New Hockey Puck Shooter Block!

As promised, we've been working on new content including blocks, levels and characters. Last week we showed you our newest character, and this week we have a blocky surprise!

Today's block is a hockey puck shooter, and we know what that means. No one is safe.

Alright enough with the fancy gifs, what does this actually do? How does it work? Why is it in the game? So many questions, so few answers.

The Hockey Puck Shooter (not final name) is a block that shoots a projectile out at laser speed. If you get hit by the puck, your fate will become that of the unfortunate raccoon in the gif above. A red light goes on above the block to warn that it's about to shoot, and that you have to get out of the way. If you're caught anywhere in the line of fire, you're toast! Rubbery, hockey-flavoured toast. You can also stand on the platform... currently you can stand on top of it, but that might change to standing on the platform on which the puck rests... we'll test it and see!

You might think this is an extremely Canadian block, but in fact it was designed by one of our Kickstarter backers from the U.S., who is an avid Caps fan. We made sure to use the red white and blue of the Caps (although it's conveniently the colours of our hometown team, the Habs, as well...). The design isn't final, but the idea is pretty solid, and it adds variety by being a projectile that you don't have time to run away from (like the crossbow).

The block isn't finalized yet as we still need to get more feedback from the Kickstarter backer / designer, but it should be close to this! Yay development!

T-Shirts Shipped, Character and Block Work

Hi everyone!

Wish I had some monumental epic news to report, but unfortunately I don't! We're working on the real "production" now... we know what we need to do and we're doing it. We're not as distracted by shows and events right now, so we're moving along nicely.

One nice thing is that the t-shirts have shipped (last week)! You should be receiving them in the next little while, if you backed at the t-shirt tier and haven't gotten it in the next week or so, shoot us an email and we'll try to figure it out.

Beyond that, there's work being done to create a new website for the company and the game, and setting up the online store! We're pretty much out of t-shirts, but we have hand-knitted hats to sell and would like to have the store up and running for when we have new shirts printed.

Alex is still working on getting the network stuff happening, and it seems to be progressing quite nicely. Look! Network stuff in the picture!

Kyler is at work on Kickstarter backer designed blocks and levels, so there's plenty of work to be done. I'm getting in touch with and following up with Kickstarter backers, so if I haven't followed up with you in a little while about designing a block or character, it's because we're working on the ones that we already need to mock up. Once we have a mock-up and send it back to the backers, we'll get started on the next ones.

That's about all there is to update for now!

Working Hard on Online Multiplayer & Kickstarter Rewards!

Hello hello! Back again this week with a rather short update. We’re in full-on development mode, free from having to prepare for shows or press releases, and working hard with our heads down. A quick update now to shine light on what our three team members are doing.

Our programmer, Alex, has been working on online multiplayer. Unity, the game engine we use, recently put out an update and their network code has changed. Seeing as everything is new, there isn’t much documentation on it so there are very few solved problems. The process is going well though, and we have some basic functionality (i.e. one computer knows the other one exists, etc.).

Our artist, Kyler, has been working on the Kickstarter rewards where backers got to choose to design a level, design a block, or design a character. The character animations have a ton of frames and each one is hand-drawn, so this can take a while. We need to make sure to optimize cuteness and minimize time, and it’s a balance we’re learning.

The write of these blogs, Richard, has been doing all the other stuff. That’s generally what he does for the company. This includes filing taxes for the end of the month, figuring out marketing and PR strategy, starting the redesign of the company site, and cleaning up the game design document so that the rest of the team can refer to it if need be.

That’s all for this week! Next week, as usual, we’ll have another post!