Hololabs Blog

2014 has been an incredible year for us here at Hololabs, and we have you - our friends, family, and supporters - to thank for it!

Lots happened this year, including some good funding news from the CMF, the launch of Phonophotopia, and of course, the worldwide launch of Papercade.

There's lots more in the hopper, and we can't wait to share 2015 with you.

On December 4th, 2014 Hololabs will be joining nine other Montreal-based indie developers to showcase our games in the Quebec Government’s Rockefeller Center office.

We will be there with Papercade, and Astrid will be moderating a panel discussion on the games industry in Montreal.

This event is organized by Rogue Counsel, with support from Alliance Numerique and the Quebec Government Office in New York.

It's that time of the year again!

MIGS 2014 is just around the corner, and Hololabs will be there in full force. We will be showcasing the latest version of Papercade in the new Demo Zone, and Astrid will be speaking about the Canada Media Fund.

If you're coming to town and are interested in meeting please do send us an email, or get in touch on LinkedIn.

Hello Papercaders!

A new update to Papercade is now live on the App Store: recording and sharing videos directly from the game. Videos, like this one, or this one, can be made while playing any of the mini-games in the Play tab or even while crafting your own. There are two types of videos that you can record, which are outlined below.

Basic Video Recording At the end of any Papercade you will see a new button (under replay and like) that says Share Replay Video. Tap that button and you will instantly be able to share your gameplay with friends on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or by email.

Recording Live Commentary Before beginning any Papercade - where you see the game information if you're playing, or the kit information before crafting - you will notice a new set of buttons at the bottom of the card (under the play / start craftingbutton). These are to enable audio recording or even a picture-in-picture video recording to accompany the gameplay.

Advanced Features In the share window there are a couple other options available to make your Papercade video more personal. One is to add your own message and hashtags to encourage friends to watch your masterpiece. The other is to preview and edit the video by tapping the video thumbnail.

That's it! Remember to share your videos with us and the Papercade community on Facebook and Twitter.

The evening of October 16, 2014 we will be presenting Papercade at the October edition of the MRGS Craft Meetup. Held monthly, these meetups focus on the craft and experience of designing games.

Throughout Papercade's development we have often sought feedback from local game developers and enthusiasts. Our presentation on Thursday will be a discussion on the evolution of Papercade as a result of this feedback and - now that Papercade is live on the App Store - what type of improvements can be made to create a better in-game experience for our budding creative community.

Mobile app lets players transform photos into games and broadcast interactive, 3D stories to the world

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MONTREAL – October 9, 2014 – Independent game developer Hololabs today announced the launch of its mini-game maker, the mobile app Papercade.

Papercade debuts in the spotlight, headlining as an Official Digital Selection at this year’s international game festival IndieCade, October 9-12 in LA. Designed for all ages, free and easy to use, Papercade delivers a new experience to the growing worldwide audience making and sharing games today. Players can create “storygames” from funny to fantastical, from personal to political—and everything in between.

“We were inspired by the miniature worlds and dioramas that we built inside shoe boxes when we were kids,” said Hololabs Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer, Paul Warne. “Papercade brings back this simple joy of crafting and sharing stories from things we make ourselves.”

Charming sets and a vintage feel form the backdrop for Papercade, where players can place their own heroes, villains and props into the mix. Papercade provides a range of tools and actions to make original storygames and share them with friends. Players can easily customize characters from images of family, friends and pets, placing these cutouts into 3D scrapbook environments. “In designing Papercade, we challenged ourselves to develop a mobile game that brings together the hands-on and nostalgic elements of today’s maker movements with the world’s insatiable appetite for taking and sharing photos,” said Hololabs Co-founder and CTO, Mike Wozniewski. Papercade is available now on the App Store for iPad. Click HERE to download.

Watch the Papercade trailer HERE. About Hololabs Studio Inc.

Hololabs is an award-winning production studio founded by industry veterans Paul Warne and Mike Wozniewski with the aim of developing new technologies to better serve creativity and play. The studio's latest title Papercade, a mobile app for creating and sharing storygames, was financed in part through the generous support of the Canada Media Fund.

Links:

Download Papercade Papercade Website and Trailer Media Kit Facebook Twitter Hololabs Corporate Website

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We are delighted to announce that Papercade is now available for iPad in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. So hit that download button and join in on the scrapgaming fun!

Need a refresher? Papercade is an iPad game for playing, crafting, and sharing mini-game dioramas. You can use Papercade to:

Play storygames made by fellow community members from around the world

Create custom characters by importing your own photographs into your dioramas

Personalize each mini-game with backdrops, music, paper cutouts, speech bubbles, and more

Share your creations with friends and the community

It's been a long time coming for us to get Papercade up into the App Store, and we are really looking forward to seeing what you make!

Of course, this is just the beginning, and we will be working on adding lots more features to the game as the community grows. You can help shape the creative community - and the game itself - by letting us know on Facebook and Twitter what you would like to see, or like to see changed, in Papercade.

Happy crafting!

Hey there everyone,

Get ready to say hello to scrapgaming! All of us here at Hololabs are excited to announce that we have officially launched our first public version of Papercade- and it’s free right now in the Australian and New Zealand App Stores.

Need a refresher? Papercade is a free game for iPad where you assemble playable dioramas from paper cutouts. You can customize the characters by using your own photographs, and make original cutouts with colourful digital paper. You can also personalize your dioramas with backdrops, music, and themed cutouts that come with the game.

Papercade is a free-to-play game where you can:

Craft paper cutouts using your own photos or digital paper

Use themed cutouts, backdrops, and music already in the game

Assemble stories using playable kits

Link kits together using Multibox Mode

Publish your stories for others to play

Play Papercades from around the world

Fun stuff.

So get crafting! Be the first person in the world to make an interactive rugby diorama or play mini-games made by your friends.

Remember to share your screenshots with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Stay crafty, Team Papercade

We are excited to announce that Papercade is an Official Selection at IndieCade, the International Festival of Independent Games.

IndieCade's mission is to support and promote independent game development around the world, and we are honoured to be included in this year's impressive lineup.

If you will also be attending IndieCade, taking place October 9-12 in Culver City, CA, please come by and scrapgame with us! We would love to meet you.

Going to Unite 2014? Us too! Let's meet up.

As you may know, we have been developing a number of projects using Unity 3D, including our interactive music making homage to Norman McLaren, Phonophotopia, and our soon-to-be-released diorama creation game Papercade.

Because we are on a never ending quest to keep learning here at Hololabs, Co-Founder and CTO Mike Wozniewski will be at Unite this year. If you will also be in Seattle we would love to hear from you.

You can email us any time or drop us a line over on LinkedIn.

Coming up this Monday (July 14) Mike will be at Critical Hit to chat about all things Papercade. He will also bring along a few iPads with the playable alpha for participants to try out!

For those of you wondering what on Earth we're talking about, Critical Hit is a fantastic program here in Montreal that is dedicated to 'catalyse the development of experimental games.' Each year they focus on a different type of game design, with this year's theme being 'game jams.'

At Critical Hit 2014, participants game jam in one week intervals, pick their favourites, and then continue developing those selected into polished experimental games.

As we work on getting Papercade ready to launch we have also been inspired by game jams. The amazing creativity and expression that come as a result of the structure and atmosphere of game jams are what inspired us to create the PaperJAM Challenges currently featured in Papercade.

We are excited to announce that we are pulling back the Papercade curtain, so to speak, for a handful of people. These lucky few get to test out the game and give us feedback about what they like / dislike / would like to see in the future.

This is a very important stage for Papercade as we work towards making the best game we can.

If you need a refresher: Papercade is a social storytelling and game creation app where players are invited to create and share story games in virtual diorama boxes using photographs and paper cutouts.

A newer feature we are working on are PaperJAMS. These are weekly creative challenges that give community members specific tasks to create a story game following a common theme.

We have been working on Papercade for quite some time now (we're coming up on a year of development later this summer!) and it is a thrill for us to finally share the game with enthusiastic new players.

If you are interested in joining this great community of testers send over an email. You can also sign up for updates on the website, like the game on Facebook, or follow along on Twitter and Pinterest.

We are currently expanding our team in order to complete two upcoming F2P titles for mobile platforms. Candidates should have an interest in social, casual and mobile games. However, we are a small "indie" studio and ultimately seek passionate and motivated new team members that will grow with the studio and help to create amazing new products in the future. Feel free to come with your own ideas and help steer this studio towards success.

Required skills:

Highly organized, self-motivated, with strong problem solving, troubleshooting, and analytical skills;

Intimate knowledge of Unity3D;

Highly competent in C#: should understand coroutines, events, delegates, singletons, etc.;

Experience in game programming concepts: 3D math, colliders, physics, character controllers, GUI, cameras;

Experience with some popular Unity3D packages: NGUI, Playmaker, FingerGestures, AStar (path planning), Vectrosity;

Can self-manage, work in an agile environment (e.g., SCRUM), and track progress;

Familiarity with version control (Git).

Other nice-to-have skills:

Design experience (e.g., Photoshop, 3DSMax, Maya, etc.);

Experience writing shaders;

Animation (Mecanim, animation controllers, rigging and retargeting);

Experience developing cloud-based applications, working with web APIs, networking, parsing JSON, data persistence, and database/CMS interaction;

Knowledge of web application programming (HTML5, responsive UI, AngularJS, Bootstrap, Javascript, jQuery, etc.);

Mobile app development (iOS/Android): XCode, C++, NDK, Obj-C;

Bilingual (English/French).

Location:

Montreal, Canada

Looking for full-time candidates who can work on site

Remote working is NOT possible for this position

Compensation:

Salary according to experience

Revenue sharing and equity compensation also available

Phew! March and April sure were busy months on the 'out and about' front for Hololabs. In March we went to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and were selected to represent Canada in the Canada @ GDC Canadian Video Game Showcase. It was fantastic, and we very much appreciate all the support we had from Telefilm Canada while we were down at GDC.

As a result of we saw some great press opportunities including write-ups in:

the Métro Journal,

Post Arcade in the Financial Post, and

Indie Statik.

A few weeks later, in April, we had our very own booth at PAX East to show off our first playable version of Papercade. It was incredible seeing so many different people using Papercade and loving it! We had a blast and were even included in Applied Gaming and Gamerwife's PAX East recap posts!

Hololabs Co-Founder & CTO Mike Wozniewski will be speaking on a panel at the International Symposium on Immersive Creativity taking place from May 21 to 25, 2014 at the SAT here in Montreal.

Mike will be participating on a panel on the theme of tools and workflow with fellow panelists Greg Hermanovic, Anton Marini, Xavier Buffoni, Quentin Bleton, and Barry Threw. The panel will be moderated by Miller Puckette of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts.

Photo Credit: National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

In honour of innovative film maker Norman McLaren the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has commissioned seven artists to create projection installations around Montreal.

We are excited to announce that in collaboration with recording artist Kid Koala we have an interactive installation at Place des Arts in downtown Montreal entitled Phonophotopia.

Inspired by Norman McLaren's film "Dots," anyone can place ‘dots’ (coloured blocks) on a film strip conveyor belt and watch as they come to life as they are projected onto Théâtre Maisonneuve at Place des Arts.