I’ve just sent an email to Brendan Watts and Shawn Eustace, the guys behind Defiant Development and creators of Ski Safari, an ultra-adictive endless runner game.
I’d like to interview them, but as they have already sold 500.000 copies of the game, I’m sure they are pretty busy thinking what to do with all that money, so I’m writing this post to make them feel bad if they don’t accept.
I know, I know… I’m a genius!
Update: No answer from Defiant… I’m sure they are too busy. :(
Botanicula it’s an awesome terrarium. It looks alive.
The purpose here is to explore and enjoy, it reminds me to a moving-part book. Critics rated poorly Miyamoto’s Wii Music for being “just a toy” and Botanicula has something of that too, but for me that’s the best compliment a game can get.
It has been under development for 2 and a half years, so launching it for “as much as you want” in the Humble Botanicula Debut is for sure a brave decision. It’s a bit sad to see that after 2 weeks in promotion, only 92.000 people have bought this three masterpieces. You could buy them for 1 cent…
Maybe the lack of media attention is one of the reasons for the “low sales”, Amanita does not have someone working on sales or marketing, so the publishing side it’s not their best point.
Anyway, the game mechanics and the scheme of control seem to be designed for tablets, I can’t think of a better device to play it. I’m sure it will be ready for iOS in a short time, and I’m sure they’ll make some more money.
At least that’s what I hope, because I’m already waiting for a new Amanita adventure.
I’ve listened the Trine 2 soundtrack everyday for the last 2 weeks and I would have never imagined it was done with a couple of keyboards. Incredible.
Ari Pulkkinen has composed some of the most captivating scores I’ve ever listened.
Run Roo Run is a perfect mobile game. Short levels, easy controls, lovely music, cute characters and extremely addictive.
5TH Cell nailed it again. Everyone knew they were good at making games, but now they’ve show that they also know how to market them. They have publish the game themselves and the marketing has been perfect.
Weeks ago, they announced they were working on something, but no one knew much about it. A few days before the release, they contacted Joystiq for an exclusive preview, and minutes later, game sites all over the world writed about it.
This way they launched the game when everyone was talking about it, topping the App Store just in hours. Usually, at least with “bigger” games, studios announce them months before the release but I think this strategy is better. Apple makes something similar with their hardware, they try to get the new products into the stores as soon as they can after showing them. Why lose all the buzz generated for free by the media after the presentation of a product?
You should also check the splendid game site (with a press kit) and the game’s profiles in the main social networks.
As you can see in the last picture, creative director Jeremiah Slaczka is credited at the beginning of the game, I loved this little detail. Why is this not usual in the industry? Is it because games are the result of team work? Movies need even larger teams and they are always introduced with “A movie by…” this gives a personal touch to the work, right? This could be a good topic for an entire new post.
What was I ta… Oh, yeah, Run Roo Run. Just go and download it before Apple runs out of copies!
Requisitos mínimos
Ontem foi para a exposição Game On, do Museu de Imagem e Som de São Paulo. Por 5R$ pode conhecer, e jogar, a historia dos games, de Pong a Kinect.
Vista da minha janela em São Paulo.
No próximo dia 8 de dezembro começa o Festival Games for Change Latin America. Estaremos lá!!
Fotos do lançamento de Saints Row - The Third no São Paulo. Consegue me ver? :P
Al actualizar a la versión 15 de Google Chrome se deshabilita la opción de navegación compacta. Lo cierto es que aunque esta ahorraba mucho espacio de pantalla, al activarla no permitía usar ni el botón “Página de inicio” ni las extensiones, así que resultaba poco práctica.
La primera imágen muestra como me gustaría que fuese el modo compacto y en la segunda vemos como aparecería la omnibar, para ver la dirección de la web y buscar en Google.
Ya puestos, he rediseñado la actual disposición de Chrome, con las pestañas sobre la barra de direcciones (tercera imagen), y en la cuarta he imaginado un modo sin pestañas, que aunque me parece poco práctico, parece que algunos usuarios lo echan en falta.
Por último, he creado un vídeo sobre el modo “Pantalla completa”. Actualmente, al entrar en este modo, no podemos acceder ni a las pestañas, ni a la barra de direcciones ni a la barra de tareas de Windows, así que es inútil. Aunque Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera y Safari si muestran las pestañas y la barra de direcciones al colocar el puntero en la parte superior de la pantalla, ninguno permite ver la barra de tareas de Windows, así que para cambiar de programa tenemos que salir del modo “Pantalla completa”.
Para solucionar esto bastaría con mostrar la barra de inicio al bajar el puntero. No creo que sea muy difícil implementar lo que muestra el vídeo, ¿verdad Google?
