- New Game "Becoming Saint" Open For Wishlists - 18 July 2024
Choose your doctrine and preach across medieval Italy in this new real-time strategy roguelike. Gather your diverse cast of followers, venture out to convince and convert new believers, conquer towns, and strive to become a saint in your lifetime — or die trying. Add Becoming Saint to your wishlist here. Developed by Open Lab, published by Firesquid and coming in 2025.
- Creating Sports Games With Minimal Means - 2 February 2023
We published a video and a post with materials about “A Feasible Approach To Team Sports Games Development”. We present concept and tips for sports games game development, inspired by Roller Drama and previously football games / simulators' development. Here is the video: And here is the post with the supporting materials. Hope this is useful for some independent game developer!
- Our second game, Roller Drama is out now! - 26 January 2023
Our second game, Roller Drama is out now: again a visual novel / sport management mashup, this time with real-time matches and exploration quests. Check it out here. Roller Drama runs on Windows, Macs and Linux, and is great to play on the Steam Deck. It is localized in eight languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and simplified Chinese.
- A Better "HD" Version - 19 April 2021
This is the first major update after releasing Football Drama "HD". It features a major improvement: the readability of all texts that are now "sharper", in particular texts that are not black or white. Another nice new feature is the hints for the controller mapping: In the meantime, Football Drama has gone through Nintendo certification for the Nintendo Switch (coming out this week!), and this led to fixing several minor bugs: Several fixes to localization (German, Russian, Chinese). More robust to random tapping. You also will find more variety in press meetings. Remember the new auto speed up option in settings! P.S. Also with 40% discount until the 5th of May!
- Football Drama “HD” — Major Update Released! - 22 December 2020
You can now update Football Drama and get a full-featured version built for desktops: This is a big update for desktop users, as with this the entire application layouts have been redesigned to use the whole landscape mode space. We hope you’ll appreciate the new layouts! Moreover, you can play with a controller (or even keyboard): This release also includes several feature updates. One nice new feature that we found can improve a lot the gameplay experience for some players is the “sped up mode”, available in Settings, that speeds up the matches gameplay so that the flow from deciding between a cautious and a risky move is quicker. This option also removes the enter fields animations and the replays after the first championship week. We have a new “night mode” - some matches are played in the evenings. We also introduced some post-processing for the graphics of the whole application, a…
- Some Good Reasons To Buy Football Drama Now - 20 November 2020
Football Drama currently is in a “weeklong deal” on Steam (60% discount, which is the highest you’ll ever get), and soon there will be 2020’s Steam Autumn and Winter sales. Plus Itch.io’s “black friday”. It’s probably not a bad idea to get it now discounted because of three coming updates: A feature update (December 2020) The “HD” version for Steam and desktops in general (we hope also December 2020) The content expansion update (first quarter 2021), together with Japanese language version and Nintendo Switch release. Feature update One nice new feature that we found can improve a lot the gameplay experience for some players is the “sped up mode”, available in Settings, that speeds up the matches gameplay so that the flow from deciding between a cautious and a risky move is quicker. This option also removes the enter fields animations and the replays. We have a new “night mode” - some m…
- Sale for Steam Summer Sale - Football Drama Is A Classic! - 25 June 2020
Football Drama now has a 60% discount! And its also a classic, find it in this wonderful collection of indie game's characters by Barracudaegg: You probably should use the full sized image, here.
- Our new game, Roller Drama, first playable at the Steam Summer Festival - 25 May 2020
Roller Drama is our follow-up game to Football Drama. Roller Drama is "a strategy and interactive narrative sport game on Roller Derby, a roller-skating full-contact sport. Live coach during matches (real-time gameplay), and help the troublesome five young women meet life challenges through an interactive narrative." (from our Steam store page). We will publish a free "playable introduction" version of Roller Drama for Steam's Summer Festival, June 9-14 2020. Add Roller Drama to your wishlist here, thank you!!!
- Winter (Sale) Is Coming: Three Months Of (Football) Drama And The Future - 19 December 2019
We recap three months of sales and preview Football Drama expansions: "HD" version, Switch porting, expanded narrative, Japanese localization. We released Football Drama on September 18, releasing on Steam and mobile. We sold over 6000 units up to now, we have a constant stream of sales, and we got some very nice press ːsteamhappyː We are happy to put it in this Winter Sale, and on the 23rd of December we will also publish a free demo of the mobile version on iOS (full iOS version here). Here is one of our favourite interviews, at Indiecade Europe this year: and here are links to two nice reviews, at Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun. In Italian we have even been featured on several paper magazines! Where are we going? We are developing an "HD" version that will serve several purposes: (1) will be released on Switch, (2) will be an update of the Steam/desktop version and (3) we hope to incl…
- Match Card Analysis, Shameless Pundits, Slo-mo Replays... - 22 November 2019
This update is "major" because we improved several aspects of the game also in consequence of the feedback received. The main updates are: After every training and for each successful card played, you get detailed feedback about your team's state compared with your current opponent. This is something several players requested. This reveals a lot of background, so we tried to make it so that it does not "break the magic" of how matches go. We introduced more variations in the narrative (e.g. press meetings), with more integration between matches and Rocco's life, and removed some end of match loops ("handshakegate") after the first championship weeks. Other improvements: Action replays improved a lot; moreover, you can close replays way sooner just by tapping on them. Improved the AI on some match actions. Minor font size issues in non-English versions. Specifically for the mobile versio…
- In Depth Football Drama Making-of Post On Gamasutra - 11 November 2019
We published an in depth Football Drama making-of Post on Gamasutra: "Changing Videogame’s Sport Storytelling", here is the abstract: "Sports in videogames are represented either through simulators or as management games. In what follows I explore an alternative "anthropological" path using narrative and strategy to represent football's universe and its paradoxical epic." The post also includes a link to a Football Drama's playable prototype.
- Football Drama On Steam's Halloween Sale - 28 October 2019
Football Drama is available now with a 30% discount for Steam's Halloween Sale. Football Drama is also available for your phone and tablets on App Store (iOS), and on Google Play (Android) .
- Attack Actions Slo-mo Replay - 25 October 2019
In this Football Drama update, we added to Football Drama's attack actions a "slo-mo replay" feature, played at their end. We think its quite cool :-) Also fixed a bug on the home launch buttons if clicked furiously. Notice that both for the replay, end of action, and also when you are playing the two-choices turns in the field, if you click or tap in the middle of the screen, the action will end or speed up depending on context (yes it works also on mobile), and this can change the game-feel considerably if you like faster matches.
- Football Drama "HD" update in development (Steam / Switch) - 17 October 2019
Since we got the "ok" for Football Drama's Switch version, we will create a special version of Football Drama for HD resolutions. This will be both an update of the Steam version and the version released on the Switch. We may also add a Japanese translation in the occasion. \\o/
- Football Drama Featured Worldwide On App Store - 4 October 2019
This is just to celebrate the fact that Football Drama has been featured worldwide in various sections of the App Store worldwide in the last week. You can get Football Drama mobile on the App Store and in Google Play (Android). Being our first game and also our first featuring, we are so happy to see people really everywhere in the world playing our weird game. \o/
- Every Achievement Has A Story - 1 October 2019
We created a site giving in-depth information about every achievement, making-of style, linked from the game. We were not happy about the amount of feedback one got by winning an achievement, i.e. a label and an image. So! We created a site where for each achievement there is an "in-depth" page that gives you context for it. The page is this: https://www.open-lab.com/achievements/footballDrama/ but to see the stuff you need to unlock the achievements. You can access it with all your achievement pages unlocked by clicking on the achievement banner from Football Drama. Actually, there was also a bug on an update we did after the first release so you weren't seeing achievements at all :P (it's fixed). But now you get them and also the candy on top \o/
- Unknown Pleasures: The only game in the office - 27 September 2019
The office is eerily empty tonight, as RPS has vanquished another foe, and been locked out in turn by my guerrilla forces. I am alone in the building. There is only me, Candide the rainbow llama , and the endless invisible stream of code I must consume to sustain my terrible power. It is time, my friends, for Unknown Pleasures , our regular delivery of the best lesser-known games on Steam, direct to your eyeballs, or possibly your earcubes. Installing malware on every PC I find left on overnight this week: island escapes, imperial collapses, and forbidden studies. (more…)
- Have a productive weekend: Football Drama culture test! - 27 September 2019
This weekend don't waste your time with your family and friends, or learning something useful; focus on useless football notions, and take our test! So you see this table here: (Here you find the image full size.) These are the teams, managers, supporters and towns you find in Football Drama. Now, none of these officially refers to anything real. But to your overexcited mind, what teams, managers stadiums and supporters are we mocking? To be even more sure that you didn't miss anything and that the whole thing takes an absurd amount of wasted time, we assigned little numbers to the cells, even to the empty ones! Also this way we may actually make it deciphering your answers. Send us your answers to [email protected] by Monday morning 10 CET (September 30th) and to the one who gets most of them right... I mean that we "like", we'll send a free code for either Steam, Android or iOS, as t…
- Football Drama's First Week Of Life - 26 September 2019
Football Drama's is one week old! Its been a dense week, with more than 2000 units sold, more than 2000 wishlist additions (stingy populace :D) and a number of press and streamers reviews that is pretty amazing. The game is here https://www.open-lab.com/games/footballdrama for mobile, PC and Mac. In this thread some of the reviews. (Also thanks to all the friends and contacts that sent me congratulation messages, seems you are all enjoying the game.) On @Kotaku by @rcmacleod https://kotaku.com/soccer-management-sim-is-surprisingly-artsy-1838142795 On @pcgamer by @FraserIBrown https://www.pcgamer.com/football-drama-is-a-story-driven-football-manager/ On @rockpapershot By @withoutaplain https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/09/19/football-drama-is-a-management-game-with-personality/ On @thedigitalfix by @Bravo2Zero0 https://www.thedigitalfix.com/gaming/content/21612/football-drama/ On @ga…
- First Football Drama Update: Speed Up! - 23 September 2019
So we just went live with our first Football Drama update. We are sorry for the two bugs, they would not have occurred if we had a cross platform cross language testing team, but being two guys that try to do everything (marketing and support too) we do what we can. So THANKS for the users who reported them in detail so we could fix them. Football Drama is also doing very well on mobile, on App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android), thanks for that too. These are the improvements/changes/fixes: We added a tutorial step in the second half to tell about the "tap or click in the field centre" just after you made a choice in the match that speeds up the whole thing. For players that like faster matches, it changes the whole feeling of the game. We removed the (sometimes repetitive) meeting with the president when nothing crucial is happening (i.e. he is not furious, you are not fired, you d…
