Holmade Games on Xbox One!

We've been sitting on this one excitedly for awhile, but Microsoft has just made its official announcement and we can finally report that Holmade Games is amongst the first indie developers to be working on an (as-yet-unannounced) Xbox One project!

We're extremely pumped, and MS has been wonderful to work with.  Stay tuned for further announcements on specific titles as the details become available! :)

In the meantime, check out the official Microsoft news post here, which features a nice list of some of the other developers you'll be seeing things from on Xbox One.

 Holmfry

We got blurb'd in Official Xbox Magazine!

This month, we had the honour of being featured alongside some of our indie friends in the pages of Official Xbox Magazine!

Be sure to check out the March 2014 issue at your local news stand for all sorts of Indie goodness.   We make our appearance on pg. 63 as pictured below. ;)

 Holmfry

New Fan Game Project - Luigi's Pac-mansion!

At the behest of my son, Holmade Games now finds itself working on a little side project which he and I came up with one night - Luigi's Pac-mansion!  Like Bit of War, it's a fan project dedicated to a game (or in this case a fusion of two games) that mean a lot to us.

We plan to release it free to your PC in time for Halloween this year!

Stay tuned for more news on this and Hurdle Turtle 2, which of course we are still pumping away on.

 Holmfry

Announcing "Operation: Clown Drop"!

Update: Happy April Fool's!!

The latest fun-filled, family-friendly retro arcade hit from Holmade Games is Operation: Clown Drop!  How fast can your clown go?

Completely customizable, you can select from several famous dropping zones including the Grand Canyon, the CN Tower, or even the Empire State Building! Design your clown's colorful costume before sending him on an exciting adventure downwards!  Select from many unlockable clowns such as happy clown, sad clown, or creepy clown!


As the game progresses, earn coins from mid-air clown stunts to upgrade your clown and increase his terminal velocity!  Upgrades include pants payload, outfit wind resistance, and more!


Please Note:  All clowns in this game are trained professionals.  Please do not attempt to drop a clown at home.


Click here to check out the game's mini-site for more info:
http://clowndrop.holmadegames.com

Get ready to drop some clowns!

 Holmfry

The Most Ridiculous Captcha I've Ever Seen

This is going to be a completely off-topic post, but I felt it had to be blogged about.

So there I was, innocently sharing a link on Facebook when..

BLAM!  I was faced with this.  Whatever, I've filled out tons of captcha's before, right?  But wait, what the heck is that in the second "word"?  n→∞?  Was I seeing it wrong?  I was going to hit "try different words" but then a colleague made it a thing by challenging me to successfully enter it.  So as you can see, after a quick romp through the ol' character map and a google search for alt codes, I managed to pull it off.. although sans subscript.  But!

 

It actually took it.  It actually wanted me to enter n→∞.  Seriously?  They expect the average Facebook user to take the time out of their day to figure that out?  Anyway, I figured it was wacky enough to warrant sharing. :)

Has anyone else ever seen anything particularly odd in a captcha?  Feel free to share in a comment. :)

 Holmfry

It's a Small Indie World!

While on my regular travels on the interwebs and emailing around about something completely unrelated to Indie games, I just happened to bump into a fellow Indie developer and we struck up a conversation!  His name is Kenny Johnson, and he's got a bunch of iPhone apps that's he's done over at his website Kenny's Apps.

I wanted to mention one in particular that stood out to me, however.  It's called Dotnuke, and you can download it (for free!) at its itunes page here.

The game is a fusion of art and traditional gameplay, with nice pixely graphics (and if you've been following my blog at all, you know that's a big plus to me!).  Kenny leaves it up to you to give your own artistic interpretations for what the game means to you (which I did in my itunes review of the game that you can view from the iPhone App Store).  The game is tons of fun to just mess around with and is trippy as heck.  I spent a good amount of time just zoning out and relaxing with it.  I highly recommend you check it out!

..Or, if artistic games aren't your thing, you can always punch some zombies!

 Holmfry

Valentine's Day - An Editorial

I want to take a little break from game development to talk about this holiday we're celebrating today.

I've been noticing in recent years that more and more people are starting to develop a "bah, humbug" attitude towards this delicious holiday.  They say Valentine's Day is bogus and was founded by the candy companies to sell more candy, the jewelry stores made it up, etc etc.

Well to that I say - so what?  Maybe it was created for the wrong reasons^*, who's to say?  The fact of the matter is that, whatever its origins, something good has come out of it.  We now have today to celebrate one thing that truly deserves to be celebrated... love.

And any day that forces today's youth (who may or may not be under the erroneous impression that Usher's "Let's Make Love in the Club" is the greatest love song ever written) to get out there and do something truly romantic for their significant other, well - a day like that is OK in my book.

So how about we drop the bitter jadedness and go out there and make some real love for our partners?

Happy Valentine's Day everyone, candy or no. ;)

 Holmfry


* It wasn't.