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Old 04-11-2012, 11:56 PM   #481
Nico Sels
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Belgium
Posts: 32
Default criticism on Wizarbox

I've seen some reoccuring messages criticising Wizarbox during the development of Gray Matter. And it appears some people are misinformed.


1) The long development time: Gray Matter was outsourced to an Eastern Europe company named Tonuzaba, they created the game engine and alot of artwork. During development it became clear that Tonuzaba was not up to the standards and pace of develloping of a Jane Jensen game. probably the reason why DTP pulled the game out of their hands and went to look for another develloper. The transition took almost a full year!

2) Wizarbox visual standards where so much higher than Tonuzaba, that they ended up redoing or restyling all of the artwork, animations, etc.. already done. This of course took some time.

3)The engine the game used was a difficult and very basic tool, giving Wizarbox a hard time to finetune. They had alot more ideas to improve it, but there was no possibility to change the engine or update it. they had to work with what Tonuzaba left them with.

4)the cutscenes: the visual style was chosen due to the fact that the budget had practically ran out. I think that knowing this fact, they still did a good job with the limited funding they had.

5)the lack of close-ups and facial expressions: again something betatesters and Jane fought real hard for, but there simple was no more time or budget to incorporate that. Also a result of the whole streched out development.

I think all in all Wizarbox delivered a very "pretty" game (Jane seems to agree, because it's visually her favourite), but it was left with some serious flaws they wish they could have changed..

Last edited by Nico Sels; 04-12-2012 at 12:15 AM.
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