We Am One!

Yep, on the 11th June 2008, a small group of developers with a wallet full of redundancy cash and a pocket full of dreams officially incorporated as Honeyslug Limited. Twelve months on, we have our own office, business cards, blog (hiya!), and the small matter of four games out in the wild. The next 12 months will see the new site up and running, along with the release of more flash based fun (not least the final arrival of Kahoots), My Pet Dino on PC and our move into development on other games platforms. All done to the soundtrack of BBC 6Music, unless George Lamb is on.

Setting up a company was the simple part, drumming up business (and resulting cash) to make that company's existence worthwhile has been (and will continue to be) hard work, but given we've made it to the important first birthday with work steadily rolling in, we must be doing something right!

Happy birthday to us!

I Am Dino, Hear Me Roar!

We've not mentioned My Pet Dinosaur for some time now, largely because it's been finished for a bit (so we're going through the whole post-dev business of getting a PEGI rating, box artwork, min spec-ing, etc that stuff you'd normally shunt onto a publisher) and we're busy with tons of other stuff. So perhaps it is as good a time as any for a quick burst of update on that front.


My Pet Dinosaur is a virtual pet game where, you raise a Dinosaur from hatchling to something akin to the size of the Cloverfield monster, except without the statue vandalism, people killing and the entire force of the US military firing shots at you. No, our dinosaurs are nice dinosaurs, all they require is feeding, cleaning, a toy to chase, maybe having a massive dump from time to time and a natty Afro wig and shades combo (natch).


As your dino ages, it discovers new locations to play in and learns new skills which it can improve them over time, he can also have competitions and races against his 4 new dino friends. As I hinted before, you can kit out your dinosaur with different types of headgear and glasses, some of them improve your dinos skills, others just make them look good.


My Pet Dinosaur will, in all likelihood, hit the stores in the summer, so keep 'em peeled. Here's some new screen shots below.

Pixel Hail#1 - We're On Display in Brighton!

You know how I love to over elaborate pre-amble for these blog postings, well I'm prepared to make an exception here...

Brighton Fishing Museum:

22nd - 24th May
Pixel Hail #1: The Art of Videogames
An exhibition of art from, and inspired by, videogames

For three days, the annex of Brighton's Fishing Museum will be taken over by a multimedia exhibition of art from, and inspired by, videogames. Award winning videogames artists will exhibit, alongside artists who's lives are meshed in someway with the world's largest entertainment industry: videogames.

Private view: the Friday night opening event will play host to the UK and Brighton's games luminaries as well as artists and members of the press. A mobile phone auction on the evening will give away an exclusive one-off piece of game art, with all proceeds going to charity. The following two days will be a public exhibition with a special kids' cosplay event on the Saturday afternoon outside the Fishing Museum.
Attendees from AtomFire, Double Six, HoneySlug, Creative Assembly, BBC, Habbo/Sulake, Scary Beasties, SEGA, SCEE... and more.

Come down and you can see some stuff from our games and possibly chat to Richard, Natalie or myself.

http://www.brightonfishingmuseum.org.uk/whatson.html

Ric Rococo: International Art Thief - Out Today!

Ric Rococo is finally ready to take on the world of international art theivery! Control Ric through 10 different galleries, stealing everything from old masters to modern impressionists whilst using your stealth and skill to avoid the gaze of surveillance cameras, or being captured by security guards. Ric is aided by his long suffering girlfriend and accomplice, Nancy, who will hover from the Rocococopter to salvage your ill-gotten gains.

You can find Ric Rococo: International Art Thief across the Spil network of websites right now which are worldwide. Cos we're Brits, like, we're going to point you in the direction of http://www.mygames.co.uk/game/Art-Thief.html

We hope you enjoy it!

Migrant Workforce

Well, we're in the process of migrating our site and this blog over to a more integrated solution, which has proved a baptism of fire for me. Ricky's been on at me for a while to try and sort it, and it has only been in the last week that I've had a chance to do owt. Up until a week ago, my exploits into the wonderful world of html/xml were limited to cut and paste jobs on here and taking ages to get my head round LUA scripting. So it's been a fairly encouraging experience that I've managed to get the site up and running and looking something akin to a proper site in less than a week. 

Some advice I was given early doors on html editing was to hit the forums, and true enough 90% of the questions I've had I can get answers to pretty quickly on them. Other stuff I've battled without answers and there is very little that has defeated me so far. To be honest, it's been a pretty enjoyable experience (albeit punctuated with a number of expletives) and a nice little break from creative accounting and spoiling people's fun saying "Yes, that'd be really cool but we have no time/money/programmer/etc..."

With a fair wind, our new site should be up within the next week or so, then you'll be able to contact me on it to ask me what all the fuss was about.

P.S. Look out for a substantially less mundane update early next week, small developer fanboys!

Kahoots - The final push

We're heading into the final stretch of work on Kahoots, with some tweaks and changes to the look, new backgrounds and a shiny new title screen.

So out goes the Peg Beast, though he'll be loitering around the tutorial screens, and in comes the nemesis of the Kahoot, the Cardborg.


We're chucking in some achievements for the player with Nat getting herself in best punning mode for the titles of the achievements.


Ricky and Nat have been working to finalise GUI elements, which has involved more plasticine and also Nat holding small objects up against the screen to check they won't be too obtrusive to the game itself.


Perhaps you'd like to see some game screen shots, hmm?

Old Big 'ead is Back

No, we haven't made a football game based on Brian Clough's 44 days in charge at Leeds United, apart from anything else, there's very little unpredicability in how the game would conclude, instead we celebrate the arrival of Balloon Headed Boy on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Balloon Headed Boy is supposed to be celebrating his birthday, with all his friends in Balloon Town, when a terrible storm scatters his balloon friends to all corners of the kingdom and dumps a load of no-good, hat-wearing frogs in their place. Faced with the prospect of the most rubbish birthday ever, he begins an adventure across 34 levels to rescue his friends.

Balloon Headed Boy (or BHB as he's known to his friends and those who can't be arsed typing his full name again) is a 2D platform game in which you navigate the titular boy rescuing balloon friends and avoiding hazards such as spikes, rising water and frogs wearing sombreros (!), however, BHB can't jump, so how does he get up to those hard to reach, nay, seemingly inaccessible platforms? Well, he can pick up Farty Flowers which help him inflate his head so he can glide gently upwards, but inflating his head also allows him to break through certain things. Some blocks are unstable and if dropped on by deflating BHB's head while hovering over them, he lands with a bump and dislodges the block to access other areas. Also, his friend the Helicat can be freed from its icy prison to push BHB up into seemingly closed off locations.

Here comes the science bit...Balloon Headed Boy has a long and rich heritage, originally a mobile Java game, he's made the transition to PC downloadable format, Flash and now iPhone. Many of the challenges faced making a game for iPhone are down to user interface, the biggest USP of the iPhone, it's lovely touchscreen and accelerometer (the tilt thing, non-tech types!), can also present their own unique challenges when transferring from more traditional button based control systems. Even when settling on a control system that works, you still have to bear in mind that the larger that control area is, the more it will obscure on-screen goings on. We worked closely with our colleagues at publisher Gimme5games.com to develop the control system which makes most sense, exploits the unique interface opportunities of the iPhone and impacts on screen real-estate as little as possible.

We're happy with the solution and we're sure you're itching to part with a meagre £2.39 to find out. If you want to have a try out before you commit to parting with £2.39 (or 4 Greenbacks for our North American fans), there's a fully playable Flash version on BalloonHeadedBoy.com as well as links to the appstore where there is also a Balloon Headed Boy Lite containing a selection of levels you can download and play for FREE on the iPhone. 

Come on! 34 levels for £2.39! That's *grabs calculator* 7p (or 11cents) per level. Get yourselves over to the Balloon Headed Boy Page where not only can you buy the iPhone game, you can buy BHB themed t-shirts, mugs and such like or download free stuff to adorn your myspace page. Bargains all over the shop!