Honeyslug

So I’m just back from GDC, where our game Poto & Cabenga was part of the Gamma IV event, with an amazing party on the Wednesday night where all six games were projected on huge screens, a bunch of DJs played electro sets and there was much drinking, dancing and shouted conversations with new friends…   then the following morning saw a complete change of scene, as we set up our stand on the Expo floor to allow people to play all the games.. this was also very cool, but in a very different way – fantastic to see people enjoying Poto & Cabenga up close, and chat to them about it, but we definitely had expo-fever by the end – having spent hours in an unnaturally lit aircraft hanger full mostly of depressing stands only tangentially related to games (we were right across from some company selling customer support software). Mind you, we weren’t complaining when these stands started giving out free beer toward the end of every day! And we ended up making a couple of significant changes to our game as a direct result of watching people play it.

Big props to the Kokoromi Crew – Heather, Cindy, Damien and Phil – who did a great job of making us very welcome,
and ensuring everything ran smoothly. Thanks guys!

Overall, GDC was an awesome experience. Was great to hang out a load of other indies and talk games, play theirs, andwatch them play ours..  My favourite two talks were Jon Blow’s ‘The implementation of rewind in Braid”, which reminded me why I make games, and “Changing the time between shots for the sniper rifle from 0.5 to 0.7 seconds for Halo 3″ by some dude from Bungie, which reminded me why I don’t make games for large developers! I also managed to play most of the IGF entrants – including Monaco and Tuning, both of which were worthy winners!

I’ve updated our flickr with a GDC photoset, which you can see here. And there’s an article about all the Gamma IV games on the IndieGames blog here.

We intend to make Poto & Cabenga available to play on the internet really soon – watch this space!

Yes, a curious start to the week, with the momentum building rapidly on our current project, Kahoots still continues be doing the business off its own back. Today we found out it’s been shortlisted for a Pocket Gamer award at GDC!

That’s pretty handy since Ricky is out at the show for reasons which will become clear soon enough, but any road, Kahoots is nominated for the Best Casual/Puzzle Game for Handheld, how cool is that! It has some stiff competition, but that we’re in with a shout against the likes of Little Big Planet PSP and Lego Rock Band DS shows you how well received the game has been. We’re chuffed to bits, thanks Pocket Gamer! Full list of all the awards and nominations can be found here.

Here’s our category, though. How bonkers is this, look at who we’re up against!

Best Casual/Puzzle Game finalists

Art Style: CODE [DS] (Nintendo)
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure [DS] (Electronic Arts)
Kahoots [PSP] (Honeyslug)
Lego Rock Band [DS] (Warner Bros)
LittleBigPlanet [PSP] (Sony Computer Entertainment)

Bit of an update on some Kahoots related activity. We recently scored a marvellous 8/10 for Kahoots from ace site The Gamers Hub. We were also very pleased to be asked to do an interview with them for their site, in which we give full and frank answers to their questions including our thoughts on influences to Kahoots, game pricing, and the announcement of an impending version of Kahoots for iPhone and iPod touch. Follow the links for the full transcripts of the review and interview.

In other Kahoots related news, there is now a Kahoots theme available on PS3 and PSP to be downloaded from the PlayStation store. There was a free giveaway of 5000 of them on the Playstation Europe Blog and there may be a last few still available there if you hurry. Stop Press – Obviously, at this time we urge you to follow the advice of Sony on current PS3 network issues before you attempt to download the theme.

Finally, and rather disappointingly, the BBC has confirmed its intention to close the excellent 6Music radio station. If you haven’t already, you can read our thoughts on it here and there is still time to stop this from happening, if you’re already a fan of the station, you can find details on how to register your opinon. If you are yet to listen to this genuinely innovative music station we urge you now, before it’s too late, to give it a try to understand why we feel so passionate about this. 6Music.