Talk of the town

Hello you. Continuing on from the positive vibes of last week, we're now getting some big sites commenting about us and Kahoots. If you gaze to your left, after you finish reading this otherwise you won't have a clue why you are doing it, you will find a few new links in the "Things said about us" section. Games review stalwarts such as Pocket Gamer, Kotaku and Eurogamer have features on Kahoots and PSP minis in which we feature heavily (or exclusively).

You can go and look now, I'm done with you, here.

Cologne Day 3 - Pork, Press, Passes and Planes

So, the final day and the final countdown to my 9.30 minis press conference, After a late session of tweaking and listening to Everton turn over Sigma Olomouc, my pre- press conference agenda was a quick shower, final bit of packing, maybe grab a quick bit of brekkie, then head to the show with ease. Well, that was the plan...Everything went well until the final bit of packing, then panic, no show pass.

Unpack everything, can't find it, unpack small bag, nothing. Check all the side pockets, nothing. Noooooo! A further 10 minutes of frantic and fruitless packing, unpacking, throwing the bedding all over the gaff, still no pass. Absolute nightmare. I threw caution to the wind and went over on the off chance I could get in off the back of it being important enough either I or Sony could blag it. John Booth (Sony), who'd been an absolute legend throughout the entire show, sorted me out at the entrance, but it was a scary half hour, there.

With hindsight, it was probably the best thing that could've happened, I'd stopped fretting about the press conference and was now more worried about looking like I'd done a 10k run on the way to the centre. Prior to the press conference, I had quick chats with fellow devs at the presentation, Jeff Tremblay (Frima), Chris Gibbs (EA Mobile) and Ash Manif (Subatomic)before it was time to do this thing.

The presentation was a surreal experience, very informal and far better (in terms of my performance) than I expected it to be. There are things I wish I'd said differently, but really I'm pretty pleased at how I came across in the conference. I hope my work will be of benefit to the company as a whole, the guys at Sony were pretty pleased, and Jeff congratulated me as I sat down (I think he'd sussed my "rabbit in the headlights" look at the runthrough on Thursday).

Press conference done, I finally went for a wander round some of the show, took some snaps, then headed for the hotel to catch up with some work and catch up with Nat and Ricky. The minis announcement is certainly starting to have an affect, I've got two email interviews from high profile internet review sites, so the impression it has left on our company profile has been almost immediate and very significant. We'd have to spend large sums of money to get this sort of profile without the support of a publisher/platform holder and what they bring to the party.

All the gushing and name dropping in this post is shocking, it's starting to sound like a Piers Morgan article.

So finally, I got to see some show, and now so can you (though I dare say you've already seen a shed load of better taken pics on any number of gaming sites).

Wouldn't you know it, I get home, start to unpack and what do I find...

Cologne Day 2 - Is this place twinned with Neasden?

Day 2 started with the ubiquitous bout of beer sweats and an early morning meeting, but any plans to go out and about in Cologne were rendered pointless by the looming Press conference on Friday morning, which meant I had to blast out some sharp looking powerpoint slides about us and Kahoots. Thankfully both Ricky and Nat were absolute bricks when it came to dropping everything to help me out, it was a much slicker piece of work thanks to them.

After a quick runthrough with the Sony guys and the other dev's it was back to the hotel, I'd still seen nothing of the show apart from the Sony stand, on the way back I noticed that the LaXwall Arena is actually a portal to my home, looking like an almost exact replica of a certain stadium just up the road from Brent Park Tesco.

An evening spent in the hotel bar practicing, surfing and watching German's swearing at the women's high jump produces the first signs of "Honeyslug" cropping up more and more in the games press.

You want the pictures? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE PICTURES!

If you couldn't handle pics, you're certainly not going to be able to handle a video...

Cologne Day 1 - Bitte Warten, Bitter Water

First day has certainly been an interesting one. My media training stood me in good stead for the interviews and grillings from the mixed collection of press types. Obviously the announcement of the PSP minis has gained us some interest, and the question "So where are you guys based?" is now "So you guys are in Camden, yeah?", so our place in the games food chain has just moved up slightly.

I'd forgotten how tiring stand work is, and when the large booth opposite you is belting out the much overrated Calvin Harris every 10 minutes, you want to cry at first, though it gets easier as the day continues and seeing the reaction to Kahoots has really made it worthwhile. One of the real thrills I got today was watching people realise how the mechanic worked and then yes go "ah, yes. That's really good"

After a day doing stand work, I went on a Sony night out, I haven't had a Sony night out since Sony was called Psygnosis. It was very different to what I'm used to, nobody was sick down a marketing ladies top and there wasn't a narky coach driver threatening to dump us all at Cronton. Though I still managed to find someone who still calls me "Minwind" and my hotel is on a junction that looks a bit like Switch Island, so the old school wasn't too far away.

More pictures!

'scuse me love? This train go, to Koelnmesse?

I can't do the umlaut, otherwise it'd be AUTHENITIC! Anyway, been in Cologne for a good chunk of the day now, although my mind is still busy with the trauma of trying to buy train tickets with something larger than a €10 note, trams are worse, but let's not start on that. Two meetings so far, though they were more catch-up/hellos than serious businichatter, plus my mind was still spinning with the dual headaches of my long term inability to enjoy flying and THE NIGHTMARE OF GETTING A TRAIN WITH ANYTHING OTHER THAN LOOSE CHANGE!

On a different note, Bratwurst, Fried Potato and Red Cabbage is teh win!!!!

Some actual news rather than my neuroses tomorrow in the next terrifying episode of "When Scousers Visit Cologne!!!"

A hint of Cologne

We are in a fortunate position to be able to have a presence at the Gamescom convention in Cologne in the coming week. We're going to be promoting Kahoots while we are out there, so we decided this week to have a few additions to the family to take on a European tour. You can see our attempts (with the original on the left), and our gradual work in progress from slabs of plasticine to living, breathing Kahoots below.

Nat's an excellent (and patient) teacher, though she never prepared us for how painful rolling and shaping plasticine is. It's taken me 4 hours to type this blog post with my nose!

Spare some change???

No, I'm not on the blag for cash, just a quick note to all that the promised switch from the general insolence and quirkiness of Blogger to the warmer climes is still on the cards. I'd like to migrate all the stuff here onto the new site if I can, so we can effectively abandon this place like we've done a runner after not paying the rent, or something.

Anyway, whilst you're waiting with baited breath for that particular brave new dawn, I've made some slight adjustments to the present home of all things Honeyslug.

• There is now a new and exciting little info-burp in the top left which tells you about us, and for those who want to get in touch to tell us how awesome it would be for them to work with us, there's the long lost bizdev contact mail address.
• With the launch of the iPhone version of Art Thief, we're now getting proper reviews for our games, so there is a new link section to game reviews. Only one there right now, but more will follow, then I'll have to have a rethink on the layout, but hopefully we might have the new site up by then.

I'd love to show you a tiny bit of our new site, but then I'd have to kill you, so here's a picture of a Kahoot on a train station instead.