Making Games in Crayta

Jul 8, 2022

Meta invites us to the Crayta lift-off programme

Prototyping something new is always exciting. Our team were introduced to Crayta late 2021 and so began a new chapter in our game making journey. Crayta is a game engine that allows users to make their own games and play them with the larger community within Facebook gaming, Stadia and the Epic Games store. There was a buzz around our offices about the potential this engine has as we explored the mechanics of combining voxels and the scripting capabilities within the system.

Our team entered game and build jams.

Jams are an excellent opportunity for us to collaborate on unusual ideas and create wicked content that is both fun and experimental. As a result, our team has won a few awards. Our puzzle game ‘Portal Flip’ has won the best puzzle award in the Duality Jam. A game where users must navigate through a complex path and find their way through, even the whole level can turn upside down!

We became a Lift-Off partner!

As we became familiar with the game, we had bigger ambitions and wanted to push the engine to its limit, so it becomes more powerful and offered more tools to creatives. We joined the Creator’s Lift-Off programme which allowed us to do this very thing. We started concepting our first game.

We have now launched our first game CRAYLOAD which is completely free to play. This is under our brand CC Creations. Crayload is a fast team-based shooter game, where players must get a payload to the enemy base. The defenders must hold out and push back.

We couldn’t be happier with the relationship we have with Unit 2 Games (Meta) and our team who worked on it. We can’t wait to launch more content on this epic platform as part of the lift-off creator programme, so stay tuned!

Luke Nolan
Director, Content

A Brand New Educational Experience in Minecraft; Plants!

Oct 4, 2021

Learn, explore and become a master gardener in CubeCraft’s virtual experience.

We are very happy to share the news that one of the most ambitious CubeCraft projects is now available to download and play! This free piece of educational content has been in development for upwards of a year, and showcases the awesome high quality content our team is possible of producing!

The team were extremely passionate about keeping this interactive game free, in order for as many people as possible to discover and enjoy the experience. Game Designer Chloe Byrne writes; ‘We created a free and informative piece of content. Why? We believe it’s important to offer an alternative way of learning, to give people more opportunities of staying engaged with a subject they are passionate about! Plants are vital to our existence and we want the Minecraft audience to experience this in our interactive map. We want everyone to have the chance to learn for free!

The team created an experience that aimed to teach people of all ages about the wonders of Plants! ‘We created a world where the player didn’t feel like they’re learning but they really are. A gardener guide takes you through the map and teaches you about the different aspects of the plants’.

Within the game, players can learn a number of interesting facts about plants through challenges, quizzes, and tutorials. From the very basics such as planting and maintaining a plant, to learning about their anatomy.

‘We want everyone to have the chance to learn for free!’

As you can imagine, a huge amount of work went into programming and developing each individual plant and entity in the game. Over the past couple of years the Marketplace team has pushed themselves above and beyond to make sure that each game they make stands out with a large variety of custom models, NPC’s, builds and animations! Plants is no different! On the topic of animations. ‘Each plant has its own growing animation which stops as soon the plant needs water. It will grow again when given water like a real plant and will grow to its full potential.’

We are extremely grateful to the team at Mojang and Microsoft for highlighting ‘Plants’ in their back to school campaign! The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive, with over 1 million people downloading it in the first week!

FIND OUT MORE AT CUBECRAFT.NET

UNTIL NEXT TIME,

THE ZIAX TEAM

Digital Tree Media is now Ziax

May 27, 2021

We are very excited to share that we are launching our new name and brand: Ziax.

Ziax is a game and events studio headquartered in Manchester, GB.

Our team consists of developers, designers, event organisers, videographers & innovators with a passion for delivering world-class physical and virtual experiences.

CubeCraft Games, an official Minecraft partner, was founded in 2012: an instant hit which soon saw millions of global players. It then combined with an at-the-time small events company, Digital Tree Media.

Blending the skill and talent of game makers, event organisers and video technologists allowed us to efficiently create combined experiences for exhibitions, live shows and more. Modifying games to meet event demands, adapting traditional video workflows to build in a new generation of IP-based, attendee-driven content creation.

In our next chapter as Ziax we will continue to expand our game studio and work in collaboration with our event partners across the industry in the delivery of physical experiences at home and abroad.

Ziax is the unification of our events and gaming work. Details about some of our upcoming projects will be shared soon and we can’t wait to see what we’ll get to make together as we continue forwards.

To all of our past clients and customers: Thank you for including us in your creative journeys, it’s always a pleasure to collaborate with the immense talent across the industry and we look forward to working with you all again soon, with our new look and energy.

To all members of our team, past and present: Forever in awe of what we have made together. From virtual plains of Minecraft to the dusty dunes of Egypt; we have been around the world as a team, creating everything from viral games, to new video broadcast solutions, to infrastructure scalable to hundreds of thousands of players.

Looking forward to more making, always.

Check out our main website here.