KinouGames
About us and our work:
We're a small group of people who work remotely from different parts of the world. We like fantasy games of all kinds and do anime-based art-styles. Our projects are medium to long-term 2-D games, 8-12 months, and as we have at least one person on it full-time, and 3 others on it 20+ hours a week, we DO get things done. We do not do projects that we believe will take over 12 months to complete, and try to avoid very difficult projects (such as MMOs). We have one game currently finished and soon to release. We're here because we'd like to add people this time around based on where we felt we could have done better/moved faster during this first game's development. Our goal now is to increase the quality of our games while also decreasing the time it takes to make them, by learning as we do. We are go-getters. We do our work individually without needing to be reminded, make deadlines and work by those deadlines, and keep steady contact when we are unable to get something in on time.
Project name:
The first project you will work on is called Mitsumata, but ideally you will stay long-term, specifically to work for an RPG project that is coming next.
Brief description:
Mitsumata is a story-based game, and the second game that KinouGames will work on. The first is Papa Pirate, Baby Bandit, which will release June 30th at conventions and shortly after for online sales. Originally Mitsumata was planned to be more of a visual novel, but due to the fact that minigames, quests and riddles in addition to intense visuals sell much better, we'd like to expand the idea to be more like King's Quest/Sierra games. We have a basic GUI operation GDD written up, and the script is currently at about 13K words. We expect this particular game to release this Christmas, so your time would be needed until approximately October or November.
The game we want to attack afterward is an RPG. We aren't completely decided on whether to stick with 2-D, or attempt 3-D for that particular project.
Target aim:
Online sales; hard copy sales at conventions in Europe, the US, Canada and Japan. Our first convention starts this month, June 30th, in Paris, France.
Compensation:
Rev Share/Upfront pay for certain positions.
Technology:
We're adding to a custom Java GUI engine for Mitsumata, still undecided on the RPG as of now. We keep track of it through TortoiseSVN.
Talent needed:
Currently, we are searching for the following:
Assistant/Co-lead designer. You must have a second talent, such as coding/art/writing, since you will have to oversee others' work and make calls on quality. For this, we also want someone who has designed puzzles, riddles, and quests before. They should include word play, critical thinking, mathematical play, visuals, philosophy and "Aesop's Fables"-type ideology. It's a pretty hefty position, some experience with development is required. This also requires the most time.
[s]Graphic designer/web designer and coder/logo designer/[/s]UI designer. Ideally you can do a little of everything, but primarily we'd need you to work with pictures we provided to you to make a completed visual design from, or to provide sketches of ideas for the above so that we may create the assets you'll need for such. You should obviously have basic graphic design skills and know what "looks good" together. This requires much less time overall and involves only working on certain aspects of the project at certain times. For that reason, we are okay with negotiating upfront pay. (Graphic design filled as of 6/14/11.)
Line artist. Your only job is to take sketches and line them. You do not have to do any actual drawing or coloring.
Advertising manager. This position is straight-forward and simple. Your job is to write articles/updates in our blog, DA, and tumblr, search out sites for us to get our name onto, and find us general points of interest. It also involves keeping a coherent list of what you've done/what sites you've found or contacted/information you've procured.
"Final" artist/Quality control artist. This artist should have a great sense of color and anatomy as it works in finalized pieces. Their job is to, essentially, go over completed pieces and add bits, tweak bits, add "ambience" and the like to give our art a "finished" look. This is pretty specialized, it literally involves you coming in at the end to put work together and do tiny tweaks. This is also something we can pay upfront for.
Some other people/talents we could use:
Native (not fluent, we already have plenty of fluent people) Japanese speaker.
People who have low-intermediate knowledge of photoshop/putting GUI screens together.
Team structure:
We have a pretty full team:
A lead designer/artist
A lead programmer
An assistant programmer
Lead sketch artist
Two co-color artists
A music/sound guy
We outsource regularly for background art and UI art, so please feel free to inquire if you can match our character style. We pay upfront for outsourcing work.
Website:
http://kinougames.blogspot.com/
http://ougaming.deviantart.com/
http://kinougames.com/ (WIP)
Contacts:
kinougames at gmail dot com. We do require you have a messenger of some sort.
Previous Work by Team:
You can check our blog for bits and pieces of our soon to be released game.
Additional Info:
Ideally, we'd prefer people aged 22+ with samples of prior work. We are looking for wholehearted additions to our team who can properly provide their time to this project. If you have completed projects under your belt, we'd love to see them. Most of all, we want someone who understands what it takes to complete a long-term project, including actually cracking down the work, extensive communication, and sometimes just doing things you find boring to get to the parts that are interesting.
