Super Crate Box is probably our best-known game. It’s a fast-paced and filled with action – a small & simple game about collecting crates. Together with the Canada-based duo Halfbot we’re bringing the game to iOS by the end of 2011.
We were invited to speak at Spilbar #8 in Copenhagen & since the Global Game Jam happened the day after, we decided to attend the Copenhagen edition – better known as the biggest Global Game Jam location in the world: the Nordic Game Jam. For those of you who’ve never heard of a Game Jam, it’s basically an event in which small teams of developers try to create a game based on some theme in an extremely limited amount of time – in the case of the Global Game Jam, that’s two days of no sleep, lots of caffeinated drinks and lots of development – but more importantly, it’s a chance for meeting old friends and new friends alike. Some parties and Infinite S.W.A.T. reaching the finals of the event concluded a great weekend over in Copenhagen.
Infinite S.W.A.T. is available for free download after the jump. continue reading… »
Some pretty busy weeks have passed lately, with the Super Crate Box iOS updates taking up most of the time that wasn’t invested in Ridiculous Fishing or GUN GODZ. One thing we’ve been working on behind the scenes was a talk about Game Cloning that we wanted to give over at the Game Developers Conference.
After being through quite an episode with Radical Fishing being cloned, we believe the industry is approaching the topic from the wrong angle – one that is focused on what we cannot do about the problem – and we want to offer an alternative and reignite the discussion from a more constructive perspective. It was just confirmed that we’re actually giving the talk and we’re thankful that we’ve been offered this chance to speak at the Independent Games Summit, an amazing venue to kickstart this new discussion.
In 2010, Vlambeer created Radical Fishing, released it as a sponsored Flash game and began work on an iOS version. As we were working, a third party suddenly released a game – which, down to the upgrades, was almost identical to Radical Fishing’s design. This resulted in a lot of thinking about defining cloning, the dangers it poses to upcoming indie developers and the variety of strong opinions that keep the issue from being debated in a useful manner.
Vlambeer will talk about the practical dangers of clones to our industry and what we CAN do, instead of discussing only what we cannot do. We want to pick up the discussion at its impasse and provide a starting point for a new, more practical conversation about cloning.
Further details and the exact timing of the talk will be announced over at the GDC Schedule Builder.
Unrelated: we’re hoping to push the Super Crate Box iOS update this week & will be attending the Nordic Gamejam in Copenhagen. It’s a busy week, but it’s going to be fun!
Last week, we launched Super Crate Box iOS & as you might’ve heard, it’s being doing well. By now – only 5 days later – 20.000.000 crates have been collected worldwide (which comes down to 150.000 per hour!), the game once almost made it into the top 25, it got a New & Noteworthy status & was even featured on the games page on the US. We’ve been pretty overwhelmed by all thepositivereviewseverywhere – even if you count the criticism about the controls – the majority still seems be able to use them with great efficiency.
In other news, GUN GODZ for Brandon Boyers’ Venus Patrol Kickstarter is nearing completion! Just last week, as we were revving up to launch Super Crate Box iOS, we played through the entire game from A to Z for the first time. We’ve had a great time listening to KOZILEK’s amazing hip-hop beats (on an related note, if you dig Super Crate Box’s OST, grab it here!). This means that the game should be in your hands (if you pledged!) really, really soon!
UPDATE: Super Crate Box iOS reached 500,000 crates in less than 5 hours after release. UPDATE (II): Holy shit, Super Crate Box broke into the top 100 paid apps worldwide – without Apple feature or New & Noteworthy (yet?). That means this is all the work of all you amazing people out there supporting us. We’re really thankful for your support & for helping us out! Let’s see how high we can get this thing!
Our year had an amazing start with hundreds of reactions on our 2012 contest – way more than we expected. It took us a day to recover from all the festivities & another to argue which entries won prizes, but we’ve come to a nice set of winners.
Rami on februari 1, 2012 |
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Rami Ismail
Jan Willem Nijman