about us

There is a famous quote by John Adams, found in a letter to his wife.

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

And so we find ourselves best described by the following continuation:

“…so that, eventually, two guys from a small country in Europe can choose not to graduate from a number of schools of higher learning and, some years later, decide to make a puzzle game instead. And perhaphs they could also be joined by a guy with a degree in comparative literature to do some sound and music.”

Our apologies to Mr. Adams. But hey, at least it’s a really nice puzzle game! Let’s meet the cast.


Ivan Hamarić - game design / graphics

“I had this idea before? Two weeks ago? We tried it and I hated it? We both liked the other one better? Ok, we’ll go with that one then.”

An ex-architecture/ex-sociology-student-turned-board-game-designer who is not eager to call himself a designer, mainly because his knowledge of typography is basic at best, with drawing abilities to match. He’s the reason all our typography is either Helvetica, or bad, or both. He does happen to know a thing or two about graphics and is usually good at bending geometry to his will. Or to fit, say, a radial puzzle.

Marko Katavić - programming / making stuff work

“No, no, this is a more beautiful solution, of course we’ll go with this one. It’s three times as much coding time and I’ll probably hate myself for ever agreeing to it but we’ll go with this one…”

An ex-computer-science-student/soon-to-be sociologist, and a kickass data scientist. The Responsible One. Did nearly all of the code and then some! Normally, he would be the true unsung hero of our little endeavour, but we do plan to rectify this by actually singing songs about him. In private.

Lujo Parežanin - sound / music

“I finally have it! (… a long, romantic explanation of his music idea…) Oh, it could be great! I’m probably very wrong about this!”

A verse theorist and a saxophone player who is almost clinically unable to answer the phone. But if you lovingly hold him hostage for a time, you will actually squeeze a nice piece of music out of him. He’s a process. We’re working on him.

ozaiko - a radially different puzzle

ozaiko facebook page ozaiko twitter ozaiko google plus

“But wait! A circle has a centre point!”
an actual quote from an early meeting for ozaiko

from the App Store description:

We take a photo, cut it into things we call orbits and slices, we shuffle the pieces and let you solve it. But we do it with some beautiful photos by great travel photographers, some nice soothing music written specifically for this game, and intriguing gameplay we’re pretty sure you haven’t seen before.

We worked very hard to make ozaiko a beautiful and worthwhile gaming experience. We think we got it right and we hope you like it. Let's take a look at some features...


NEW PUZZLE MECHANICS WITH OUR UNIQUE RADIAL SCALE EFFECT

Also known as “the thing that makes the pieces look oddly deformed, but it actually helps while solving the puzzle”. We think it’s neat, it was relatively difficult to do well, and we’re somewhat proud of it. It has to do with straight lines not being straight whenever a puzzle piece is not in it’s proper “orbit”. Also, a shape bounded by two concentric circles is apparently called an annulus.

BEAUTIFUL PHOTOS BY GREAT PHOTOGRAPHERS

Or was it great photos by beautiful photographers? In any case, some very nice people around the world decided they could entrust us with their high resolution images to jumble around for you to play with. We also include image descriptions, authors’ biographies and links to their online portfolios should you like to know more about them.

DIFFERENT DEGREES OF DISTURBINGLY DEVIOUS DIFFICULTY

Ok, ozaiko is not at all devious or disturbing, but it somehow felt wrong to leave you without a single feature that could double as a pronunciation exercise. Still, it is true that you can play any puzzle with any number of slices - 3, 6, 9, 12,15 or 18.

SPLIT-SCREEN MULTIPLAYER FOR TWO PLAYERS

Because we’re hopeless romantics who prefer people sitting down to a game in a group. Also, one afternoon we played Fruit Ninja in split-screen and that was the day we decided to make ozaiko a bit less “meadows of morning meditation” and more, well… competitive. It turned out to be much more fun!

A 19-MINUTE PIECE OF MEDITATIVE MUSIC

Our internal testing concluded that it brings no demonstrable benefits to your health, but we like to pretend it greatly contributes to feelings of safety and well-being of your house plants. If they don’t like it, you can turn it off.

INCREDIBLY UNIMAGINATIVE ACHIEVEMENT NAMES

They go so nice with our understated user interface we just had to mention them here. Also, we wanted to share that we’re not exactly great at naming ancillary content in games.



Oh yes, the iPhone version is on the way, too!




contact

If you’d like to report a bug or have a question about ozaiko, please write to:
support@guessware.com

For any other questions, comments or suggestions, please write to:
info@guessware.com

We’ll do our best to respond as quickly as we can!

ozaiko - a radially different puzzle

factsheet

developer:
guessWare
based in Zagreb, Croatia

release date:
November 12th, 2015

platforms:
iPad

website:
ozaiko.com

regular price:
USD $2.99

about guessWare

guessWare is a game design studio based in Zagreb, Croatia, founded by Ivan Hamarić and Marko Katavić. Ivan spent his time around architecture, Marko spent his around computer science. They met studying sociology. Ivan subsequently went into board game design, and Marko became a data scientist.

about ozaiko

If one cares to be formal about it, ozaiko falls into the category of radial sliding puzzles. So there isn’t much to say, but we hope it’s nice to play!

In short - we take a photo, cut it into things we call orbits and slices, we shuffle the pieces and let you solve it. But we do it with some beautiful photos by great travel photographers, some nice soothing music written specifically for this game, and intriguing gameplay we’re pretty sure you haven’t seen before.

ozaiko features

  • new puzzle mechanics with with our unique radial scale effect
  • beautiful photos by great photographers
  • different degrees of disturbingly devious difficulty
  • split-screen multiplayer for two players
  • a soothing soundtrack

videos

ozaiko - a short preview YouTube


images

download all screenshots & photos as .zip (4.8 MB)
  • An open album
  • A multiplayer session
  • An unsolved puzzle
  • An unsolved puzzle
  • Help screen
  • Finished puzzle

download logo files as .zip (2.6 MB)
  • guessWare logo
  • ozaiko icon
  • ozaiko logo

ozaiko soundtrack
https://soundcloud.com/guessware/ozaiko-one-long-piece-of-music-instead


ozaiko credits

Ivan Hamarić
game design / graphics

Marko Katavić
programming

Lujo Parežanin
sound / music


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presskit() by Rami Ismail (Vlambeer) - also thanks to these fine folks

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