About
Genio is a videogame where you can play the strategy game of the Renaissance expanding towns with art, ideas, inventions. It will be a card based real time strategy videogame that anybody can play. Be part of our research by pledging this project, giving us feedback and getting 3D blueprints and Leonardo’s original toys.
Renaissance Italy was a melting pot of ideas, inventions and extraordinary artistic intuitions. In Genio you experience this universe of ideas in a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game.
Supported platforms: Win, Mac, Linux, iOS (iPad), Android tablets.
Note: the game play examples you see in the video are not from Unity (yet): they are animations of the 3D assets.
You’ll browse through the ever growing Book of Inventions, play the builder cards from your deck and send your teams for missions in towns. Keep the Renaissance splendor burning by expanding your power and prestige.
Your teams will parade through towns, be cheered or jeered, and then build what you planned, creating palaces, gardens, armies, monuments.
You can conquer towns, expand knowledge and open new architectural perspectives revolutionizing knowledge, engineering, art, politics, war according to the new ideas of Brunelleschi, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, changing the world forever.
Here is a video where we explain how to play Genio - not resisting the temptation of talking also about art, history and science, as usual :)
Joining playful with historic research, one component of this project is the creation of Leonardo’s toys. In analyzing Leonardo’s writings, we found three sketches of toys: a kite, a spinning top and a yo-yo.
Note. After our tests, the kite model while beautiful, simply can’t fly without substantial modifications, and it would not respect our philological spirit - so for the moment it is not in production.
The yo-yo and spinning top instead do work, and are getting produced. Nobody has modelled these sketches up to now: it is a completely original research and production. By pledging Genio on Kickstarter you get a brass and wooden toy and in the beautiful box you also get: (i) a booklet with the history of the toy (ii) an accurate reproduction of Leonardo’s folio. More details on the set here.
Genio is a game that will gently guide players through the conceptual innovations of the Renaissance simply by playing a card based town builder game. Designed by a mixed group of software engineers and historians of the Renaissance, Genio is a way to present in depth studies in the technology of the Renaissance and the history of ideas in a way accessible to all. Learning through fun (as defined in A Theory of Fun for Game Design) is realized by increasing the complexity and type of references during game play. The game mechanics is immediate and quite classical. More about Genio's didactic model here.
ALEXANDER NEUWAHL
RENAISSANCE TECHNOLOGY RESEARCHER, DESIGNER
Alex is a museum and exhibition designer, a 3D modeller/animator and builder of Leonardo da Vinci machine models and a book author on the theme of Renaissance technology. More about Alex here: http://www.artesmechanicae.it
PIETRO POLSINELLI
GAME DESIGNER, DEVELOPER
Pietro is an experienced software developer and an enthusiast game designer. He curates the blog / podcast / YouTube channel Design a Game, dedicated to game design and game development tools. Full bio here, on Twitter @ppolsinelli.
DA VINCI SKETCHES & CARDS DOWNLOAD. Download of Genio folio sketches from the Book of Ideas and the character and builder cards, all in HD. Inventions & idea sketches inspired by Da Vinci, Brunelleschi, Machiavelli. You also get reserved development updates. For £5.
A FULL COPY OF GENIO GAME. A full digital copy of Genio the moment it is released. DRM-free, for Win Mac Linux (desktops). For £10, the previous reward included.
ORIGINAL GAME SOUNDTRACK + PDF CONCEPT BOOK. A download featuring Genio's original soundtrack by Krur + a booklet PDF of concept art and 3D models of inventions - cool stuff from Alex! For £12, both previous rewards included.
Here is a song inspired by Alex' book on Renaissance cranes, "Tirari & Alzari":
IPAD TABLET GAME LICENSE. You get a digital Genio app for iPad. For £15, all previous unlimited rewards included.
ANDROID TABLET GAME LICENSE. You get a digital Genio app for Android tablets. For £15, all previous unlimited rewards included.
The game will be released for updated versions of operating systems.
TWO DA VINCI MACHINE SCULPTURE BLUEPRINTS. You get two original 3D printer files (in 3D print open formats: STL and OBJ) so you can print two blueprints of a Leonardo da Vinci machine sculpture. The sculpture will not be a working machine, but a detailed portrait of one. For £20, all previous unlimited rewards are included.
ART LOVER: CHARACTER CANVAS PRINT. You get a high quality print on 100% natural cotton canvas of one of Genio’s main characters. It is always a reinterpretation of a Renaissance portrait. You will pick which character you want from our offer. Size 30x40 cm, 12x16 inches. Frame not included.For £30. Shipping in the UK included.
SPONSOR REWARD: BETA AND SOURCES. You get access to Genio's beta and beta full sources, all in a Unity project kit (the Unity project will require a few commercial plugins which you must provide yourself, such as Daikon Forge and Gamelogic Grid, as we cannot redistribute them in source form; as for the license, you will be able to use it for any game substantially different from Genio). Also get a reserved video explanation of the code, and a special mention in the game. For £60, all previous unlimited rewards included (delivery time may be different). Special thanks to you!
ONE LEONARDO DA VINCI TOY SET. You get a toy (made of anticated brass and wood) designed by da Vinci in his sketches. You can pick between a spinning top and a yo-yo. In the beautiful box you get also: (i) a booklet with the history of the toy (ii) an accurate reproduction of Leonardo's folio where we found the toy. For £80, all previous unlimited rewards included (their delivery may be different from this). Shipping in the UK included.
Here you find a post with more information about the toy sets.
TWO LEONARDO DA VINCI TOY SETS. You get two toys (made of anticated brass and wood) designed by da Vinci in his sketches.You get both a spinning top and a yo-yo. In the beautiful boxes you get also: (i) a booklet with the history of the toy (ii) an accurate reproduction of Leonardo's folio where we found the toy. For £115, all previous digital unlimited rewards included (delivery may be different). Shipping in the UK included.
ART MAECENAS: TWO TOYS AND TWO CANVAS PRINTS. You get both two toy sets and two canvas prints. For £150, all previous digital unlimited rewards included (delivery may be different), shipping in the UK included.
HAND MADE LEATHER BOOK OF IDEAS (HIGH QUALITY PAPER). Limited edition handcrafted, leather-bound printed version of the Book of Ideas, with around 50 folios in high quality paper. The book has an introductory chapter giving the historical and scientific context of the inventions, and each invention folio has illustrative notes. For £200, all previous digital unlimited rewards included (delivery may be different), shipping in the UK included.
ART COLLECTOR: TWO TOYS, TWO CANVAS PRINTS AND HAND MADE BOOK OF IDEAS. You get two toy sets, two canvas prints and the printed Book of Ideas. For £350, all previous digital unlimited rewards included (delivery may be different), shipping in the UK included. Special thanks!
TOUR TUSCANY WITH US. An amazing Leonardo da Vinci guided tour in Tuscany, for 2 people. We will take you to da Vinci's places (some not generally open to the public) and to our labs. Includes two days stay for two people - you'll stay in a beautiful hotel; we will plan with you all the details before your trip. Travel expenses not included. For £4000, includes all previous digital rewards and the toy sets.
MUSEUM QUALITY DA VINCI MACHINE. Real wooden hand made Leonardo da Vinci machine: a working model, philologically accurate in materials and design, uniquely built for the pledger. For £5000, the pledger can pick among several machine types - full documentation for choices will be provided before production. All previous digital rewards included, shipping included - also toy sets inside :-)
The only way for us to stay independent and produce this game and so make more and more people discover the beauty and smartness of the past simply through fun and play is with the Meacenas, the patrons of the creatives of our time: that is, you. By pledging this project through Kickstarter you’ll be funding the creation of deeply educational tools. We studied our rewards so that they should make everyone happy. This project is inspired by diverse sources, is made by a team with different skills, and so also our rewards are of different kinds – check them out. Even if you can’t help us economically now, please do talk about this project, you will help us succeed.
Risks and challenges
From Pietro:
In the last three years I have been working on HTML5 games and gameful systems, learning a lot about game design and the complexity of game production, even for quite simple games.
In the 14 years that I've been working as a developer of project management software (since 2001) and as consultant on project management software adoption and integration, I’ve worked with many types of organizations in different countries; I'm responsible for conceiving TeamWork (http://twproject.com) a successful project management tool.
I have learned from my work and will avoid the traps above by producing Genio as a feasible, simple game, and by organizing production with a very small and experienced team of “shippers”
Genio is not a research in innovative IT technology; it is a research in game design and didactics. Given the simple design and established technology used, failure in the sense of “not shipping a game at all” to pledgers seems unlikely. But it may result that the game is not fun, not instructive - this is a possibility and a risk, which we hope to mitigate with early, frequent releases - the community that we hope to form on Kickstarter would be functional for this part.
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Funding period
- (35 days)