Markus

Unfortunately my impression is that this is a problem not restricted to games journalism only, but journalism in general (just looking at the press coverage of the election campaigns here in Austria makes me sad). And it's always the topics closely related to oneself that you really start to notice how bad things are. Surely there's a small percentage of journalists with enough respect for themselves and their work, who don't invariably tend to always take the easiest route. I don't think the percentage has increased in any way though, which leads me to sadly conclude: there's just too few readers even noticing to make it worth the effort on a broader scale :/

That sucks, sorry to hear :/ Still, I also believe this might be the perfect opportunity to start your own thing

Looking good! Nice art direction, promising concept, and the gameplay video really makes me want to play

After launching our site some months ago and spending far too much time on contract work, Philipp and I finally finished our next little Flash game: coign of vantage http://www.bobblebrook.com/games/coign-of-vantage Adjust your camera pointing at a 3D pixel cloud to form the icon shown in the upper right. The goal is to build as many icons as possible before time runs out. Please let us know what you think, and spread the word if you like it Markus

We had an amazingly high amount of traffick the last few days, after a lot of blogs mentioned the game. Yay! The highscores have finally ventured into impenetrable regions though. I tried playing a few rounds with the tablet yesterday. Does indeed 'feel' good to play, but didn't help me score higher than 1.100.000 either.

Thank you for the kind comments! I'm happy the game is getting so much positive Feedback Oh, damnit. Gotta fix that. Thanks for pointing it out. Yes. We used only 16x16 Icons for this game, because it turned out to be a pretty ideal size for this kind of game, and because they were a lot of fun to make Technically the cloud generator works for sprites in any resolution though. Practice But seriously, the current highscores are even beyond every record we reached during development and testing. A slow computer also helps a bit, as does concentrating on the early icons, because they get you a lot more time bonus. My personal record is somewhere around 1.000.000, which might not get me into the highscorelist anymore either

Hey, been a long time since my last visit to the forums, but here's the reason Exciting News: I've quit my job some months ago to team up with an old friend of mine and take our first coy steps into the jolly realms of game development! For starts we're mainly doing small Flash-Games and only just launched our website with three small games: www.bobblebrook.com Right now we're still pretty occupied with doing various media-related jobs (ranging from Flash-Development to TV-Advertisements) to make at least enough money to pay the rent. The plan for the next months now is reaching a point where we will be able to create Flash-Games on a fairly regular basis of about one game a month, while trying to also develop one bigger and far more ambitious (not browser-based, probably) game a year. Please don't expect too much yet though, the site lacks a lot of content (there'll be a developer-blog coming for example) and we're just trying to get the hang of game production, so existing games might be a little shy on daring design-concepts and still have a rough edge or two, but yeah, I'm pretty excited about all this - mainly about finally having the guts to try and make games for a living - and happy to share the news, as well as excited about getting some feedback on our work so far! I hope it's not inappropriate to spam the link here - if so, I apologise, and please feel free to delete the thread. So, I'm off now to read all the new articles I've missed in the last months - good to see Idle Thumbs has become more active lately!

Thanks you very much for taking the time to give us such detailled feedback, Noyb! Lots of useful input. Oh! I'll take a look at the highscore-script - quite an embarrassing bug *cough* You're absolutely right, still I don't know if there's a great motivation to replay certain levels in a game that - like Twizzle - doesn't count any kind of highscore. On the other hand, some kind of Level Editor would fit the concept quite well, I think. We've been contemplating which keys to use for a little while (tested a few different setups), but since the playing-field rotates all the time, we found that every setup felt somewhat wrong in certain situations. In the end, Up/Down still seemed to be the least confusing one, although I admit we didn't get many opinions on this before releasing the game. Ah, damn. Well, it's not like you already knew you had any forum-members here What did you work on (in case you can talk about it)? Philipp, my colleague here at bobblebrook, programmed the first prototype for Papermint at Avaloop in 2004.

Marek: Thank you! As much as I'd love to just shout "Yes!", the truth is: we don't know yet. Next weeks and months will be lots of collecting statistics and calculating scenarios, which will then give as a clearer outlook on possible ways to go. But right now we don't even know ourselves yet, whether we're going to stay as a team of two and focus solely on our own games, or rather think a bit more expansive with lots of games and developers. Sounds great! Will your trip through Europe lead you to Vienna as well? Make sure to pay us a visit when you're here!

Unfortunately, I have absolutely no natural feeling for rhythm whatsoever. I'm even bad at masturbating. Still, I managed to finish the game on easy mode at least. And I will keep on trying till I've beaten "insane" too, even if it takes me years to do so.

Oh yes!

Psychic World (Game Gear). It is actually horrible, but i still love it to bits.

And double as popular as Mel Gibson, says Wikipedia: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~leon/stats/wikicharts/index.php?ns=articles&limit=100&month=08%2F2006&wiki=enwiki

I was talking about having real metal coins to play as opposed to paper banknotes with Marios face on.

I'm a little bit disappointed you don't get to pay with coins. But i really like the Koopa shell.

Those are the two I meant. While studying, I had Lev as a game design teacher for some time, and i know Barbara through one of my friends. Vienna is tiny Where do you know each other from - GDC probably?

Yes. One of my best friends has been working there for a few months. Also, I know two of their current employees, although with "know" i mean: met them once or twice in my life.

I'm working for a New Media Agency in Vienna - began as graphic designer only, but doing more and more programming and development work in Flash now. Some of my work includes branded games, although this means the more or less boring kind (learning games for kids, different kinds of quizzes, memory etc.). I am experimenting with browser based (Flash, mainly) games in my free time, but i just don't seem to have enough time to finish one of them. Still, this is something i seriously want to expand, and will find a way to do so.

This is great, thank you!

Oh yes! I have some nice memories of Knights of the Round too, but they get punched in the stomach (from behind!) by the frustrating memories everytime i think about the game. Also, i never managed to use the horse to my advantage. The armour upgrades were great, though.

Microsoft Vista voice recognition.

That would make a great tagline for "2006" in the history of video games. Or any other year, actually.

Same here. And OMG Yuzo Koshiro! Shinobi on Game Gear was the most important Soundtrack of my entire childhood! Even today i seem to remember every music to every stage and boss.

This means: you have the phone number of Keira Knightley now. PMPLZTHX