gundams when we got home... And it was just as awesome as I'd hoped it was! I sense impending doom for our wallets...

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And that wraps up our trip to Gamescom 2023!

I hope you enjoyed reading about the misadventures of the wizards that make Leximan. If you liked it, I'll try and write more! Make sure to drop a comment below (I read all of them!)

Until next time!
- Programancer Max ✨




https://store.steampowered.com/app/2017200/Leximan/

A few of you were sad that you wouldn't get a chance to play the demo - a week just isn't enough!

So we've decided to extend the demo all the way through to the end of Steam NextFest on June 26th!

Hopefully that gives you all just that little bit longer to soak in the stupidity of Leximan and co. :)

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In addition...


We all just want to say thank you for how amazing you've all been since our announcement with our incredible publisher Marvelous over the last couple of weeks!

We were looking forward to welcoming dozens of new wishlisters over the weekend... We didn't expect THOUSANDS!?

Thank you. Seriously. ♥


Until next time!
- Programancer Max ✨




https://store.steampowered.com/app/2017200/Leximan/

Hi aspiring leximancers,

You can now download the Super Alpha Demo! (It's like a normal game demo, but you can only get it for a very limited time)



We wanted to give you a very early look at how some of the puzzles and minigames are shaping up in Leximan and what better way of doing that then letting you test them out yourselves?

You've got one week to download and play the demo and we can't wait to see your epic spells so if you're planning to stream it please let us know @borria on Twitter, we'd love to tune in!

Before you run to download the demo, we must give you a little disclaimer because our lawyer (who may or may not be a large trout) insists we admit that not everything in the demo is final and some stuff might change before the game's release. You may also run into some ducks bugs or glitches as it's the first time Leximan has been out in the wild but have no fear, by the time we launch in 2024 they will be zapped out of existence.

Quick, last thing - did you see us on the Guerilla Showcase today? We showed off a new trailer! Don't worry if you missed it, we have a handy little YouTube link for you below:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Don't forget to wishlist and follow us for more updates.

We'll be back in a spell!
- Marvelous Resident boss witch, Daniela

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2017200/Leximan/

Welcome to our first Behind the Scenes of Leximan! A tiny round of applause, please.

Thank you.

I'm Max, the programmer behind the magic, and I'm going to show you a little sneak peek at what's going on behind the screen and inside that mystical little box you call a 'com-pu-ter'.




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When it comes to games, there's a little thing we call 'game feel', or 'game juice', or just 'juice' for short. It's the satisfying 'snap' when you drag and drop. It's the crunchy, clicky 'click' when you press a button. It's the gratifying 'bleep-bloop' when you score a point.

It's the things that stimulate your senses and get you feeling something when you do something on your computer and it shoots an effect back at you. When it comes to games, there's nothing worse than a static, unmoving screen - you may as well be staring at a spreadsheet!

He-heh... 'Squaag'...

You may not conciously notice it all the time, but when it's not there you sure do. Something will feel 'off'. Think about those janky, crusty games you sometimes play on the internet. They feel 'empty', right?

Now 'juice' normally translates to the game giving solid, heavy feedback to your direct actions, like that clicking a button example. But other times, it's just about seeing things happening. Things that help you to understand, and make you feel something.

...And with that said, let's talk about the juice of Leximan's dialogue.

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[h2]ANIMTEXT[/h2]

Leximan is a game about words. You make words to cast your spells. You read a lot of words. Words are everywhere. Remember what I said about game juice? We spend a lot of time with those words, so we want them looking and feeling as good as possible.

So, I put together our super ultra special Animated Text system, or what I call Animtext!



For you game dev fellas out there... [expand]We use Unity, and plugging into the TextMesh Pro system is REALLY handy for messing with those text meshes, believe it or not. If you put the time and work in, you can get some really incredible results.

Get your custom markup solution going for animations, and use their built-in rich-text formatting to do the rest (bold, italics, solid colors, align, text-size etc.)![/expand]...But that's all boring stuff. Let's talk about the shiny bits!

We've made a whole bunch of crazy animations that we can throw on any word in the game. We can make 'em shake violently, float up and down, jiggle around, grow and shrink, teeter from side to side, stretch and warp, and all sorts!

The way we actually throw it into the game is surprisingly simple!

Each of those crazy animations has a special linked to it. Let's take for example. Everything between and will wobble and pulse like, um... Well, like this!



Pretty neat, huh?

Let's take a look at another example.



All of that dialogue looks a little something like this behind the scenes:

"GRRRASTY WIZARDS! GONNA EAT YOU.\r\nWAH-AH-AH..."

"I don't know if brewing our way out of this one w-will do much, but we have to try something!"

A puff of flame breaks apart your word fragments into single letters!

"Oh, froglegs! I don't have any water left to put out flames! See if you can come up with a distraction while I gather some ingredients!"

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And there you have it! Leximan's Animtext, behind the curtain.

If any of you found this interesting, make sure to drop a cheeky comment below and I'll make sure to spot you some more top-secret information (don't tell the other guys...)

Until next time!
- Programancer Max ✨




https://store.steampowered.com/app/2017200/Leximan/