News

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  Reflections on the City of Victoria Mural Mixer

  placeholder • 2023-05-19

  Hololabs VP of Software Development shares Hololabs' explorations in developing augmented reality murals at the City of Victoria’s Mural Mixer event, part of the inaugural Design Victoria festival.

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  Reflection on HoloLabs' 11th Anniversary

  Hololabs Studio • 2022-11-03

  We asked Mike Wozniewski, founder and president of Hololabs, for a bit of history, favorite moments, and some anecdotes from the past 11 years. Here are the highlights.

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  Creating Outside the Lines: An Interactive Mural

  placeholder • 2021-07-06

  Creating an AR mural for the We The West Basketball Festival.

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  Hololabs releases new detective game for kids

  Hololabs Studio • 2021-04-30

  Based on the best-selling books, The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency brings history, mystery and coding to mobile

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  Floor Kids Launches on Steam

  Hololabs Studio • 2018-05-15

  Hololabs is proud to launch Floor Kids on Steam on May 16, 2018.

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  Hololabs Launches VR/AR Meetup Group in Victoria

  Hololabs Studio • 2016-06-23

  There's no question that virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are rapidly growing industries. Given Hololabs' expertise in both and a lack of a formal organizations on Vancouver Island, we have decided to launch and maintain the VVAR Meetup Group for these topics. We plan to host events every month, with technical talks, demos, and social events for people interested in the industry.Here's a photo from our first meetup (held at SpaceStation on June 21st), where we held introductions and demoed several games on the HTC Vive and Oculus. We had about 25 people in attendance, ranging from developers with games already available on Steam, to investors, audio engineers, and enthusiasts eager to get into the industry.

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  Floor Kids Selected for Presentation at GDC

  Hololabs Studio • 2016-03-24

  Hololabs was in San Francisco for GDC from March 14-18, showing Floor Kids to a number of publishers and developers. But the highlight of the event was presenting the game at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop among a number of other super innovative projects. The game was selected from almost 200 submissions to present its unique gameplay, and received cheers from the crowd when the touch controls were demonstrated!A video of the full session can be found in the GDC Vault: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023585/Experimental-Gameplay

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  Hololabs Creates Inter-Studio Partnership with Merj Media

  Hololabs Studio • 2015-09-24

  Hololabs has partnered with three other amazing companies to create a new multi-disciplinary studio called MERJ Media. This initiative brings together experienced players from the fields of music, video games, animation, film, publishing, technology, live performance, management and production. Together, they embark on their first project - a touch-based breakdancing game called Floor Kids.The team is made of veterans from four different but complementary industries. Ryhna Thompson’s team at Envision Management and Production has been in the business, production and marketing management for almost 15 years. JonJon has been doing art and animation for over a decade, and Kid Koala has been producing innovative music and live shows for almost 20 years. Finally, the development team at Hololabs will be handling programming, implementation, and deployment for the studio.While the official partnership is new, many members of the team have been working together for years, forming a collaborative and synergetic relationship. Envision has worked alongside Kid Koala since the company was formed almost 15 years ago, directing his career and projects, providing management and production through a range of ventures including the release of recorded music, books, live musical and theatrical tours. Hololabs has collaborated with Kid Koala and Envision on prior projects as well, such as the outdoor installation called Phonophotopia produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 2014. JonJon and Kid Koala originally came up with the concept for Floor Kids back in 2007, when they collaborated on the original short film, and they have been discussing the brand ever since.

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  Hololabs Moves Head Office to Victoria, BC

  Hololabs Studio • 2015-08-30

  This summer Hololabs makes the move out west, re-locating its head office to Victoria BC. While projects will continue with Montreal, a new set of initiatives will launch in the Pacific Northwest.Victoria is a growing scene in the games industry, with an active IGDA chapter and organizations like VIATEC that support and promote technical innovation. We're excited to be closer to other creative tech communities on the west coast, including those in Vancouver, Seattle, and all the way down to California.We'll be opening a new studio in a coworking space called Spacestation, so if you're interested in visiting or have projects that you'd like to discuss, contact us.

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  Hololabs Wins Best Social Game for Papercade @ GameConnection 2015

  Hololabs Studio • 2015-03-02

  Papercade won a Development Award for the "Best Social Game" at GameConnection 2015 in San Francisco. Taking place at the same time as GDC, GameConnection is a parallel conference that brings together professionals in the video game industry to develop their businesses and products.Hololabs was nominated in three categories for their work on Papercade, which also included "Best Mobile/Tablet" and "Most Creative & Original Project". The full list of nominees is here: https://www.game-connection.com/development-awards.

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  Huge Papercade Update v1.8.0: New System to Customize Game Behaviours

  Hololabs Studio • 2015-02-26

  Hey there Papercaders!We just launched a great new update to Papercade, with a whole new way of customizing your game mechanics, creating animations, and adding some special effects. Here is a rundown for you:Custom Game MechanicsWhen creating your games, you now have access to the new property inspector that allows objects to have different rules, animations and effects.Start by tapping the gear icon that appears above any selected cutout, and choose a property type for the object. It can either be a collectible (meaning, it is added to the score counter), a hazard (the player loses the box if they tap it), or simply destroyable (disappears when tapped).Deeper in the properties, you can configure when objects appear in the scene. For example, you may choose to reveal an enemy after a delay of 10 seconds, or only once the player has collected something in the scene.New Win/Lose ConditionsOnce you start crafting with this updated version, you'll notice a new score counter and timer up at the top of your screen. These are both ways to set win and lose conditions to your diorama box and can certainly add a degree of challenge to your story.Tap the time button to open a slider that can be used to set the required time for completing your scene. Move the slider all the way to the left to turn it off, max it out at 60 seconds, or anything in between!The score box shows how many collectible items there are in the scene. You can use the property inspector mentioned above to set up collectible objects, and each one increases the required score for the scene, allowing for all sorts of skill-based games.AnimationsOn the second tab of the new property inspector, you can now add customizable animations for your cutouts. There are currently two versatile options: Patrol lets an object move back and forth along a certain axis; speed and range is customizable. Random moves the object to a new location either after a customizable amount of time, or whenever an object is collected in the scene.Visual EffectsCutouts can now also be assigned a visual effect to add flare to your storygame. Add anything from an explosion to a tornado - let your imagination run wild!New KitsAs a result of all these new features, we have replaced the existing creation kits with all new versions that show many variations and combinations of these new game behaviours. Click the create tab in the main menu and try them out!We can’t wait to see what you create with these new features! Remember to tweet us a screen capture, or share a video replay with us on Facebook, and let us know what you think.Happy scrapgaming, Team Hololabs