2009 March

We printed a bunch of  shirts for next week’s Game Developer’s Conference.  If you can find us early enough in the week we may still have a Minotaur China Shop or Raptor Safari shirt left (reprints in new colors of last year’s design).  Not going to the GDC?  No problem!

Win a shirt on Twitter!  We’re going to give away a fine Off-Road Velociraptor Safari t-shirt, in beautiful olive and yellow, to one of our Twitter followers.  To enter all you need to do is follow Blurst and tweet:

I just entered to win an Off-Road Velociraptor Safari t-shirt!  Follow @Blurst and retweet to play: http://blur.st/raptor-shirt

These are high quality prints on American Apparel t-shirts.  We’re still wearing the original run from last year; they hold up well!  We’ll let the contest run over the weekend and then pick a winner on Monday.  Good luck!

We’re on track to launch 6 new games in 2009 at Blurst! Blush was launched successfully after an 8-week development cycle, so we changed gears into developing new concepts and prototypes. The first of these prototypes is Crane Wars. Adam and Matt present the concept to the rest of the company:

Watch Video in HD @ Vimeo

It’s a long video, but it covers the concept nicely (and you get to see how we discuss things, if you’re curious). But why watch a video? You can also:

Play Crane Wars Prototype

We’ll be posting regular video updates of our prototypes as we work towards the launch of our next game. Want to get instant notification of new videos and other inside info? Follow us on twitter.com/blurst!

Phill Cameron recently interviewed the company about our plans for six Blurst games in 2009, our history, and our view of the indie gaming world. The interview just went up over at GameSetWatch, a clever gaming site run by Simon Carless (Game Developer Magazine, Gamasutra, IGF):

With such quick development cycles for each of your games, are there a lot of ideas that don’t make it? Or are they all used eventually?

FS: There are tons of ideas that don’t make it. Our policy here is to spew out whatever coagulates in our brain soup. Naturally, most things are not going to make the cut. Part of this is because there isn’t enough time in the day or an idea is too complex, part of it is that some ideas aren’t any good, and part of it is that some ideas are just too genocidal, demeaning, horrible, abusive, disrespectful, and hideously irreverent to thrust upon the world.

For the curious, we handle interviews by dropping the questions into Google Docs and letting everyone pick at it, like so many lions gorging on downed zebra.  Sometimes an answer is a single person, but we tend to mingle at the sentence-to-sentence level.  See if you can guys can guess which line is by which person!

Read the entire interview over at GameSetWatch!

I’ve had a bunch of people both on and offline ask for wallpapers so here you go! There’s two different images, a screenshot and a logo, and I made them in a handful of sizes.

Click to the link underneath the images to view in the browser. You can save it to your computer from there or you can right click the link and save it from there. Enjoy!

I did this partially for my own entertainment, but mostly for those of you who want to scrutinize cartographical reference when exploring new and uncharted areas so you can exploit their vast riches. Oh, and also because there have been some arguments on whether or not the game world is big or not. Now you can immaculately measure it for yourself in the unit type of your choice!

Do with this what you will, but remember who loves you. And if you’re going to construct elaborate Blush fan fiction and use this image in the introduction to the limited edition hard cover version you inevitably make, please let us know.

It’s been spoken of here and there in darker corners, but I thought I would give it a formal mention. You can head over to Danny B’s website to download the beautiful pieces of music he wrote for Blush. For FREE, even! It’s like there is some sort of inherent benefit in giving away your creations to people who will appreciate them!

;)

Blush is live!

Head over here to play Blush, our latest 8-week game creation.

For those of you who haven’t been following us on Twitter, or in the increasingly active UStream chat, Blush is a free game about the underwater exploits of a physics based squid (or Crystalline Attack Sperm, depending on who you talk to.) As you collect eggs and return them to the various glowing catchers, your tentacles grow longer and your speed increases. By the end of the game, you’re brawling against some rather sizable critters. We’ll let you discover just how large and how many for yourselves!

So that’s one 8-week game done, five to go. Whew! Thanks for believing in us, Internet!

<3

Flashbang

The official Blush trailer is upon us!

Blush Trailer from Flashbang Studios on Vimeo.

Also, we’re going to release the game sometime today.  It’s currently slow-simmering in a final basting of Flashbang Special Sauce™.  Hang around in the usual Fridays With Flashbang UStream chat if you want to play the game before anyone else!