IGN’s 2007 Puzzle Game of the Year Now Available for Apple Platforms
Capybara Games announced today that its award-winning mobile puzzle game, Critter Crunch, is now available on the Apple® iPhone™ 3G and iPod® touch.

Creating original effects for this project was quite a bit of fun. The short vocalizations for each of the Critters and Biggs really made the characters come to life. It’s pretty exciting to see it up on the iTunes App Store. I was over @ Capybara today and got a chance to play it on an iPod Touch. I have to say the graphics look completely amazing … and it sounds good too ..

Like most people, I feel kind of bonkers and impulsive when I see the iPod Touch or iPhone. Gimmie … gimmie !! In case I didn’t want one bad enough here’s the reason I’ll be rushing out to get one on July 11. I’ve been invited to join Intua’s featured artists community, creating content for the initial release of Beatmaker … this is like a dream come true.

“BeatMaker introduces a new generation of mobile instruments and music creation software. Inspired by hardware beatboxes, loop samplers and software sequencers, it combines them to turn the iPod into a unique, inspirational software instrument.

UPDATE : My 1st kit will be included in the initial release of Beatmaker !

UPDATE : Now available at the iTunes app store

The artsy games incubator open house event was really inspiring. Everyones work was great, in particular the superbrothers guy and new media artist Rob King . Their work was so freakin’ great. It made me want to pour a bunch more time into my own music game project. So today I’ve downloaded the new version of Max5 and started picking away at Quick Composition ideas again.

An amazing flash game in the making. I’m providing lots of help to the Intuition team working on music production, sound effects design and creation, due out in the summer 2008.

Dinowaurs recreates the childhood joy of fighting dinosaurs against each other. In the game, two opposing teams of villagers attempt to gain each other’s land by strapping crazy weapons to dinosaurs and forcing them to fight each other. The dinosaurs themselves are actually oblivious to the fact that they’re fighting.

Dinowaurs is a free-to-play multiplayer online combat/strategy game played in real-time. It has MMO-like persistence and character customization, and can be played in your web browser if you have Flash 9.

You play the game by (indirectly) controlling a dinosaur that can be equipped with weapons meant to destroy the enemy’s dinosaur and villages in an arena. Each village produces gold and allows you to buy and equip weapons there using a simple drag-and-drop interface.

Once your dino is equipped with up to two weapons, you can go out and attack the enemy. Be careful of enemy villages, since they’ll attack you with some of the same weapons you have. The other player will of course be trying to do the same to you. If you kill the enemy dino, it will hatch out of a new egg at its nearest village.

If you destroy an enemy’s village, you can build your own village there instead. Once you capture all the villages in the arena, you win.

UPDATE : Game wins 2nd place !! 

Paul over at ToadTrip is game crazy ! During a short break in the Zompocalypse schedule he’s gone and started working on his entry for the TIG Source : Video Game Name Generator Competition. The generator spit out his title just a few days ago and he’s already got it up and running. I’m having a blast making sound effects for this one. Paul is my indie game hero.

Indie Games Blog Link >> here
You Tube Video Link >> here
Game Downlaod Link >> here

Took some time out from sound design to help out with a retrofit for the Studio2 @ RMW Music. Its been about 4 or 5 years since the room was put together so it was time for a change. The idea was to simplify the setup and work more “inside the box” taking advantage of the routing and processing possible with the ProTools HD application and hardware interfaces. 4 Days and over 650 solder joints later the rooms back up and running with a glitch.

Jane from Springbay called the other day and has requested some musical sound effects. She’s heading off the the GDC2008 with a really original flash game prototype. The art style looks great and the mini games are quite fun to play. Springbay Studio Ltd. is a Canadian startup company dedicated to the design and development of high quality, fun, casual games from a feminine perspective.

Looks like I’ll be hard at work over the next few weeks doing Sound Design for ToadTripGames horribly amazing “Zompocalypse”. Considering the scale of this game project they are tossing some great design, programming, art and music into it. I’m glad I got in early on this project as its way more fun to see it change and get better every new build.

Get ready for awesome “red neck cop VS zombies” action coming soon …..

“Taking place January 17 & 18, 2008, GameON: Finance is a unique investment summit designed to bring investors and games companies together to explore financing possibilities for the games industry.” – GameOn Site

The Friday day long event was a serious reality check for me and my plans to develop music and rhythm based casual games. Many of the speakers related current financial strategies and practical advice. I got allot out of this event, so much that I just left early. I feel like I’ve adjusted my course just in time before heading off in the wrong direction. What a relief.

Actually a major part of my trip was 2 connections on the Thursday night before the summit.

1) was grabbing a beer with my brother before the GameOn Keynote. Tony’s advise is always so practical and cuts through all the time/money waisting. He immediately convinced me to focus my approach and make it on paper first. Thanks Tony

2) was later on that evening completely out of the blue my long time friend Daryn introduces me to Priam Givord. At first it took a while for us to connect the dots and figure out where we had met before. Turns out he teaches with Tony at George Brown and I had attended his presentation on prototyping with VirTools at the Vortex competition early in 2007. Priam is obviously a freakin’ genious and even better, isn’t socially retarded like most computer/art/science types. We ended up all going out for dinner that night.

Wow, my trip out to the west coast was simply amazing. The meetings I lined up ranged from pints at the local pub with freelance audio guy all the way up to signing in at the Electronics Arts Canada automated touchscreen NDA kiosk. Everyone was really friendly and relaxed. Most offered up some great advice and insight into the development scene in Vancouver. I must say it was great to finish off my week of meetings with Paul Ruskay from StudioX Labs over several beers.

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