The Ever Evolving ‘Gua-Le-Ni’

One of the first steps in creating a game is deciding what you’re going to make.

One of the first steps in creating a game is deciding what you’re going to make. Many developers think up of an idea and later end up scrapping it for something sexier until they once again get tired and move on to the next idea. But where does the initial inspiration come from? For developer Stefano Gualeni it came from inspiration on David Hume’s 1784 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, alongside etchings of animals by Albrech Durer and Leonardo Da Vinci. Combine those ideas and you get Gua-Le-Ni; or, The Horrendous Parade , a bizarre beautiful game whom he developed alongside Double Jungle and tuned the game with the support of medical technology using biometrics.

For those unfamiliar with Gua-Le-Ni , it’s a unique puzzle game for iPad that challenges players to identify and feed a strange series of paper beasts. These beasts are combinations of real animals such as a Tister (tiger and lobster) and Wartdor (warthog and condor). These beastly combinations will attempt to flee from the illustrations of an old bestiary . The player’s job is to twist, turn, and rearrange virtual toy-cubes to form the correct “name” of the animals. By getting the correct combination of cubes you will permanently catalog them preventing the animals from being lost forever. Some animals can be carnivores or herbivores and different food combinations will effect how long the beast will stay on a given page.

Gua-Le-Ni debuted back in December 2011 to great critical reception and currently sits at an 83% on Metacritic. Since then, Gua-Le-Ni has been updated with better tutorials, more body parts (including humans!), and a new game mode called Poetry. In Poetry mode you will focus on memory, creativity, and relaxation in comparison to the fast paced performances in the original game mode. Complete with classical music and the versus of an old sonnet, it’s enough to bring back old players of Gua-Le-Ni and more of a reason for new players to buy it at the discounted price of only $0.99, a huge drop from it’s original $4.99 listing.

Developers Double Jungle and Stefano Gualeni are now working on a new update that will include some minor adjustments/tuning as well as support for the beautiful iPad retina display. All these changes are expected to release this September.

For updates on Gua-Le-Ni be sure to like them on Facebook! Don’t forget to pick up Gua-Le-Ni in the App Storetoday!