Often times it takes a bad game to show a journalist’s true literary skills. Great games tend to write their own reviews, they command you to write about the same excellent features that everyone else is writing about. Bad games on the other hand allow journalists the freedom to exercise their creativity. It takes real skill to slice hundreds of wafer thin strips of flesh from the still living (and writhing) body of a game without killing it. The deserved victim should suffer until the very end of the review if the reader is to understand the full depth of its awfulness. As a prime example I give you Quintin Smith’s review of WET http://videosgames.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/wet-review/

“All told, Wet is a man who vomits on you on the bus and doesn’t even say sorry.”

Obviously as a developer I feel for the guys who worked to make the game. I know only too well how many factors outside of the developers control can result in a game failing to meet its design goals. Having said that, gamers do need to know and if you are going to put yourself/your game out there you need to take the resulting knocks.

I don’t think I have enjoyed a review quite as much since the 1992 release of Domark’s AV8B Harrier Assault for Amiga (developed by Simis). After all these years most of it is long forgotten but the line in the review which bemoaned the slow frame rate is forever burned into my mind…

“If i chopped my legs off and nailed the stumps to the floor, I could still run round the block faster than this game.”

A new selection of screen shots have been added to the Space Ark page and can also be downloaded from the new Space Ark media page. The media page also includes previously released assets such as videos, company information and copies of previous press releases.

The guys over at Console Arcade just posted an interview we did with them last week. In it we talk about our fondness for bright colours and the fact that Digital Distribution may let developers escape the problems of retail publishing but it also presents you with a whole new set of challenges.

You can check out the whole piece over at http://www.console-arcade.com/features/strawdog-studios-interview/

An interview we did with Ben Parfitt has just been posted over at Intent Media’s casualgaming.biz site.

The interview was set up by PR guru Dene Landucci (every indie developer should hire a PR person to help promote their business) and in it we discuss a range of topics including the challenges of developing original games,  iTunes vs XBLA vs PSN, piracy (boo hiss) and our new XBLA game.

You can find the full interview at http://www.casualgaming.biz/news/28626/INTERVIEW-Strawdog-Studios

Just spotted the first review of Turbo Duck to hit the net at Gamedroid. Now obviously they liked the game but the thing I really like about the review is the fact that they obviously paid attention to what they were doing. They didn’t just play through the game and say what they did/didn’t like. They clearly paid attention to the details as you can see from this quote…

“For example: every time a submarine re-surfaces and creates a wave, that wave will change your ducks direction when it hits it.”

The submarines aren’t in every level and yet the reviewer has picked up on what is actually quite a small feature. None the less it is a feature that the team worked to include in the game and as a developer it is always nice when someone notices those things you have worked hard to include.

Game announced…. check
Video released… check

The press have been really great and picked up the announcement story and the video. Here are a selection of the sites that have covered the game so far…. thanks guys.

Finger Gaming

IGN Wireless

Zmogo

Videogamer.com and Screenshots

Gamesindustry.biz

Gamershell

DailyGamesNews

PocketGamer

MACNOTESDE

iPhone Kung Fu

Next stop game reviews….

So I was down at GameSpot HQ today joining Guy and Alex in their soundproof basement for their latest podcast. It’s a pretty good format, they cover a wide selection of games news and reviews, and so we were pleased to have the invitation to talk a little bit about Geon, how it started out on Xbox Live Arcade, and how we’ve been busy porting it to PSN and Wii. We also talked a little bit about what we’re doing next as well as how Strawdog Studios got started, which is something I always forget is interesting to many folks. The whole idea of setting up your own company to make games can be either crazy and/or inspiring! I’m pretty sure we’ll write more about that one day.
Anyway the podcast homepage is here, but you can hear today’s epsiode right here.

So our brand new best friends over at wonderwallweb have uploaded their first thoughts on Geon, and it certainly seems to have created the right emotion with them anyway! We’re really pleased to read that they have enjoyed the game, and taken the time to note some of the things we hoped would get recognition: the new tutorial, the new strategy behind the emotions and level designs, and the refined competition in the various game modes.

So for this review, www, we salute you!

http://wonderwallweb.com/article-481-Geon-.html

Those of you interested in what goes on behind the scenes of the game development business might like to head over to IGN and read their article entitled From Cuball to Geon and beyond. The article focuses on the various business challenges that we faced in getting the game to market.

The article discusses how the game was originally conceived back in 2005 as Cuball (Cube All) and pitched internally using a pre-visualisation demo. All the games we develop here at Strawdog Studios start off with a video, which is used to get buy-in from the team and ensure that everyone understands what we are aiming for. The next stage was to produce a playable demo to pitch to a publisher but, as a small and relatively new development studio we didn’t have the necessary funds to pay for this.

The article highlights the amount of time that gets eaten up by business with months needed to raise investment, months needed to negotiate publishing deals, more months needed when publishers fail and you have to find a new publisher, as well as the time it takes to decide upon and register (trademark) a game name. As the article shows, Geon was in fact the third name for the game, with one name being dropped because it caused confusion (people thought that Cuball was a Pool game) and another, Ora, being dropped because it conflicted with an existing trademark. In short there is an incredible amount that goes on behind the scenes in a game development company that isn’t actually development (and eats into the time available for development).