- Scripting an adventure based around Brent Cross Shopping Centre
- Screen grabbing pictures of Miley Cyrus & Cheryl Cole
- Drawing with felt tips
- Painting game backgrounds without the use of a computer art package
- Coming up with the concept of Frogs stealing footballs during a design meeting
- Level scripting exploding animals

So if you’re finished with exams/school and are looking for something to fill the gap between Jeremy Kyle and the evening showing of Neighbours, or you’re a parent just wishing your child won’t come home stinking of cheap supermarket cider each evening, why not consider Honeyslug for “work experience”.

*Thanks to Dana for being a good sport, she’s been an excellent accomplice for Nat and we hope she’s enjoyed her week learning about games dev Honeyslug style.

Yay! Poto & Cabenga was Internet Game of the Month in Edge Magazine last month! Now that the new Edge is out, here’s a scan… Hopefully that’s okay with the Edge dudes – if not let us know etc.

The World of Love conference. It threatened to draw an unprecedented horde of independent game developers to our nation’s noble capital, where they would surely be compelled to blurt scandalising ideas out of their disordered brains, to binge-drink, and to forever infuse ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ with apocalyptic portent. Such a volatile situation required delicate handling – as anyone who has seen the shameful aftermath of a TED conference can attest.

As luck would have it, celebrated indie scene-boffins Terry Cavanagh (DistractionWare) and Ricky Haggett (Honeyslug) were seeking to organise a weekend Game Jam around the same time. This event would act as a lightning rod, diverting the indies’ attention to their second-favourite pastime of making games. (Although regretably, a group of unrepentant maniacs had to be released into Kensington Gardens.)

The World of Love Game Jam was held at Honeyslug’s offices in Kentish Town on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th June 2010. It comprised of four three-hour jam sessions, and a proportionate amount of time in pubs and restaurants. Over the course of the weekend it is estimated that around 35 games aficionados made an appearance, from backgrounds as diverse as MMOs, social games, journalism, console development and academia.

The suggested themes of the sessions were:

1. Facebook, Traps

2. Vegetables, Hugs

3. Light and Shade, Water Water Everywhere, The Blob

4. The Jury, Reunion, Drifting

The results (that were deemed fit for public consumption) can be found at the Cambridge Friendship Club site: http://cambridgeindies.com/events/jam-world-love

A woefully incomplete list of attendees can be found here: http://lovejam.eventbrite.com/

My impression of the event (compared to the grand total of one game jam that I’d attended previously) was that it was remarkably quiet and intensive. While there was some collaboration going on, the majority were content to tinker on their own projects until (and beyond) the end of the allotted time before casually demonstrating them to the group.

As I spent most of my time squinting at Deluxepaint and inelegantly hacking at Python, I am sure I missed a lot of people’s stuff entirely, but out of things going on at my end of the room/things drawing the biggest crowds/things with the loudest sound effects, standouts were Terry’s Vegetable Game, Kieron’s VVVVVVegetable, Perrin and Terry’s Blind Faith, Alice’s VIDEO GAME, and Alan Hazelden’s blood-soaked tentacle-vs.-submarine game. The best game that I only found on the website afterwards ribbon goes to Don’t Eat Kittens. There were loads and loads more.

But as well as games, friendships were made, plans were hatched and fun was had (and other cliches). There are going to be more London-based game jams. Oh yes.

Edge have done a feature on Minis with Sony which also features an interview with Ricky around our becoming involved in the Minis programme and also working with Sony.

In a double whammy the magazine has also named, Poto and Cabenga as “Internet Game of the Month”, pretty cool, eh?

Edge issue 216 is out now and available from any competently stocked newsagent. Check out a preview of the issue here.

Coming Soon – Hopefully we’ll have some exciting news on some new games and our plans for Kahoots on iPad and iPhone, AND we’ve got our talk at Develop Conference in mid-July to tell you about, AND we’ll have some more updates to the look of the website. Also, some new pictures to celebrate our second birthday in July! Hooray!

We we’re really excited about the election, voting is generally seen as “a good thing” here at Honeyslug and this all segues nicely into telling you about another vote you can take part in, it’s the C+VG Golden Joystick Awards, and you can help us make the shortlist in a number of categories!

Simply go to http://www.goldenjoystick.com/, and you can vote for us and our games in the following categories:

Downloadable Game of the Year: Kahoots
Online Game of the Year: Poto and Cabenga
Portable Game of the Year: Kahoots
UK Dev of the Year: Honeyslug (yay!)
Ultimate Game of the Year: Both games

Voting on the longlist closes on the 27th May, so if you love our stuff and love us, please give us your support and we may make the shortlist!

It’s located here but you can also download it from iTunes should you wish to listen to it on your choice of mp3 player.

Many thanks to Tom’s Bramwell and Champion and the rest of the guys at Eurogamer and GI.biz for an entertaining time and sub-zero drinking environment on Brighton beachfront.

Sounds incredibly tricky, yet it’s really not that difficult [to grasp] at all. – Indiegames.com

Poto & Cabenga sort of feels like what would happen if Eric Carle decided to start making flash games. – Jay Is Games

Hell, worth playing just to have the title screen bobble along with its neat parallax. – Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Play Two Games With One Button in GAMMA Finalist Poto & Cabenga – Bytejacker

Poto & Cabenga only needs one button to make your Monday a loss for the company and a net gain for your dignity. – Two Fedoras

One man, one horse, two screens, two eyeballs, one button? – Flytrap Games

Cute browser game that gives quite a different game experience. – Hawaii Kawaii

If you still haven’t found out what all the fuss is about, try Poto & Cabenga out here.

Personally, we’re keen for people to experience it P&C fresh, but if you need a little info about the game (and it has been a while since our last posting), there’s a lovely feature on it from the Destructoid website.

Poto & Cabenga was a very much collaborative effort on the creation side, with artist Richard Hogg working on the design closely with Ricky, and excellent work on the Animation and Music sides from Kwok Fung Lam and DNR respectively. There are links from the Poto & Cabenga site to their work, and we urge you to check them out once you’re done playing the game.

We hope you enjoy it!