Jonas Kyratzes | |
|---|---|
 Kyratzes in 2011 | |
| Born | 21 May 1984 |
| Nationality | Greek, German |
| Occupation(s) | Video game designer, writer |
| Known for | Last Rose in a Desert Garden (2000), The Museum of Broken Memories (2006), The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge (2008) |
| Partner | Verena Kyratzes |
| Website | jonas-kyratzes.net |
Jonas Kyratzes is a German-Greek video game designer and author of video game industry related articles. [1]
Kyratzes' games are known for breaking with convention and being heavily story-driven. [2] Several of his games are thematically interconnected, often by the recurring figure of Urizen (first mentioned in The Great Machine) and other themes related to or inspired by the work of William Blake. With his wife, he created The Lands of Dream, a setting for many games, [3] a book, [4] and stories (see Stories below) he and his wife created.
He also has an interest in film, and in January 2009 he wrote and directed a short documentary about the 2008 Greek riots called The Greek Riots: Some Basic Facts. [5]
Jonas was born in Germany to a Greek father and a German mother, and raised in Greece. He has written several articles on video games, often advocating the concept that games are an art form. He is also politically active on the internet, blogging about political issues [6] and co-founding the Wikileaks Stories game-making initiative. [7] [8] [9] He describes his political stance as left-wing. [10]
He lives in Frankfurt, (Germany) with his wife, Verena.
Jonas has "collected" many stories that take place in the Lands of Dream. They are all illustrated by his wife, Verena. The stories are found in The Oneiropolis Compendium, [34] the Wanderers' Tales [35] (stories written by other authors that "traveled" to the Lands of Dream), and Likely Facts, [36] excerpts from The Book of Likely Facts (only published in the Lands of Dream), which was written by "Jorrum Dooga."
Fantasy tropes are a specific type of literary tropes that occur in fantasy fiction. Worldbuilding, plot, and characterization have many common conventions, many of them having ultimately originated in myth and folklore. J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium for example, was inspired from a variety of different sources including Germanic, Finnish, Greek, Celtic and Slavic myths. Literary fantasy works operate using these tropes, while others use them in a revisionist manner, making the tropes over for various reasons such as for comic effect, and to create something fresh.
"The Slithering Shadow" is one of the original short stories starring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard and first published in the September 1933 issue of Weird Tales magazine. "The Slithering Shadow" is the original title, but the story is also known as "Xuthal of the Dusk" in further publications. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age, and concerns Conan discovering a lost city in a remote desert while encountering a Lovecraftian demon known as Thog.
Lair is an action-adventure video game developed by Factor 5 and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was released for the PlayStation 3 in August 2007 in North America.
In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the centaur is a large monstrous humanoid. Based upon the centaurs of Greek myth, a centaur in the game resembles a human with the lower body of a horse.
Kung Fu Panda is a video game loosely based on the movie of the same name. Developed in a collaborative effort between Luxoflux, XPEC Entertainment, Beenox Shift, and Vicarious Visions, and published by Activision, the game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, Wii, and Nintendo DS in June 2008. A version for mobile phones developed by IronMonkey Studios and published by EA Mobile was released the same month. A port for Mac OS X was developed by TransGaming and released in March 2009. It is about the quest of a giant panda named Po to become the Dragon Warrior.
Tales of Monkey Island is a 2009 graphic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games under license from LucasArts. It is the fifth game in the Monkey Island series, released nearly a decade after the previous installment, Escape from Monkey Island. Developed for Windows and the Wii console, the game was released in five episodic segments, between July and December 2009. In contrast to Telltale's previous episodic adventure games, whose chapters told discrete stories, each chapter of Tales of Monkey Island is part of an ongoing narrative. The game was digitally distributed through WiiWare and Telltale's own website, and later through Steam and Amazon.com. Ports for OS X, the PlayStation Network, and iOS were released several months after the series ended.
Samorost 2 is a puzzle point-and-click adventure game developed by Amanita Design. Released for Windows, OS X and Linux on 8 December 2005, the game is the second video game title in the Samorost series and the sequel to Samorost. On 5 November 2020, the game received an update with enhanced visuals, brought fullscreen support & replaced level codes with a level select system. This version also received iOS & Android ports.
Hamlet or the Last Game without MMORPG Features, Shaders and Product Placement is an indie adventure game based on William Shakespeare's Hamlet. It was developed and published by indie game developer Denis Galanin.
Stargate is a 1994 platform game by Acclaim Entertainment for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Genesis/Mega Drive. It follows the adventures of Colonel Jack O'Neil as he struggles to free the slaves of Abydos, defeat Ra, and get his mission team back home using the stargate device. The game is based on the 1994 film of the same name.
There have been several King's Quest fangames both original and retellings/remakes of the original games that have been released by various developers.
Dragon's Lair: The Legend is a 1991 side-scrolling platform video game for the Nintendo Game Boy developed by Elite Systems. The game is part of the Dragon's Lair franchise and stars Dirk the Daring, who explores the world attempting to collect all 194 fragments of the mythical Life Stone. The gameplay is an extreme departure from other games in the series as it includes no enemies and aside from its protagonist, no other established characters. It does however retain the grueling difficulty that the series is known for.
The Sea Will Claim Everything is a point-and-click adventure game, the first commercial video game from design team Jonas and Verena Kyratzes. Written by Jonas Kyratzes with graphics from Verena Kyratzes, it is the fourth game in their Lands of Dream series and was released May 25, 2012. It features a musical score by Chris Christodoulou. The game is available from the author's website and has occasionally been bundled with other games from various digital download portals. It was released on Steam on March 24, 2016.
The Talos Principle is a 2014 puzzle video game developed by Croteam and published by Devolver Digital. It was simultaneously released on Linux, OS X and Windows in December 2014. It was released for Android in May 2015, for PlayStation 4 in October 2015, for iOS in October 2017, for Xbox One in August 2018, and Nintendo Switch in December 2019. Virtual reality-enabled versions for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive were released on 18 October 2017. A DLC entitled Road to Gehenna was released on 23 July 2015.
Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope is a 2017 first-person shooter game for virtual reality (VR) developed by Croteam VR and published by Devolver Digital. One or two players fight waves of enemies, including bosses, across five thematic planets. The enemies approach from a 180° field and the player can use dual-wielded weapons while moving across a limited space. To develop The Last Hope and experiment with other VR implementations, Croteam VR was established as a specialised division of Croteam. Devolver Digital announced the game at E3 in June 2016 and launched it in early access that October. After several updates, it was released in September 2017 for Windows with compatibility for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift VR headsets. The Last Hope received mostly positive reviews, with post-release reception lauding the game's gameplay and visuals while criticising difficulty spikes and issues with the online multiplayer mode.
Phoenix Point is a strategy video game featuring a turn-based tactics system that is developed by Bulgaria-based independent developer Snapshot Games. It was released on December 3, 2019, for macOS and Microsoft Windows, for Stadia on January 26, 2021, and Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on October 1, 2021. Phoenix Point is intended to be a spiritual successor to the X-COM series that had been originally created by Snapshot Games head Julian Gollop during the 1990s.
Allen Stroud is a researcher and university lecturer at Coventry University. He is currently leading the Creative Futures project, a funded research partnership between Coventry University and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL). Previously, he was Course Leader for the BA Media (Hons) Top Up and BA (Hons) Media and Communications. Before that, he was the course leader for Film and Television Production and the Creative Writing for Publication degrees at Bucks New University. Up until the end of 2019, he was the editor of the British Fantasy Society Journal. He also composes instrumental music; however, Stroud is best known for his sci-fi fantasy novels and video game writing. He was the 2017 and 2018 chair of Fantasycon, the annual convention of the British Fantasy Society, which hosts the British Fantasy Awards.
Serious Sam 4 is a 2020 first-person shooter developed by Croatian studio Croteam and published by Devolver Digital. It is part of the Serious Sam series and a prequel to Serious Sam 3: BFE. The game was announced in April 2018, originally as Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass, was released in September 2020 for Microsoft Windows and Stadia, followed by PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S ports in December 2021. A standalone expansion, Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem, was released in January 2022.
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is a 2023 action-adventure video game developed by ACE Team and published by Nacon. The game is the third installment in the Zeno Clash series.
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