OFF GRID trailer

Behold the new Off Grid trailer! Finally available to all the people who couldn’t get to BFI to see the game itself…

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Off Grid at the BFI

Well that was that! Pontus and I showed Off Grid at the BFI last week and had some great feedback from industry luminaries like Phil Harrision (Corporate Vice President of Microsoft) to admired journalist’s like Will Freeman (@spadgy_OTA of The Observer, Eurogamer, Develop etc.).

It marked the end of an era as we also both were awarded MA certificates from the National Film and Television School by none other than Ken Loach OBE, the world renowned social realist director of films like ‘Cathy Come Home’ and ‘Kes’.

The NFTS has been a rollercoaster ride, highs and lows, but I think I can safely say that we are both proud of what we acheived there - we formed an indie partnership that hopefully will spawn many more games in the future.

For now, onto getting Off Grid out there! We have a couple of publishing deals on the table and just this week were chosen to pitch Off Grid to a panel of investors ‘live’ onstage at the Games for Change festival in New York in a months time, but whatever happens, we’re hoping to get a demo in your hands soon… watch this space.

New user interface

It’s been a bit quiet here at the blog lately, but that just means that we’ve been too busy working on the game… New user interface is up and running, story intro & tutorial level is on it’s way, we have plenty of new sound & music stuff to implement, and as you might guess from the pic, I’m working on some shots for our new trailer right now.

Failed to sneak my way to the servers this time, and got tasered by the guards instead…

Eurogamer Roundup:

Our first fully playable prototype for ‘Off Grid’ demoed at Eurogamer Expo in London last week, we met some amazing folks, had people write and tweet about us, and we managed to get the build into the hands of lots of kind and willing gamers!

It was great to hear what people thought, see them enjoying the gameplay, and take note of the things that will be our first port of call in the next development phase.

This last month has been particularly tough, with Pontus and I pushing ourselves to get the game from being a disparate set of systems and prototypes and into a single, functioning level, and so the last couple of days have been pretty damn good for rest and reflection.

Eurogamer was a great reminder of the big picture. I can safely say we couldn’t have asked for more at this stage in development. Highlights include Mike Bithell tweeting us; big name players visiting the stand to try out the game such as Henrique Oliviers from Bossa Studios, Ali from Puppy Games, and Leigh Alexander from Gamasutra, among many others; and finding out in the pub that a good few fellow developers and journalists we admire had already heard of us, including Simon Roth - developer of Maia, and Daniel Nye Griffiths, UK Editor of Wired. What more could you ask for?!

We’re going to be working hard over the next few weeks to implement changes inspired by all the great feedback we got. We’re also up at Gamecity Festival, Nottingham, at the end of the month. I’m going to be heading up a panel discussing ‘Thematic Risk’ in games (or the lack thereof) and we should hopefully have a couple of exciting guests to announce soon! If you’ll be there, drop us a line to let us know and come and get involved!

Thanks for a great Eurogamer to all those who visited us, and those who made it happen!