games - DOMA Games

18 February 202214 August 2023

Do I hear “oír”?

Whilst working hard on fixing the final bugs, the DOMA team indulged in a quick round of the board game Scrabble. Given we are working on a Spanish Verb Conjugation game, we chose the Spanish version which is called Intelect in Spain due to licensing laws.

My Spanish is not yet perfect, and I wanted to double check the spelling of the past subjunctive of “oír” (to hear). Our game allows you to search for verbs using the infinitive. There isn’t much I could spell incorrectly with “oír” – or so I thought. Still, the game didn’t find “oír”. We were flabbergasted. What had happened?

It turns out that the search insisted on the accent above the “í”!

What is the size of the issue?

Of our game’s over 3,600 verbs, there are only 9!

They have one thing in common: they have a hiatus. What is a hiatus?

Spanish has strong vowels and weak vowels. The“a”, “e” and “o” are strong vowels. The “i” and “u” are weak vowels. When a strong vowel and a weak vowel are combined they can either form a dipthong or a hiatus. In a dipthong, the vowels are combined to be pronounced as a single sound. In a hiatus, the vowels are pronounced separately. To indicate that the vowels should be pronounced separately – a hiatus – the weak vowel is accented. In the example “oír”, you pronounce it “o-ír”, and “reír” is pronounced “re-ír”.

The full list includes:

desleír	to dilute
desoír	to ignore
engreírse	to become conceited
entreoír	to half-hear
freír	to fry
oír	to hear
reír	to laugh
sofreír	to sauté
sonreír	to smile

This issue is now fixed. You can now search for “oír” by typing “oir”. However, once this issue was fixed, we realised there may be other potential, similar issues. Fortunately, there are no verbs with “ú”, but there is the “ñ” character. You may want to search by just typing “n”. And, guess what? We have 53 verb infinitives with the “ñ” character. So, we’ve fixed that issue too. You can now search for “bañar” by typing “banar”.

In other news: our new design is being applied as we speak and our first Alpha version should be released next week! Go team DOMA!

If you want to sign up for the Alpha version, email us at info@doma.games or enter your details into the early access form below.

What are you waiting for?

UPDATE: The game is live and you can download it here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.domagames.spanishverbconjugation

26 January 202214 August 2023

Final two bugs being worked on prior to release!

Yes, you read that right: We only have two more bugs to fix before we can put it all together and show you how the Spanish Verb Conjugation game will play like!

We’re all set up to put in the graphics and make some videos, which you’ll be able to watch on our YouTube channel or on our Google PlayStore.

If you want to sign up to play it before the official release, use the subscription form or contact us directly on info@doma.games.

UPDATE: The game is live and you can download it here:

25 November 202114 August 2023

Nearly ready: Spanish Verb Conjugation

Yes, our new game is nearly ready.

What will it do?

Spanish Verb Conjugation will teach you how to conjugate Spanish verbs in a fun and friendly way. It includes all 86 irregular ways of conjugating Spanish verbs. It includes the 10 different tenses from the indicative through the subjunctive to the imperative across all six different persons. And it does this with over 3,600 verbs!

Best of all: Once it’s downloaded, you don’t need an internet connection! So wherever you are, you can keep learning and practising.

How will you play it?

You can select any verb you want, learn today’s verb of the day, or continue your journey through learning the most important verbs first using our version of the spaced repetition learning technique. Once a verb is selected, you choose which tense you want to practise. Then the fun begins.

The Flowers game will show you flowers containing random conjugations of the verb. Your goal is to pick the correctly conjugated form for the person and tense before they float away. Here is a preview of what the screen will look like with the verb “hablar” (to speak; to talk):

Spanish Verb Conjugation flowers game with new background.

What do you think?

It’s not ready yet in that the final verb display and scoreboard is still being worked on. We are also working on a little bull as a mascot to be our logo and stand in the field. More on that next week though.

Do write in and share your ideas on how to improve it, what you like and what you want us to change.

If you want to play it, get in touch to get on the early user list so you can give it a go sooner than anyone else!

UPDATE: The game is live and you can download it here:

21 October 202111 August 2023

Back after a break

After a relaxing holiday in the sun, we are back and working hard to finish our Spanish Verb Conjugation game. Unfortunately, we were side tracked by some admin tasks which took longer than expected.

I guess you can empathize with receiving an unexpected letter; which then results in you spending the next few days on formulating a response! This is then followed by more delays, since there appear to be issues with post getting through. Once you receive a response, you find out that there are more questions than answers and off you go again with responding… and this, in a nutshell, is life sometimes. It’s part of what needs to be done to keep DOMA Games up and running. Now that we’ve overcome the obstacles, nothing can hold us back 🙂

Most importantly, we are back in full swing and will share a more in depth progress update late next week!

2 September 202114 August 2023

Spanish Verb Conjugation is on it’s way

There are many reasons to improve your Spanish. And, what better place to start than verbs – the action words of every language?

Verbs are the only word needed to make a sentence. Just think about this for a moment. How often do you tell someone to “Look” or “Stop!” or “Move”?

It may not just be the love of grammar. You may also need to learn Spanish verb conjugation for school or university. Possibly, you were inspired when you holidayed in any of the 21(!) Spanish speaking countries such as Spain or Mexico.

Flag of Mexico by Alex Covarrubias (CC0)

As for me, I wanted to be able to speak Spanish from a very young age. I don’t know why. I just knew that I would want to speak Spanish one day. There were many failed attempts and my main hurdle was the complex verb conjugation. I looked for more fun ways than mere repetition, but I didn’t find anything that would cover my need to learn all of the tenses and not just the present tense and one of the past tenses. So we decided to build our own game!

Fast forward a year or two and the game is now ready for testing. Our database contains over 3,600 verbs which rotate as the “Verb of the Day”; for those who want to practice every day without getting bored. If you think long term, that’s nearly 10 years worth of a new verb every day without repetition! And yes, they cover all the 83 irregular conjugations we are aware of.

Does 3,600 verbs sound like too much? Fear not! We have prioritized the most important verbs by how often they are used in every day speech in the “Learn New Verb” section. This way, you’ll stay focused on what you need the most. It also feeds into the “Revise Verbs” section, which helps you stay on track with your revisions. It uses our version of the spaced repetition learning technique, to ensure revision is beneficial – without overdoing it of course.

Our demo version will be free and will contain the most important verbs and tenses so you can get a feel for the game. The full version will contain all of the 3,600 verbs, all of the 10 tenses and all of the persons you’ll ever come across.

If you want to be one of our early access testers, please sign up with the form below and let us know what you think of it. Your feedback is very welcome!

Fun fact: did you know that the Spanish language features more than 12,790 verbs?

UPDATE: The game is live and you can download it he r e:

31 July 202114 August 2023

Our first game is released :)

It’s been a long time coming but it’s finally arrived. We have released our first game: our own version of Mine Sweeper!

Mine sweeper victory screen on a mobile phone.

It may not be the most creative start into our games journey, but it’s a start, and we are proud of it. That’s what it’s all about after all: Getting started and gaining experience with the release process. Most importantly: now we have an actual game published.

Our way to learn how to make great games is to use each game we work on as an opportunity to learn something new. We focus on an area that we need to improve upon or try something new: Try a new mechanic, or existing mechanics in new combinations. It will be a long journey – we hope – since that would mean we are continuing to improve our skills and our games are getting better. It would also mean that we continue making games which after all is what we want to do.

What is next you ask?

We are currently working on a game that helps you learn to conjugate verbs in Spanish. I used it while I learnt Spanish and continue to use it today. I have given pleeenty of feedback along the way. After all, conjugation by itself isn’t a lot of fun, but our game should make it so. So hang on tight for more news!

In the meantime: try out our Mine Sweeper game, which can be played in landscape or portrait mode. You can even customise the size of the mine field and the number of hidden mines in contains.

You can find it on Google Play Store. It’s free and ad free. Try it today!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.domagames.mines

4 May 202111 August 2023

Ready to publish!

We have been officially incorporated and are now able to publish our games!

It took more time than initially anticipated to find the right incorporation partner, overcome the mountain of paperwork, go back and do it all over again to finally clear the last hurdle so that we now can officially release games.

What a great day!

Even better news is that whilst the paperwork was being done in the background, we didn’t stop working on our games. That means that our starter game will be released shortly. Whilst it is a game for us to learn the processes and get used to the various platforms, we will still celebrate it when it’s live.

The game thereafter is close to finishing as well and only needs a bit more polishing before we release it into the wild.

We are even thinking about game number three already. It is is still in the early phases of brainstorming and a clear idea will firm up over the next few weeks.

In summary: May the hard work begin 🙂

3 March 202011 August 2023

Our logo

First step in our journey to go public is to share our logo with the world. Here it is.

We wanted it to be colourful and show diversity whilst staying simple and being readable even at small size. It looks like blocks since all games should still be fun if you remove the graphics and use blocks as characters. If you think it’s a crazy idea, have you ever played Tetris?

What do you think of it?

1 March 202011 August 2023

We have arrived!

After 2 long years of working towards starting a small, smart, indie games company, we have arrived! Yes, at long last, we have arrived at the start.

Our name, logo and purpose are agreed upon and we are ready to start making games. YEAH!

Now, being ready is great but that also means that the vast world of games to be made is now open to us and that is somewhat scary. What will be fun to play? Who to work with? How to publish our games? Will we like our own games? Where to start?

Let’s start at the beginning. We are a 2 person game making team with an eclectic mix of skills which complement, overlap and at times confront. Hardly any of the skills relate directly to making games which makes you think: how nuts are we exactly? We don’t know and we are sure to find out.

We hope you come along the journey and play our games, enjoy them or tell us what you want changed. Bring on the fun! And meaning… and purpose… and different ways to look at the world.

Let the journey begin!!!