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No More 8-Week Games

Happy Birthday, Blurst! (And Some Changes)

Posted to Blurst by Matthew on October 16th, 2009

Blurst is now one year old! We launched Blurst.com as a unified destination for our quirky games just over a year ago. What a year it’s been!

Public Prototypes

Previous to Blurst we had launched Splume, Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, and Jetpack Brontosaurus on their own domain names. Our plan of attack, back then, was to release a number of game ideas “into the wild”, so real players like you could play them and help us judge the relative merit of each design. After some time we would identify a winner, and subsequently develop that idea into a $20 of value (for downloadable release on PC, console, etc).

The Blurst of Times

Midway through this plan, though, we realized that if we put all of our games in one place, we might be able to create a compelling place where people could find small implementations of cool, original ideas. If we continued to make games quickly, we could build this destination to the point where it could survive on its own, and we continue making small games indefinitely. This thought process resulted in Blurst, and we focused the company on making it work. Our goal for 2009 was to create six 8-week games, each one unique, to push Blurst in this direction.

To date we have released 4 of these 8-week games scheduled for 2009 (Blush, Paper Moon, Crane Wars, and Time Donkey). Development was stressful at times, but we’re very proud of what we’ve been able to do in just two months each! But something wasn’t working.

Changing Gears

Blurst hasn’t met our expectations. More specifically, Blurst’s traffic has not increased to levels where it will pay for itself. We could continue to fund Blurst’s development through contract jobs and other means, as we have been, but we feel like there are too many roadblocks between now and a time when Blurst itself pays our bills.

So we’re returning to Plan A. We are halting development of our 8-week projects and beginning longer-term development on Off-Road Velociraptor Safari. There won’t be a November 1st launch.

We feel that launching another 8-week game won’t change the playing field for us. No new possibilities will open up with one more game; we’ll be roughly where we are now, except two months poorer and two months behind on doing something that could change things up. By contrast, we feel like a strong ORVS standalone version will open some doors and provide us with more flexibility and opportunities than we have now.

Future of Blurst

Raptor Safari will be our focus over the next few months, but we will continue development on Blurst itself! There are new website features in the pipeline that we’ll launch, and we’ll do our best to support our community as we work on Raptor Safari. If you have purchased Raptor Safari, or the game bundle, you will have access to development builds throughout development, as well as a copy of the final release. Buy now before the price goes up! ;)

We’ll announce more details about schedule, platforms, and all of that jazz before too long. In the meantime, thank you very much for being a fan, for playing our games, and we hope you’re as excited about Blurst’s future as we are!

Tags: Off-Road Velociraptor Safari

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Blurst. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

skiff

I played the Bejesus out of Raptor Safari, and have followed blurst's development with a critical eye (I'm a cheap kiwi), and have not really been tempted by the $20.00 deals. But - if a game was released with more replayability and depth (i.e. a current game, but polished and expanded), I would definitely buy it.

For instance 'A Reckless Disregard for Gravity', had enough depth and arcade replayability that it was a pretty good buy.

Looking forward to the future, then - I appreciate blurst's vibrant personality and talent, so Happy 1st Birthday.

dinolover53

KWl happy birthday blurst!I love being a fan of such an awesome web
i dont know a web with sooo many fans as blurst soo rock on blurst!!

thranx

Looking forward to seeing what you guys do with VRS. I really don't think anything's been to the quality level/awesomeness of VRS. The other games are fun and unique but nothing quite has the magic that VRS does.

I think it's well worth the effort to grow that IP, and as a purchaser (and a former software QA guy) I look forward testing and providing feedback.

TheGHammer

Oh yeah, and Bappy Hirthday. Yikes!

TheGHammer

Aww, it's a real shame that Blurst itself hasn't paid off (literally!) as much as you thought it would. It really makes me confuddled when I see these brilliantly designed and quirky games pale in terms of traffic next to a whole range of other flash sites which don't have content as developed. I've really loved and enjoyed your 8-week games, and the general ethics which surround them. The games, and the company itself, is based in optimism and amiability as far as I can tell, and I hope that the full release of Raptor Safari gives you the break you need. A Steam release, right? :)

nille

If traffic had increased significantly, how would you've been making money from it? Advertising?

Happy Birthday btw.

Mike

Good idea. Quality over quantity, I say.

Mathieu

Happy birthday guys!
During this first year you took Indie development to another level!

michaelheald

Hey Guys, its a real shame that the venture hasn't paid for itself, but a big thanks goes out to you for creating a superb collection of games that have kept lots of people very entertained! I'm sure that Raptor Safari will continue to be a hit (probably still my personal fave for long term play) and if your looking to take this to a down-loadable platform like Wiiware or XBLA etc, then it will be sure to do well...and I'll buy it there too! Good luck for the future!

Mike from England.

Shaun

You guys are still my favourite dev company.

<3 from Scotland

Pops

Content is King!

colinnorthway

Good experiment, cool games. I can't wait to play the no-holds-barred version of Raptor Safari!

orionburcham

Excellent news! It's very impressive what you've accomplished over and again in 8 weeks, but sometimes it felt like your collective talents weren't allowed to fully flourish. I can't wait to see what comes out of a longer FB dev period, especially if you're revisiting a fan-favorite title.

Happy Birthday, you guys have fans in MD!

Ben Hines

Nice, happy to have helped by being a fan and buying the game pack, can't wait to get stuck into the dev builds and the final version :D

Thanks for the good fun times!

Tadej Gregorcic

Sounds like a good plan - I think you've build a pretty impressive portfolio for now - Blush for one thing was simply amazing for me.
I hope you can get ORVS where it deserves to be and congrats on the long-term commitment and happy birthday!

Nero

Happy Birthday Blurst! I've enjoyed every game here for different reasons and it's too bad if it hasn't been worth it for you. I've tried my best to spread the word but it's not easy there either. I'll still see what you guys do in the future.