Gaming Your Way

May contain nuts.

Some quick links

8. May 2011 Squize News (0)
There's a bit of urgency attached to this first one. Josh contacted us about a Flixel powered kickstarter project, which is closing real soon, hence the need for this quick pimp.

Head on over to here for more details. We wish Josh luck with this project, it's just a pity we didn't hear about it sooner.

The Plastic Sturgeon ( That is a great name isn't it ) sent us a link to a complete ball / cannon game in box2D. By complete we mean source code complete, ready for you to download.
By pumping out this email quick I've got to be honest we've not had chance to look at the code, but free code is like free beer, it's always good. Read his blog post here and give yourself a little head start to the pain which is doing a game in box2D.

That's it kids, short and sweet. I know we've been a bit linky the past couple of posts, these are just one offs, we'll be going back to swearing and talking about our own stuff like the ego-centric shits we really are.

Squize.

Something for the weekend sir ?

6. May 2011 Squize News (1)
We briefly mentioned this yesterday, but here's the pimp in all it's glory. Good friend to the blog Matthew's most recent release, "Relics of Fate: A Penny Macey Mystery" is availble to buy and install on your Windows machine.

Not sold ? Ok, how about this then,

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Nope ? You know you can grab the demo to play free for an hour. A whole hour of clue solving like this,

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Even better still, BigFish have got a sale on today for one day only ( Although that was there yesterday, which a more cynical me would think was odd ) so you can get it even cheaper and Matthew will earn that little bit less for all his hard work. Support an indie by buying at a discount.

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Yeah you want it now don't you. Nip over to BigFishGames and grab it, but don't all of you do it, as we have no affiliate scheme in place, and it'll just make us sick thinking of all those little percentages we're missing out on.

Squize.

Dear Hacker...

5. May 2011 Squize News (5)
Really ? You're really trying to hack our blog ? Is there nothing better to do in China ( Well, according to your IP ) right now ?
What are you expecting to do l33t haX0r ? Do you think we have a ton of emails address on here ? How about all those credit card details we must have stored up ?
Or even cooler, are you looking to just delete the db, lock us out and put up your own little logo ? That would be cool wouldn't it ? Constructive use of your time.

We've got to write blog posts mentioning "Relics of Fate" ( Available now on BigFishGames ), and link up to Plastic Sturgeon's box2D tut, not piss around saying how much we think you're a tit.

So please stop ( Trying "blog" and "blogblog" isn't going to get you anywhere, for a start my user name is "HotRodRacerDeluxeFantastico" ).

Hopefully if l33t boi doesn't bring us down then we'll have some pimping and some tut linking and maybe even a failed game to show over the next few days.

Squize.

Cars More Destroy

21. February 2011 Squize News (1)

I think I could have conceived and delivered a child quicker than this, but finally Destroy More Cars is live.

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Twat! That's going to hurt in the morning


If you liked the original then you'll love this. If you didn't, it more than likely won't convert you. There's a ton of content in there and there are some bits I'm really proud of, the smoke particles turned out especially nice.

Here's the link, feel free to Destroy More Cars ( See what I did there ? ).

Squize.

Knight's Quest, get your mana on.

25. January 2011 Squize game development, News (10)

Finally finally finally, we've soft launched KQ. With it being a soft launch it means we know there are things we need to tweak and change and there are more features planned over the next couple of weeks ( Today is a day of resting ).

Rather than me write reams of boring text, here are some pictures to give you a taste before clicking ( Or not ) the link.

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KQ_fireballs.jpg

Now it's finally out for everyone to play I'll be able to do some more techy posts about how it does what it does, I was kind of loathe to do it sooner as explaining how the spiders AI works in a game you can't play is a bit abstract.

Please, any and all feedback in the comments is more than welcome. We can't make the game better if we don't know what's important to you guys.

Here's the link, ( Facebook only I'm afraid, it's the nature of the beast ) go and hurt some big spiders ( They so deserve it ).

Cheers,

Squize.

"I'll be the judge of that!"

20. January 2011 Squize News (0)
That's what I said when our mate ickydime asked if I was interested in judging games as part of Stanford University's 2011 Hackathon.

It's great promoting a cause like this, although to quote from the above link, "an all-star cast of judges!" is pushing things a little too far in terms of spin with my involvment.

There are prizes and some lovely game pimping on offer, more of which can be found again on ickydime's blog ( And here ) and fellow judge Iain has posted some source for you to be getting on with.

We're not a big lover of comps, they bring the cynic out in us, but this one is for a great cause rather than just trying to get a lot of content for next to nothing, so lets support it as much as we can, blog and tweet it kids and lets raise some awareness.

Thanks,

Squize.

PS. It goes without saying that as a judge I'm there to be bought, and I'm cheap. Basically buy me a couple of drinks and some smokes and that Master suite is yours.
PPS. Before that comes back to bite me badly, I am obviously joking.
PPPS. Or am I ?
PPPPS. Why ? Why do I have to make things more complicated for myself by talking crap. Thanks in advance for any bribes, but I can't accept them no matter how good they are.

Four years later...

9. January 2011 Squize News (6)
...and we're still bone idle.

Olli and I have somehow managed to keep the curse which is GYW going for 4 years this very day.

To provide some focus and direction, which all companies irrelevant of their size or structure need, we've produced a mission statement.

"Our goal is to provide varied entertainment utilizing transmedia to it's fullest extent, adopting bleeding edge technology to leverage the maximum potential from all aspects of social media to raise brand awareness."

Nah, I'm just talking bollocks. We just aim to carry on making games we want to play, hoping that some of you guys like them, whilst having a blog we can swear on because we find it big and clever.

( I know I should do something like "Here's to the next 4 years" or "This year we're really going to hit things hard!", but come on, that's really not us. Hopefully we'll make lots of great things this year and very few sucky ones, if that doesn't pan out and we make more duds than winners, well it's something to learn from. Just talking about it here in a positive light won't make it any more real ).

Squize.

2010 in words and pictures

28. December 2010 Squize News (0)
A couple of days earlier than we normally do it, but compiling these things takes ages, so better I do it now when I'm still in the laziness that is just post Christmas than leaving it last minute.

Jan:

Our third birthday, and one monster project finally out of the door.

DogTown was a project we did for National Geographic.

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You know that theory that women forget just how painful child birth is, because if they remembered how bad it actually was they'd never have any more children ?
I've forgotten how painful this project was.
Also no link, as it turned out at the last minute that it was to be sold as a downloadable game, and I'm not going to insult you guys with that.
It's not a bad little suite of games, just... well, I personally wouldn't pay money to play them.

In other news this month, we started our first iPhone game using the CS5 beta ( Was that really a year ago ? ) and some of our games which were behind a freewall weren't anymore.

Feb:

A good month.

First up Zap finally went live.

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Check the video out, as that's the closest you'll get to playing it. My Apple dev membership expired, so the game was removed. I really didn't know that games on the store were held to ransom, but there you go, Apple need the money I guess.
( It also means that because it earned a lot less than the minimum payment, $150 from memory, the handful of cash it made is floating around somewhere, not in my pocket that's for sure ).

Developing for a mobile device [ In Flash ] is purely a vanity project, it's cool to see your work running on a different device, and also there was a plan to give tax breaks to UK developers, so it was important for us to have a sellable title out there rather than just the usual free / ad powered games. Pity the tax breaks never came to anything. Nor the game itself for that matter ( It did get shown at FITC though, which was nice ).

Also this month Ionic finally went live.

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My baby. Hellish hard work, but the end results make me happy, and that's enough for me. Also a pleasure to work with Lux for the first time.

Also this month saw an interview with Barry White from GamesChart, well worth a read if you missed it first time around.

March:

We started the month off with a preview post about Destroy More Cars ( DMC ). No link ? Hard to believe, but it's still not live. It'll give us something to write about in January.

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It's almost there. If you liked the original you'll love this, if not, well play it anyway, it'll help the traffic figures.

The rest of the month was more of a discussion thing, Olli putting forward ideas and concepts, and the first mention of Chock a box, our first game in a day.

April:

Bit of a slow month really. We previewed another game in a day, E-Run.

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As simple as it looks really. So simple in fact that it never sold. I still don't know what to do with it, it may well just end up a Facebook exclusive on our page there, or just sit on my HD forever more.

Chock a box went live, and GamesButler were happy with how it went for them, and they were great to work with, so a win all round really.

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More DMC images, and a bit of a rant from me.

May:

The month started with our view on the whole Apple vs Adobe, Flash vs HTML 5 thing. It's been done to death now, so I'm not even going to bother linking to it ( Opinions are like arseholes don't you know ).

Slightly more interesting was some previews of Game'88,

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We asked for help with naming the games, and we were blown away by the response. As to the game itself ? Still coming. I know it sounds like vapourware, but it's been a long 6 months since those happy carefree days of May.

June:

I turned 38, and managed not to post a bleak entry about it. Instead a couple of days later I open sourced the blitter engine.

Also this month we linked out to a couple of friends who were doing some really nice things, and Olli previewed some of the bits he's been working on.

In terms of games, our first project with Aardman digital went live,

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Shaun's Big Lunch, a reskin of our mates' PhotonStorms game. A nice quick gig which came out of nowhere and turned out well.

July:

This month saw the blog get a much needed make over. Olli did a blinding job with it, and showed he's usual professionalism by not telling me to fuck off after my repeated "It looks great... could you just... ?". I honestly don't know how he puts up with me, I'm guessing crack.
Also we went all Facebook, and some day we hope to actually do something with that page rather than just repeat the blog there.

What else happened ? A little preview of terrain splatting, which was done for KnightsQuest, which has just made me realise how long that has been in development.

We also did a light hearted pimp of Jeff and Steve's book, which I've just this second realised we've got to review yet. Oh well, there's at least 2 posts ready for January. I wonder if that symbol has appeared in any other games ?

Finally as way of filler we finally produced post mortems for both cronusX and Ionic.

August:

Quiet month from us. We finally put the criminally neglected Game of Life on our own server after the sad news that Tak had closed.

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Olli teased us yet again with a grab from 'Shrooms, and we both ended up the month bitching about two totally different things ( One of which provoked the angriest response from a reader yet. Perversely that made me happy ).

Sept:

Another quiet one, it happens, sometimes you're churning the games out, other times you're busy making them.

A couple of posts about KnightsQuest, and an unwarranted rant ( Again ).

Oct:

More work hell, with I think our quietest month yet here on the blog ( We're all about Facebook and Twitter now don't you know ). Olli showed some WIP from his Unity game.

Nov:

Exactly the same again, Olli showing the world that we'd not just given up and walked away. There is a reason for this quietness, maybe we'll find out why in December ? Let's see.

Dec:

A cheeky grab of KnightsQuest showing the weather effects. Maybe there may be more news about this next month, hmm, maybe.

Also Championsheeps went beautifully finally live.

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I'd been working on this on and off for months, not long after the Big Lunch game from memory, so it was so sweet when it went live.

We also gave you all an insight into our Christmas drink up, basically an instruction manual in how to kill your liver, Olli posted some more Hellstrom info, and then the month ended with an overly long post recapping the year before ( I wouldn't bother reading that, it's just ego stroking crap ).

And that's it, that's what what we did.

I'm slightly concerned that our release rate seems to drop every year ( I'm not sure if it does, it does feel like it ), a couple of large projects for both of us and the productivity drops right down, well the perceived productivity at least, I've done my share of 4am shifts the past couple of months.

In the new year we're looking at getting Game'88, DMC, Hellstrom and KnightsQuest live, and from there who knows. Molehill will come out and turn everything on it's head.

Thanks again to each and everyone of you who has taken the time to read, comment and re-tweet the blog, we'd be a lot more lonely without you.

Happy New Year kids,

Squize.

Our Christmas party

20. December 2010 Squize News (3)
It's the time of year for the works do, and it's pretty much standard to show a load of photos, so we've done the same, just the highlights.

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Now I know there was a Tequila and then some more drinks, but by that stage I was a bit too messy to remember to take photos.

I couldn't have been any iller on Sunday, so there's a lesson there kids.

Squize.

PS. This was just the UK leg of the Christmas party, Olli's got to have his yet.