In the Media Category
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Edge magazine on the world of Flash gaming
24th Oct 20117
Edge magazine recently ran a series of articles on their website about the state of Flash gaming. They interviewed people like Tom Fulp of Newgrounds, Chris Hughes of Flash Game License, and .. err .. me! It’s a really interesting read covering both the perception of Flash in this post-Apple/Jobs HTML5 tainted world, and where things might be heading. The article is split into 5 parts:
Doing deals with Chris Hughes (about Flash game sponsorship)
Trouble ahead? (the HTML5 influence)
The Future (Stage3D, Unity, etc)
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Cat Astro Phi goes continental
25th Mar 2011
I was really pleased to be told that Cat Astro Phi was reviewed in a couple of great publications recently. Both the German magazine GEE and the French IG Magazine covered it, with nice big screen shots dedicating up to half a page.
GEE (Games, Entertainment, Education) was described to me by several Germans as “the only gaming magazine worth reading here” and that to be featured in it at all is “something special”. My thanks to Oli at GamingYourWay who shipped me the issue with the review in. Although my German is school-boy level at best I could still appreciate the layout, feel and quality of the publication. It reminded me very much of a German version of Edge magazine.
Cat Astro Phi was featured in their Retro section and a scan of the review is uploaded here. The text, kindly translated by Anjin Anhut (who blogs at “How to Not Suck at Game Design“) reads:
“There have been a lot of exciting games for the Gameboy, while the green of its display had something calming to it.
The Flash-Game “Cat Astro Phi” sends an astronaut on a search for his cat to distant and hostile worlds – and sends the player to the realms of nostalgia, thanks to the simulated Gameboy look.”
IG Magazine (website, in French) is a quarterly French publication by Ankama, who run the insanely successful MMO Dofus, as well as having a large comic publishing arm. I battled my way through their web site (I don’t speak French!) with the aid of Chrome auto-translate and ordered myself a copy of the issue in which Cat Astro Phi appears.
A few days later a giant cardboard package arrived housing probably the smallest (in dimensions) gaming magazine I’ve ever seen! It’s somewhere between A5 and A4 in size, but is more like a book as it has a staggering 260 pages and not a single advertisement! That’s a really great amount of content, and I’ve thumbed through every page. I loved the way they picked on Kirby in this issue, and Kirby artwork adorned each section as well as a good retrospective into Kirby games.There seem to be a lot of interviews and coverage given to old titles. Including an interview with one of the guys from Silmarils, and lots of retro coverage. Always great to see 🙂 I guess if they can afford to publish this without adverts that will always impact the “tone of voice” and choice of content. It almost feels like a modern-day equivalent of a fanzine, where they just picked whatever they felt like writing about. If they ever publish it in English I’ll be the first in line to subscribe 🙂
A scan of the original review is here. My thanks to Damian Connolly, Jerome Maurey and Rémi Boutin for the following translation (twitter rocks!):
“With graphics and interface paying tribute to the Game Boy, and music which will please chiptune lovers in a Commodore 64 style (We sometimes believed we heard Chris Huelsbeck on a good old Turrican), this space action-adventure game offers a very cool trip. Note that the soundtrack – composed by Rich Vreeland – is available for download in a digital album for a measly $3.
Concerning the gameplay, it can be compared to that of Zelda because you progress with a top-down view in different dungeons. But before you can discover these futuristic bases, the player has to play a little shoot-em-up stage, again in an ultra-retro style. In brief, this will delight old school gamers as well as all lovers of pixel art!”
Which is a cool little review 🙂 As a total computer gaming magazine addict (and collector, I have thousands of issues from the 80s on!) I love seeing my games in print. There’s just something real and substantial about it. Of course I’d love to be featured in an English magazine too! I did email Retro Gamer magazine, who didn’t even bother to reply (nice of them) until I prodded further, only to be told that it had been passed-on to someone else. I’m not holding my breath. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I check the Flash game Edge picks every month 🙂 One day maybe… one day.
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Superb video review of Cat Astro Phi from Indie Games Searchlight
8th Feb 2011
I was really buzzed when Mark Carr of Indie Games Searchlight sent me a message on twitter saying he had something cool I may like to see. Naturally this perked my interest. And sure enough a few hours later he delivered! It’s a truly fantastic video review of Cat Astro Phi.
I’ve embedded the video below, or you can watch it here.
My thanks to Mark for an excellent video and fair review! I really liked the way he fed lots of mini factoids into the piece, collected from my blog entries, tweets and NG comments. Research, that’s what it’s all about 🙂 and hey, he even nearly pronounced Ilija’s name correctly. Almost.
You can follow Mark on twitter or Indie Games Searchlight on ScrewAttack.com.
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Cat Astro Phi gets Byte Jacked
6th Jan 2011
I love watching ByteJacker. It’s funny, it’s irreverent, and they cover indie games well. So colour me impressed, when not only do I enjoy almost 5 minutes worth of awesome Retro City Rampage footage, but they then cover Cat Astro Phi in the quick-fire indie round-up section. Kick ass!They seem to mostly show the shooter part, which is a shame as that’s the most minimal sequence of the game. But it is great to see Jonesy and the spaceman getting byte jacked all the same.
You can find it in Episode 110. If you want to skip right to it (and don’t, because Retro City Rampage looks so freaking excellent) then hit the 6:25 marker (the third white dot on the timeline).
http://www.bytejacker.com/episodes/110
Oh and this episodes music features Disasterpeace, just like Cat Astro Phi does 🙂 The track is from his new album Rise of the Obsidian Interstellar
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Check us out in Computer Arts Projects Issue 144
2nd Dec 2010
I’m very pleased to announce that Issue 144 of Computer Arts Projects magazine went on sale today. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be anything I’d blog about, but this issue is a little bit special. It carries a full-page feature on Photon Storm.Entitled “From online to mobile” it talks about 4 of our games, and how we approach game development with mobile in mind.
There are some lovely screen shots of the Droplet game sprite sheet, Quartet, our new game Cat Astro Phi (which will be front-paged on NewGrounds next Wednesday) and the coming-soon Chickaboom.
While the article itself is a bit tongue-in-cheek, some of it clearly made-up on my behalf, it’s still nice to be represented in the mainstream press.
And even nicer to see Ilija’s awesome artwork in full colour display.
Computer Arts Projects 144. You can buy the single issue (soon) from here.
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