There’s a nice review here, and we suggest you log in to your PSN store and try it out.

Well, it means that we no longer have a significant internal team for software development. Instead, we’re working with external teams and artists, put together on a per project basis. This may be actual software development, game design, or game consultancy. This allows us to put teams together based purely upon project requirements, a significant advantage over carrying a sizeable internal studio.

While Mark is working with Rudolf and Alex on Eufloria for iOS platforms, I’ve been working with an external designer, artist and art studio Ten24 on another project. Eufloria, incidentally,  is coming along nicely but Rudolf Kremers is the man to speak to if you want to know more.

However, from Monday I’m working again with Anthony Flack full time. Out first gig is to turn our Cow Patrol prototype into a full fledged iPhone and iPad title. The game is essentially a spin-off from our Cletus Clay title, a project we’ll return to in due course (especially if a few people buy Cow Patrol!).

If anyone expresses an interest I may blog Cow Patrol development, but I will certainly be tweeting about it from Monday. It’s a bit of an experiment for a variety of reasons, but I know some of you have been waiting for us to put stop-motion work on Apple platforms for quite some time.

As for our old crew, we’re still in touch and see many of them regularly, and we expect to work with some of them in the future too. All appear to be doing well, and we wish them luck in their blossoming careers.

I will let Andy tell you more:

It’s over two years since the original pitch was put together for Cover Girl. The idea evolved from an experiment to use input methods from everyday PC applications. The aim was to look outside of games for interactions that had a pleasing feel to them and graphics packages, with their myriad of virtual manipulation controls, were a fertile ground. There are definitely interactions that feel just right; they have an intuitive nature and a pleasing elegance to them.

This train of thought lead to a ‘casual’ game that was scrapped at the prototype phase, but the idea of interactions based around existing operations remained. Then, as often happens, a simplification of what we originally set out to do dawned on us. Why try to force an image manipulation technique into a new environment? Why not build a game around the user experience within its original context?

Once I started to run with this idea – ‘How can I make image manipulation fun?’ – the bulk of Cover Girl formed very quickly, and in an automatic way:

How can I make image manipulation fun? By manipulating images of humans…Manipulating images of humans…that’s what magazines do…and it’s a bit sleazy…and it gives people self-esteem issues …and lots of people don’t understand how much of it goes on…and maybe I should give Channel 4 a call.

We’d already met Alice at Channel 4 Education, and knew they were interested in games that could help teenagers get to grips with what the world throws at them. They liked the idea, so we went away and created it.

The actual creation of a game is a long and difficult process. Cover Girl had some tricky hurdles to overcome; it was Tuna’s first Flash game,  nobody had ever made a ‘Photoshop Em Up’ before, so we couldn’t easily learn (or steal) from other designs, and then there was the presentation – should we use photos, or cartoons, or 3d models..?Over the course of the last year, and through numerous iterations and redesigns we ended up with the finished product.

Along the way we also ended up doing things that game developers don’t normally do. Things like; setting up photo shoots, talking to doctors and psychologists, going into schools to talk to teenagers, and even attending debates about body image at the Houses of Parliament. It has truly felt like a journey.

And so Cover Girl is live. We hope you enjoy playing it, and that you’ll tell your friends and family (especially the teenagers) to give it a whirl. And maybe the next time you’re faced with a wall full of magazines, all displaying seemingly ‘perfect’ cover stars, you’ll remember some of the tricks that Cover Girl has revealed.

Finally I need to give out some massive thanks:

Sarah, Chris, Lawrence, Jim and Nick

Alice, Celia, Azka, Gemma, Kimberley, and Gayle at Channel 4

Margaret

Ian, Monika, Dominika and Jacqui

All of our brave (and forgiving) models

And an extra special thanks to Alex and Mark (the management team at Tuna) not just for digging in and taking the project over the finish line, but for letting me run with my ideas over the last seven and a half years.

It’s been difficult for those working here too. We’ve had some wonderful colleagues over the years but for everyone it has been stressful in recent times. I’d like to thank all of them for all their hard work. In the end, however, my belief is that highly creative indie games such as Cletus Clay need everyone equally vested in it. That’s a topic for a future post perhaps, but it has contributed to our new form.

Tuna has returned to the two of us, and we’ll collaborate with designers and artists to allow us to work on some amazing and wonderful projects. Right now we’re working with Gordon at Different Cloth, Rudolf and Alex of Eufloria fame, and continuing to work with Anthony Flack. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us but I know that all our projects are different; they will all stand out from the crowd in some way. What’s more, they are fun to work on and have no publisher to screw things up.

Cletus Clay will happen too, but it has to wait until ‘Derrick’ has finished. We’re not prepared to take on any more external funding as it lead to a lack of control and, at times, a lack of focus. We felt like we were working to our funder’s requirements rather than those that benefited the game. Again, this is perhaps a topic for a future post.

I hope people buy Derrick, Eufloria and Cow Patrol since it’s their sales that will have to fund future claymation escapades!

This is also our last week in our office full of Space Invaders and other strange vinyl stickers. There are still plenty of good memories here so I’m a little sad to be typing this in a sizeable but half-bare room, but I also have a smile on my face – the future look is bright. What’s more, I’m back to full-time programming instead of management. I couldn’t be happier about that! We’re moving just down the road to Electric Works, a building full of small, creative companies. We’re continuing to share with Games Faction too, another indie developer who are currently working on their secret new project.

To those who know us have supported us, I’d like to thank all of you.

And, in particular, to Andy, Sarah, Nick, Pete, and Ken, who are all doing amazing or brave new things, good luck for the future and a big thank you for letting me kill you all in our deathmatch sessions.

I am, as you know, Strangely Invincible.

And so is Tuna, nearly 15 years after I started it.

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