If you’re at PAX, this is where to go to play Skulls of the Shogun!

To get to Booth TCC6 take the escalator on the right side if the north hall down to the tabletop gaming area, it’s across from there.

You can play the game, pick up a t-shirt, buttons, and rad stickers. YES I SAID RAD.

It’s PAX-time, and spring is right around the corner… No wait, that’s not right. Actually, it’s your first look at our new environment type – spring!

The world of Skulls of the Shogun takes you through 5 mystical lands, each of which are based on one of the seasons. No, we’re not bad at math! Most of them are based on the seasons – the 5th land we’re going to leave as a surprise for now.

This gallery also takes a closer look at the Fox Monk, the animal spirit you first meet in this environment. (My favorite shot is the green Fox Monk telling you where he puts all those tasty skulls!)

If you’re at PAX swing by booth TCC6 and say hi to Jake! (And yes, there will be t-shirts).

Well hello! The Cavalry is happy to see you! Meet our recently tweaked (well, it would technically be recent if we were better at doing more frequent dev diaries) Cavalry.

Instead of a sword, he now has a noticeably nasty naginata.  

As we’ve been playtesting since E3 a few months ago, one of the things we realized we needed to juicify (technical term – no really) was the visual differences between the units. Jake had worked on this a bunch already, with the stylings of the armor & helmets, but we noticed that the cavalry, even with it’s horse, still occasionally got mistaken for an Infantry when players zoomed out fully.

We had a number of ideas how to amp that up, from changing the helmet outline or the crests more, but a new weapon was certainly the clearest. We debated (vigorously as we often do) what kind and whether it should go to the Infantry or the Cavalry, but Jake wanted to keep the classic image of the samurai swordsman, rightly so.

Nothing in game development is ever that easy though. The longer ranged weapon meant the Cavalry would be expected to have a longer attack range than the infantry. Beforehand the infantry actually had the longer attack range, to balance the cavalry’s power with their larger movement. So this meant we’d have to change the Infantry in order to keep its uniqueness – which was fine because we felt he didn’t have enough edge anyway.

Thankfully Ben just upgraded our physics by integrating Farseer, so in combination with that we’ve got some new ideas about how to do that – but we’ll go into that more once we’ve finished prototyping & playtesting it. Another especially nice thing about giving each unit a distinct weapon type was that it tied nicely into our design for items, something else we’ve been brewing up and hopefully will show you in the next month or two!

More excellent news, somehow we’ve managed to secure a booth at PAX in Seattle September 3, 4th and 5th!  We were a little late getting in, so we’re not on the main show floor but upstairs near the tabletop gaming area in the -late-to-the-party booth area.  REGARDLESS, you need to stop by, we’re gonna be selling our awesome can’t-keep-up-with-demand T shirts (in both men and womens sizes) and this time with GLOW IN THE DARK SKULLS.  You can’t beat that with a stick!  Come check us out, experience first hand the power of THE SHOGUN!!  Booth TCC6, WHERE THE PARTY IS.

I have the best of fantastic news.  We are MOVING UP IN THE WORLD.  Our dear friend Grampa (some people call him Paul) is coming on board as producer starting next week!  Grampa and I go waaaaaay back to my first game job at Lobotomy Software in 1996, Grampa visited me in Japan a few times, we almost died together in a giant earthquake on a small island 8 hours away from Tokyo.  We almost launched our own company while I was in LA.  LITERALLY one million adventures together, PRACTICALLY FAMILY. He has tons of experience both as a programmer and as a producer, and we can’t wait for him to help out on Skulls of the Shogun so I can do less producer stuff and more art stuff!  Cuz there is still tons of art stuff to do!! WOOOT!!

Borut, Ben and I spent last week visiting as many press outlets as humanly possible, here are some links to some first impressions and even a few video demos!  There are still more to come but this should keep you occupied for now!

• GiantBomb
• GamePro
• 1up – Game Night!
• IGN
• Wired
• GameSpot

Like Ben said E3 was awesome.  Love hooking up with all my old friends, many of whom I only see over E3 week every year!  We didn’t have the game on display but were able to show it to some press, and lots of publishers, it went great!  Now the biz really starts up, we have meetings with a bunch of publishers over the next few weeks and we’re all looking forward to seeing who we’ll be partnering up with for SOTS!  Too many meetings to prep for this week leaving the web page a little lonely but we have some great pictures of E3 week we’ll be sharing soon. Here’s one of our favorites!!

1up Nominee for Strategy Game of the Show!

Back in LA so I could attend E3 with Jake and Borut.  E3 was awesome, exhausting, inspiring, and very productive for us!  We talked to TONS of people and got the word out, formally and informally, whipping out the laptop to show off the game whenever needed.  We even managed to score a nomination for Best Strategy Game of E3 from 1up.com!!

Now that the E3 madness has died down, I’m going to be blogging about my adventures on the road and making the game without a permanent home (or office!).  Currently, I’m crashing with Borut to hang out and recharge the batteries.  Prior to E3, my esteemed cohort and I made it all the way from LA to Chicago, though we entertained the idea of continuing on to New York.  E3 put a damper on that, but it was definitely worth coming back!

I’ll be posting a few times a week, so check back for stories on Malibu, an abandoned quarry, concrete wigwams, and dead bees.  Yes, dead bees.