Been a while since I updated the blog!

Recently They Need To Be Fed has been updated with 4 new worlds (that’s 32 new levels!). The update is free and available on iOS and Android. Also, the game is one of the new titles for the Xperia PLAY by Sony Ericsson. That means you can play the game with buttons which is cool and slightly better than the touch screen.

They Need To Be Fed on a giant Xperia PLAY at GamesCom (photo from YoYo Games News).

A few screenshots of the new worlds:

You’ll have to play the game to figure out what each new world does.

New features include:

• 32 new levels
• over 100 new diamonds to collect
• 11 new achievements
• Now a universal app (iOS)

Let me know what you think of the new worlds!

HTML5

Don’t have the game yet? Want to try it out for free? You can now with the new HTML5 version! Check it out.

Next week Casual Connect is being held in Seattle, and I’ve been invited to talk about They Need To Be Fed!

What is Casual Connect?

It’s basically a big event with lots of talks from people in the games industry and opportunity for networking. Especially companies that make mobile and/or social network games are present. In their own words:

“Casual Connect brings together the most talented and knowledgeable experts in the casual gaming field to further the casual games industry with the best of networking and learning.”

What is the talk called?

“Creating addictive gameplay in They Need To Be Fed”

What is the talk about?

I will be talking about how I designed They Need To Be Fed, what kind of decisions I made (good, and bad ones) and what I learned from the process.

When?

July 21st (Thursday), 12:30 – 13:15

Where?

Triple Door.

Special surprise

After my talk I will showcase a new title by Q-Games, where I work since this year. Hopefully it will excite people!

If you are going to the event or happen to live in Seattle come and check it out! Otherwise, please wait for a new blog update or any other news sites that may cover the event.

250 Indie Games You Must Play

A book by Mike Rose, editor for the IndieGames.com blog. I received my copy about a week ago and can really recommend it. Basically, each page shows another game with a little description, a screenshot and short url to play the game. It’s great to have so many great games together in 1 book, for inspiration, for just flipping through and for finding something new (and almost always interesting) to play.

I feel honored to say that 3 of my games have been included! Get the book to find out which 3

Here’s what they need to do next: Take all the 250 screenshots in the book and put them together into 1 poster. I would totally buy that!

Get it at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/250-Indie-Games-Must-Play/dp/143987574X

Game Maker 8 Cook Book

Written by Uriel Griffin (who ports my games to Mac), this book is set to come out real soon (in June).

From the website:

Written in a cookbook style, this book offers solutions using a recipe based approach. Each recipe contains step-by-step instructions followed by an analysis of what was done in each task and other useful information. The cookbook approach means you can dive into whatever recipes you want in no particular order.

The cover features a scene from They Need To Be Fed (mobile version).

I haven’t seen the book yet so I’ll reserve my judgment, but hopefully this turns out to be a good new book specific for beginners using Game Maker 8.

Pre-order here: https://www.packtpub.com/game-maker-8-cookbook/book

「PLAYism for Japan」とは？

東日本大震災復興支援のためのサポートを募っています。

2011年3月11日に発生した東日本大震災の復興支援金を皆様から募集しています。集まったお金は、全額日本赤十字社へお贈りさせていただきます。100円以上サポートしていただいた方には、スペシャルパッケージをお贈りさせていただきます。

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PLAYismで、「They Need To Be Fed」の日本語版(PC)が発売中！パッケージに「サモロスト1」っていうクリック操作で不思議な世界を探索するゲームも入ってる。興味あったら、是非！

URL:　http://www.playism.jp/project/detail.php?game=8

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PLAYism is a new website for selling and funding development of small, innovative, creative titles. Currently they are running the “PLAYism for Japan” campaign, where people can buy indie game packs for a small fee and support victims of the earth quake at the same time!

The link above leads to a package including an exclusive Japanese version of They Need To Be Fed and point and click adventure Samorost. If you’re interested feel free to take a look (and you can study some Japanese as well!)

The very first Karoshi game has been released on the Mac App Store today, for free!

(There are actually 6 Karoshi games now!).

Karoshi – Mac App Store (Apple website)

For anyone who has a Mac and would like to experience more Karoshi, or would like to see how the series started, I recommend it! It’s still one of the best in the series, only passed by the direct sequel Karoshi 2.0.

The other Karoshi titles are planned for release as well, though I can’t promise they will be free. If people enjoy this one, hopefully they’ll be happy to support us with a dollar here and there to enjoy the sequels.

Looking forward to the reviews. Will people think it’s a fun game? Will they mention how terrible the graphics are?

As always, curious to hear your ideas on all this.

You Probably Won’t Make It is doing well on the Mac App Store. The game is currently featured by Apple for the second time, this time in a temporary category called “The Best Games You’ve Never Played”. I believe the first time it was under “New & Noteworthy”. Reviews are fairly positive, though there are some complaints.

We’ve addressed some of the issues with a small update that is now available. New are the requested mute button and a level select screen. The level select screen leaves room for more levels to be added but I don’t know yet whether I will actually take the time to design them.

Sales

For those interested here are some sales numbers.

• YPWMI

You Probably Won’t Make It has made around $1400 so far, and will likely keep selling for a while, albeit I don’t expect it to do big daily numbers for much longer.

• Frozzd

Frozzd has some nice positive reviews but hasn’t received much attention. Up till now it made about $150.

Taking into account that Apple takes a 30% cut, I am still very pleased with these numbers and am happy people are enjoying the games. It won’t make me rich (and luckily it doesn’t have to) but it’s good experimenting with this market. It would be interesting to see what an entirely new (and bigger) game could do, but I am not in the position at the moment to try that. However, together with Vetra Games I am still working on bringing some of my other work to the Mac App Store.

Karoshi was released on the European PlayStation Store as a PSP minis on April 6.

(photo by Piotr Gnys)

In 2009 I did a student exchange and studied at Kyoto Seika University for half a year. I took a course called Digital Creation, and in one of the classes we made a game for iPhone. TORIPORO was the result. Although the game was finished in 2009, when I went back to the Netherlands communication went slow (everyone busy with uni) and we had to update the code a few times when a new iOS came out (went from 2 to 4 during this time). It’s finally done..!

TORIPORO was made by a team of 6 students. Project leader, 2 artists, a musician, and 2 programmer / game designers (one of which was me). I developed the concept together with the other programmer / game designer and we built it in 3 months. None of us had prior experience with Xcode (Apple’s program) or Objective C (the language) but that’s what we used. Was pretty tough but a good learning experience (unfortunately we couldn’t spend much time polishing the game design because we were busy enough with programming).

It was a lot of fun working together, seeing the concept come together, seeing the crazy art our artists came up with, working until the next morning to get the game finished, etc. The experience of working together with these students is something I won’t quickly forget. I hope some of that enthusiasm can be seen back in the game.

The game

In TORIPORO you control a strange creature in space, that uses its 3 arms to move across planets. You are out to catch and collect other weird aliens (presumable for research purposes….). Basically, using touch you move its hands one by one from planet to planet. Additionally you can pull its head (let go and it’ll wobble back and forth) and use it to collect the creatures you come across. There are 51 different creatures to find, and you can check your “collection screen” to see which you’ve gathered. Some are quite rare and difficult to obtain. When playing well, you can reach new levels (up to 5) and some of the craziest creatures can only be found in the later stages.

Because the game is quite short (it’s more of a minigame) and because the quality of iPhone games has gone up considerably since 2009 we’ve decided to put the game up for free.

Features

* Over 50 different creatures to catch
* Time Attack mode
* Beautiful sound and music
* 5 levels to reach
* Original graphic style

Links

Official website

Blog (in Japanese)

iTunes web page

TORIPORO is only available for a limited time, and it’s free!

If you give it a try I’d be interested to hear what you think.

Recently I was interviewed by AppsJP, a Japanese website that reviews iPhone games and occasionally interviews developers. Here is the original in Japanese: 【AppsJPインタビュー、日本語】

The interview is mostly about They Need To Be Fed, as Karoshi wasn’t out yet at the time it was taken.

Hit the jump for the English version.

Continue reading ‘Interviewed by AppsJP’ »

YoYo Games released another 4 games for Android devices, including my 2 titles They Need To Be Fed and Karoshi.

If you’ve been wanting to play but don’t own a compatible Apple device this could be your chance. Get them from the Android Market website:

Karoshi

They Need To Be Fed

I do not have an Android device myself so if you have any comment or if there is a problem please let me know. Hope it runs fine!