Happy new year to everyone!

Hope you’ll have a great year

Here’s a little video from all of us to all of you, hope you have a happy Christmas : )

The video is a trailer we made for GGA before the summer, so the things shown in it is about 7 month old : )

It’s still nice to watch

Some in our team is in Germany right now at GDC (Game Developer Conference) Europe showing Penalty of Heroes. So we’ll probably post some pictures and stuff of it in a few days : )

Sorry for no updates.It’s holiday for most of us : ) We’ll start to update here again in late August, beginning of September : )

Today me Jona och Nixi went true the final sprint list in the presence for Dreambuild 2009, we discuss our last long meeting about feedback from Nordic game and Gotland Game Awards and how we should organization our work to get  ass much ass possible done in time. We know that we cannot have all the futures to Dreambuild, so we have to focus some of our features.

We stay up all night (only 22+ Celsius on the night that make it possible to breathe in Visby) playing Penalty of heroes ; ) and some  old hack -n slash game. We found a new game that are very slimier to use except its imposable to complete with only 10 lifes. It’s called dungeons and dragons shadow over mystara and is a  must play for all hack n slash lovers

Tomorrow I’m going to start working on all the nasty bugs.

Wohoooo. We just got back from the Nordic Game party at the club Debaser in Malmö and it was great.

The first day at Nordic Games went good. We started to show Exhaust, but we changed to a “work in progress” beta of Penalty of Heroes. Many features is missing but the “core gameplay” is in so we tried it on a lot of people. The response was over all good, there were of cause some things that were pointed out, but now we can change or design them in another way. So all the worlds game developer were our beta testers today :p

I also went to a couple of lectures. The best one that I went to was Ryan Schneider seminar about communities. Ryan is the community manager at Insomniac Games (Resistance, Ratchet & Clank etc).

There were also “some” people that took a chance to play PoH. The video is shot from a distance and PoH is shown on the TV to the right.

Also today two games from Gotland University was nominated at the awards, Vertigo (best new game studio) & Penumbra (best game of the year). Though none of them won : (

* There were also some people coming up to us and saying hi and thanking us for keeping this blog up working. It’ feels really great to get that response from people you never met : ) This makes us want to do this blog even better : )

As you might already know, a friend of ours is making the first teaser for Penalty of Heroes. It originates from a sketch we made a couple of months ago. So far we have seen two teasers/trailers that use the same concept, both video game trailers and trailers from movies. I had not seen them before we started working on our teaser, so I can gladly state that the concepts were not stolen, but right for 2009. We’ll release this teaser very soon : )

Anyways, we are currently sketching on another trailer. The trailer has more of the story to tell obviously, but we tend to keep it short and none spoiler wise. There’s nothing more disturbing than watching a trailer that slaps you in the face and says “this is how the movie ends” or shows the last boss in action. No one wants to see that and we’re planning to keep it that way. However, we need to find something that’s interesting. And believe me; not giving away too much, is going to be tough.

* Jens comment *
We’ll see if this “story trailer” will be made (I hope so). It’s more about having time or finding someone to do it and also convincing the other on the team that it’s a good idea (hope our teaser making friend can help us out). This trailer will tell the “pre story” and set the mood for the game and the time frame for it to be done is about the beginning of the summer (June). We also had thoughts of doing a one minute movie about each character, but we haven’t got the time to do it as good as we want it to be, so we decided not  do it. Though we’ll present them on this blog in a similar way in this following month. More of that in a few days : )

Databox Team is back after 2 weeks holiday and the start of 2009 is looking good for us. The Winter has come=( (unfortunately) and icy winds are attacking our beloved Gotland. Kids play in the snow, old people slip on the icy pavement, but I remain inside. Safe from harm. Since I’m not a winter-being, I have had the luxury to barricade myself indoors playing lots of games, read some fantasy, drank some alcohol and sat down just thinking. Thinking about our game and what features we could add to make it even better.

Hope everyone will have a great new years eve and a great 2009!
Be sure to check out Penalty of Hero later this year!

Duke Nukem 4 Ever got the usual vaporware award of the year for the 100 times in a row. So no news there and I think 99% of the earth population would bet their money that we won’t see Duke4Ever in 2009.
Personally I will not bet on this one, because I think that we will see Duke and his babes kick some serious ass in 2009. So the really big question is,
-“Will Penalty of Hero be released before Duke4Ever?”’

Mr Duke nukem