In-game music for Death Ray Manta ‘Death Ray Manta Anthem’

Just did some in-game musics for my mate Rob and his game ‘Death Ray Manta’

The game is white hot. Imagine you could encapsulate that feeling of sneakily swigging the milk out of the bottle, stood in front of the fridge, knowing any minute someone could walk in and shout at you – into a videogame. That’s how it feels to play. Keep sipping from that sweet milk bottle all you like, but eventually you’ll get busted. It’s probably the most glorious, euphoric, anthemic fun you can have in a game in under 3 minutes.

Rob compares the experience to a videogame being played as a music chart single. I can totally get on board with that. It’s the thrill of driving on the motorway at night with your lights turned off just to see how many seconds you can do it before you bottle it and put them back on. It’s bouncing round your room while your favourite childhood single is playing, the moment made all the sweeter knowing that it will soon stop. But with prettier particle effects.

It’s available to download in ‘Bundle in a Box’ which seems like an unbelievably good deal: $0.99 for D.R.M., Space Giraffe (one of my all time faves) and some other stuff I haven’t seen before but look fresh.

Edge Online gave Death Ray Manta a well deserved 8, and called my composition ‘relentlessly euphoric’ which was lovely of them! You can hear my tune here…

Frutorious released on iOS

Things have been busy! We’ve just put out Frutorious onto the AppStore. This is a big thing for me because it’s a project I’ve enjoyed more than any other I’ve worked on in the games industry. Many many reasons for that, but the main one being because of working the fantastic team of Charlie and Graham.

Here’s the launch trailer:

You can download Frutorious on the AppStore here:
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/frutorious/id524952395?mt=8

It’s getting there slowly! Each day the Facebook page gets new likes from folk from a massive variety of backgrounds, and everyone we know who’s played it has had fun. It’s also got a lot of great reviews on the AppStore which is really really flattering: http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/frutorious/reviews/

Something that makes me quite excited too, we’ve got a lot of really great feedback from players which we’ll put into the next update (along with a very unexpected gaming cross over… more on that soon)

Just finished the Frutorious sound track

This has been fun, writing the music for Frutorious. I’ve used a variety of things to make it happen, from acoustic guitars to sequencers and groove boxes.

The theme tune came first, the g-funk and dub later after a spell of ragtime experimentation.

You can listen to it here:

Frutorious E3 trailer!

Here it is, boys and girls!

The frame rate is a little shonky in this video but the game itself is smooth as a peach. It’s just because I’ve had to record the display out on my iPad using this application for Jailbroken iPads called Display Recorder It does the job but it can drop frames a bit.

Anyway, this should give everyone a good idea of how the game looks and plays! It’s still got a lot of art and polish to go in, so stay tuned for more footage soon because it’ll keep getting better and better!

Like Frutorious on Facebook to be sure you’re first for later updates http://www.facebook.com/Frutorious

Update!

Well I’m settling in nicely as my new role of creative director at Infinite State Games.

It’s great to be making games I care about again, and fantastic to be making games suitable and appealing for everyone and anyone.

We’ve assembled a great little team at ISG, headed up by code Godfather; Charlie Scott-Skinner.

As Creative Director, I’m dealing with the design, art and audio as well as social media marketing and all that stuff. We’ve also roped in an old talented friend Neon Hearts on senior level design duty who’s bringing a lot of joy and original ideas to levels and the company as a whole.

Our first big project as the newly expanded Infinite State Games studio; Frutorious, is going REALLY well.  It’s a good few months off being complete, the art needs a bit of polish and we’re knocking out as many levels as we can to give people a rich and varied experience.  There’ll be a lot of focus testing before release to make sure it’s as fun as possible and we’re starting to get very excited indeed.

What’s equally as exciting is the amount of people who are inspired by it to offer us help in a variety of ways from marketing and graphic design to play testing and feedback.

For me though, the best thing about it is that it has inspired some friends in the mainstream games industry to start making their own games in their spare time.  I suppose if three guys can make a game out of plasticine, felt and pipecleaners it gives everyone hope!

Concept art for the intro sequence

So here’s some concept art that our illustrator has created for us for the intro-sequence for Frutotype. We think it looks fantastic and can’t wait to see the finished painted version!

If you’re feeling his and thinking ‘wow, this illustrator is awesome! I want to hire her!’ go here and have a look at the rest of her stuff. It’s something else…  kaeillustration.blogspot.com

Blast from the past – Zombie Commander!

Here’s some prototype footage of an unreleased Nintendo DS game that I designed and my main man Charlie at Infinite State Games coded:

Shame it never got bought up, it was made way before Zombies got utterly ruined by the game dev community! Still, a demo lives on and one day who knows, it may find its way to a mobile platform near you!

Frutorious – The folk song

The third in what will probably be an on-going but sporadic series… here’s what the Frutorious theme music would sound like if it were a piece of folk music!

Props to Mr. Pickle for the guitaring x

Frutorious update: FRUTORIOUS LIVES

Here’s a video of the latest Frutorious WIP prototype. As of just now we have some particles, some parallax and some peril! All the levels are randomly generated at the moment but we’re soon moving on to the next stage … making levels! Exciting.

We’ve also got an illustrator on board to paint the intro sequence for us in acrylics and she’s already coming up with some heartbreakingly cute stuff. More news on that soon!

Run, Mr.Fruits! Run!

Here’s a photo of some new characters, Mrs. Fruits and Pedro the skull.

Don’t worry though, chums! Snr.Frutz and his wife get away safely in the end!