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[jonaz.dk]

(DK) Flashbulb Games' Rubber Bandits is out on Switch

Adding: Just did a quick check up to see how the game is doing after Steam and other console releases. And damn! Look like it's doing just great in sales! (Nothing super crazy compared to the direct competitors.. but surly respectable) Grats on that! And very positive reviews on Steam.

My >rough< estimate is that the game has sold around 185.000 units on Steam alone. And taking into account the consoles where the game is possibly even more at home the total number is somewhat higher. Console sales on XBOX indicates lower sales with 595 reviews. Also there is a bunch of DLC.
An even more rough estimate could be around 300.000 units sold across all platforms. Very rough number but it sounds good!

On Steam they did drop the average price quite significantly back in September 22 to the cheap end of 4-5€. The amount of units sold, price point and new added platforms with crossplay should keep the online space alive with an influx of new players for a long time.
Public company figures for 2021 indicates things are going >really< well at Flashbulb.. Trailmakers is also doing really great, their biggest game so far! Super awesome!

My own personal time with the game and kiddo in local multiplayer+online players was unfortunately not really landing the fun for me and kiddo. Neither did Gang Beasts in the physics game category. We did enjoy some time with Human Fall flat earlier, Stick Fight: The Game was brilliant. Also Stikbold from local Gameswing was damn excellent (sorta physicsy).
But players are happy! So happy it's working out for them!



Rubberbandits on the Nintendo Store
https://www.nintendo.com/store/products ... its-switch

[jonaz.dk]

And 1.000.000+ sold units for Flashbulbs Trailmakers plus a bunch of DLC.

Some executive must have red ears after kicking PressPlay out of the Microsoft fold.
But we got two excellent studios out of that ordeal. Flashbulb Games and Ghostship Games. Super sweet!

[jonaz.dk]

Global Gamejam 2023 Copenhagen 30 January - 5th February.

Signup here:
https://globalgamejam.org/2023/jam-sites/ggj-copenhagen

[jonaz.dk]

Free alpha demo of (DK) Glowlight's first (as an independent unit) game 'The Magical Mixture Mill'

[jonaz.dk]

Three Danish games was nominated for this years IGF awards.

Nominees
Excellence in Audio: Forest Quartet
Best Student Game: Mind Diver + Presenter Slides

Grats to the teams so far!

More on:
https://igf.com/finalists-and-winners?f ... rdJhgWkTGU

[jonaz.dk]

DK release of first person color puzzle game 'Temple of Starlight' from the new studio Enlit Games. Student game turned commercial game release.

There is also a free demo available.

[jonaz.dk]

OddBallers from (DK) Game Swing is out on PC an consoles!

Grats on the release!
Stikbold was (super) great! Hope this can live up to or surpas the legacy.

Update: they messed up their PC link. (Only out on the Ubisoft Store)
Hope it's just a timed PC exclusive.. without forced Uplay if it should release elsewhere.
But it is Ubisoft publishing.. sooo.. hmmm lets cross fingers they can do better.
Steam page is disabled. So not too optimistic about a Steam release in the immediate future. Possibly later.

OddBallers on PC, Ubisoft Store:
https://store.ubi.com/us/game/?lang=en_ ... rce=detail

UPDATE: The game is also out on the Epic store.
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/oddballers




Adding:
But anyways! The absolutely best Steam alternative to OddBallers is none other than one of the top tier competitive local multiplayer games created, namely STIKBOLD! by the same company Game Swing.
I have played quite a bit of local multiplayer games in my time.. to be exact I have 323 games with local multiplayer in my library alone. (Not counting Amiga, C64 and early PC days obviously)
The major selling point of OddBallers is the online multiplayer that is not featured in Stikbold. But local multiplayer is always more fun anyways when playing with friends/family.
My heart-warmest recommendation goes to Stikbold! A Dodgeball Adventure!



Also I couldn't find any of traditional official magazine reviews yet on metacritic. But Obscurist Gaming has a video review of the Nintendo Switch version. Sounds like the game has a lot issues.. sadly the end quote is 'this game is a huge disappointment'.
Very sad to hear that! As a vibrant online community and a good game is absolutely vital for longevity of the game. I hope they can patch it up to perfection in the near future real quick.
Naturally this is just one review on one platform. We can hope for better reviews on a broader scale.


UPDATE:
XBOX review...phew.. sounds much better! But online play still seems to suffer from a low player base. 70% review score.

[jonaz.dk]

Also grats to Northplay!

Well done!

[jonaz.dk]

Golfie from indie (DK) Triheart Studio is now released out of Steam Early Access.

[jonaz.dk]

A few day old news.. HITMAN 3 becomes HITMAN World of Assassination
Includes 21 maps from the last 3 games and the new Freelancer game mode. Besides VR support.

I might presume the strategy is not jump into making a new HITMAN 4. But just keep supporting HITMAN (3) World of Assassination as is with new DLC added on a regular basis. Makes total sense! While they focus their main efforts on the new Bond game and the fabled 'Project Dragon' across the different studios.

IO Interactive has done incredibly well after the exit from Square Enix. After a rough and scary period in the beginning. Wikipedia mentions 50 million players (number might include free demo players?!) of the latest trilogy as of November 2021. Absolutely crazy! Bloody well done! Public numbers reveals they have more than half a billion (565M) DKK in equity capital per 2022. So the ship will not be sinking anytime soon.

UPDATE** well actually I did not include the capital in the related holding company. Which puts the IOI related capital in the near-range of 1 billion DKK for 2022! Boom!

Another Danish example of how being bought by the big guys, in the ends leads to even bigger success when the creative forces eventually turns independent again. How awesome is that!
Doesn't always happen like that but PressPlay (Became Flashbulb and Ghost Ship Games) and IOI has been some great stories in this regard.



Youtuber review also pointing out some issues are how they monetize the game which could be on the greedy FOMO side of things.
The company could certainly afford not to employ these sales tactics.

[jonaz.dk]

Wartile from (DK) Playwood Games gets AR Tilt Five support.



More
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 5695545511

The AR hardware Tilt Five
https://www.tiltfive.com/

[jonaz.dk]

The Animation Workshop in Viborg keeps rocking! This time with 'Postmouse'.

Latest student project from the education by the student team 'Critters Collective'.

(Have not played it yet.. but it looks pretty amaze on the surface!)

Postmouse is free on Steam


Postmouse gameplay


Postmouse Making-Of

[jonaz.dk]

Vivanox is back from the grave! I guess it is in a non-company sparetime capacity?!
They have been active since 2011 and closed operations in August 2022.

"Yeah we are back, and as some of you may know,
we had a breakdown back in late August 2022.
We made some risky decisions that set us back.
Thankfully, we’ve bounced back and progress is moving forward from where we left off.

During this hard time, it was the words of encouragement from supporters of the project
and followers that motivated us not to give up, especially when we’ve come so far and
we are so close to the end with HoE."

More on
https://vivanox.com/2023/02/01/what-has ... january-4/

[jonaz.dk]

Vampire Survivors Only Works Because We're Stupid

[jonaz.dk]

Tons of free lowpoly 3D assets


https://quaternius.com/index.html
https://kenney.nl/assets

[jonaz.dk]

ThroughLine Games' Forgotton Anne coming first to Switch and consoles later.

Also I take it the image posted is a little teaser of their next project. I presume this project is 'Forgotlings' which received 1.9M DKK in production funding back in 2021. And taking place in the same Forgotton Anne universe.

Btw. Forgotton Anne was a pleasure to play. A bit rough around the edges but overall a nice experience.

[jonaz.dk]

COPENHAGEN MATCHUP 2023, April 24 - 25

Copenhagen MatchUp is Denmark’s largest games industry matchmaking event. Pairing investors & publishers from across the Worlds with the best of the Danish Games industry both online and on-site over two days in April.

Investor/publisher participation in the on-site event is by invitation only. The online part is open for all. Enquire here, for questions about attending the on-site part as investor/publisher.

https://copenhagenmatchup.dk

[jonaz.dk]

'Something is always cooking at 3DRealms'

A “3DRealm” Tiramisu | THE GEEK RECIPE Ep.3 w Frederik Schreiber

[jonaz.dk]

Heroes and Generals 2: The Next War will be coming to Kickstarter also it's now running in Unreal Engine 5. Seems like they have been working on it for a while, looks pretty ok. Not really up to par with today's standard just yet. And not quite as 'photorealistic' as they mention in the video. But fair enough if the project is in early development.

Adding: I might also add that I certainly think it's a good idea to reboot the project in UE5. That old homebrew Retox engine had run it's course. Frame rates was never high. Also I remember going to a job interview once at Reto. And seeing a bit of their pipeline.. and oooh boy! Glad I dodged that bullet! They were creating entire maps directly in the now defunct XSI 3d modeling software. Just opening a map looked like a pain. UE employed on a larger team is certainly the way to go.

We are EXCITED to announce the launch of the Heroes & Generals 2: The Next War Kickstarter campaign. TLM Games seeks to raise $3MM USD that will move the franchise onto the Unreal Engine and provide a first playable version of the game to all pledge donors. We are simultaneously in the early process of sunsetting all servers for the current Heroes & Generals WWII video game.

After 15 years of development and 8 years of deployment Heroes and Generals: World War II will finally make the move to Unreal. A move that so many of our community members have asked for!.

More info here:
https://heroesandgenerals.com/2023/01/h ... ckstarter/

Reto-Moto merged into TLM Games. The Reto core team is working on H&G2 as TLM Games.

(NOT LIVE YET) The Kickstarter will go live sometime soon


The Kickstarter video is actually already live on:
https://tlmpartners.com/tlm-games/

After watching the video the question is what the goal will be... if they realistically mean that $3M is the goal for 6 months work on a prototype of a F2P game? Not even the final game is promised. That's a pretty poor pitch! The leadership in TLM Games doesn't really seem to be in tune with alot of things. Not the most promising future for the game.

All in all I am already quite skeptical of this project on KS. Sure they have a lot of players already (in the millions) and TLM can probably push a lot of money into the KS if needed. So that counts on the positive side.

But under normal KS circumstances I would say.. it's not going to happen. But let's see how it goes! Crossing fingers!
It really depends on if they can mobilize their existing player base to chip in. And who knows.. maybe things will look different when the campaign goes live.

Personally I can't think of any large F2P games (or small even) successfully completing a Kickstarter. Maybe there some?! But that has somehow eluded my attention.


-------- On another note ------
Also as mentioned earlier.. I was not kidding when I said Unreal Engine was a growing factor in the Danish games industry and it would be a good idea to start looking into the engine to expand your future job possibilities.
Besides it's also super fun to learn new engines if you have not been there yet!

From the top of my head I can recall these companies are using Unreal at the moment. Possibly a few more. Some are very well funded startups you have not heard much about yet. Some are veteran companies.

• Playdead ApS

• Ghost Ship Games ApS

• Flashbulb ApS

• Dynasty Studios Inc.

• Campfire Cabal ApS

• Raw Power Games ApS

• Invisible Walls ApS

• Reto-Moto Aps/TLM Games

• Eddaheim ApS

• Playwood Games ApS

• Slipgate Ironworks ApS

• Bitfire Games ApS

• LEGO - (Unknown capacity, but there was at least one job position related to UE. And they made a huge deal with Epic)

[jonaz.dk]

Truly fascinating simulations in 'Particle Life'



Download (Windows 64-bit): https://particle-life.com

On Github
https://github.com/tom-mohr/particle-life-app

[jonaz.dk]

Back to the days of early Pinball

Suzanne Ciani Creates The Soundtrack For A Pinball Machine

[jonaz.dk]

How To Market A Game In 2022

[jonaz.dk]

Figment 2 launchdate trailer
Looks great! Demo I played long time ago was a great step up from the first game. So got a good feeling about this one!

By Bedtime Digital Games

[jonaz.dk]

A last farewell to Hero Blocks ApS from Esbjerg.

RIP Hero Blocks ApS 31.05.2016 - 22.11.2022

The team gave it shot of making games and a living and few tries over 6 years with Mad Machines! So pretty cool!

The game started out as a more area type battle game.


Mad Ball was their last spin on the Mad Machines universe aiming to ride the Rocket League wave.


Steam page is still there. But the game is no longer available
https://store.steampowered.com/app/611260/Mad_Machines/

Respect for giving it all your best for all these years!

And making indie multiplayer games is HARD! No doubt about that.

Cheers to new adventures to the team! I hope they all landed somewhere good!

[jonaz.dk]

'Gerda - A Flame In Winter' I worked on at PortaPlay (now Bird Island) has won a few awards so far.

- "Best Narrative" Award at the Taipei Game Show Indie Game Award 2023

- "Excellence in Narrative" Award at the DevGAMM Awards 2022!

Estimated sales are still not impressive.
But glad some people out there likes the game.

Just dropped by the basement today while on my way to pick up the kiddo. Always fun!
They are still alive a working on a mix of projects.