What are we up to?
Posted by: Jason Hughes in Untagged on Apr 5, 2009
Some folks have been asking about Bruiser & Scratch, about what we're up to right now, and about what we're planning to do in the near and far future. Some folks are just complaining that I don't post enough. Given that there's no good way to answer all of this to each person individually, and that I'm pretty sure we can release the information, here's the scoop.
Bruiser & Scratch has been available on WiiWare for a while, and as expected, we haven't been blown away by sales figures. Partly, this is our fault for allowing the game to ship when it wasn't Crash Bandicoot. Oops. I know, I know, we should have made a chintzy 2D version of the game, cut the characters, cut the story, and basically shipped it 6 months earlier. We'd probably have gotten more sales because for some reason, people ignore shitty art when it's "retro styled", but it's flame-on if there's even a whiff of 3D going on. Also, if we'd released earlier there would be less puzzle game exhaustion on the part of the user base.. by the time we came out, there were more than enough puzzle games on WiiWare to go around. The initial reviews skewered us, and that's all she wrote.
So, what have we been doing in the meantime? Jeff and I have been working on Ghostbusters Wii with our friends at Red Fly, doing some heavy lifting tech work for an unannounced title at Red Fly, working on some of our own prototypes, and porting a really cute family-friendly game to the Wii for Conspiracy Games. All at the same time. So, pardon me for being a little lax on the updates.
One cool mention is a dear friend, Will Loconto, was nominated for Best Original Instrumental for The Heist this year at GDC by the Game Audio Network Guild Awards people. He helped us out on Bruiser & Scratch and is doing the remastering for our port work with Conspiracy. Very cool. He was up against Afrika and Little Big Planet, both of which swept awards this year, but to be nominated is quite the feat. Congrats Will!
And that pretty much wraps up our first quarter. On the off-chance you are a publisher looking for a small but talented studio to do a game for you, drop me a line. As busy as we are, I'll make time for you. :-)
JH