Category Archives: Scotland

May 8 2012

Time Capsule Tuesday – THE Definitive History Of Games In Scotland

Did you know that Scottishgames was originally started in 2005 as a Yahoo Group?  That didn’t work.  It required people to get involved and contribute.  So in 2006, your editor took the decision to start a blog.  At that time, TypePad was a decent choice and allowed sophisticated content like words and pictures to be mixed in a new way which the ascended masters referred to as ‘multimedia’.

There’s over three years of content and updates on the original Scottishgames.biz (since it was primarily an industry blog in them days). It provides a snapshot of a smaller and more console focused industry.  It’s also the only record out there of the laughter, the tears, the events, the awards and the successes Scotland achieved in the world of games.

There was also, for a year, a Ning powered social network, which empowered every developer, every student and every participant in the whole interactive sector and allowed them to post their work, look for employment, post jobs, share news, find collaborators and link to their new games.  It wasn’t a success.  You want to be controlled editorially and told what’s important.  We get it…  We can’t link to it, since Ning has a policy of nuking any unpaid networks.

If you’re a researcher, student, journalist, politician, civil servant, event organiser, developer, publisher or fascinated observer, this is an invaluable resource, akin to the National Museum of Scotland (who we confidently predict would pay thousands for access to these ‘archives’).

Since then of course, the media empire has grown into the all new blog, a Facebook group, a Twitter account, Google+ group, fashion label, provides RSS feeds and of course a daily e-mail update, all in all reaching around several thousand people – important people, like YOU – per day.  Scottishgames has THE definitive company directory of interactive companies in Scotland and is recognised in the halls of power as the ‘industry bible’.

Believe!

May 1 2012

Scottish Climate Change App Competition – £50K Up For Grabs

There’s an opportunity for the creative geniuses (genies?) of Scotland’s interactive sector, to get their mitts on £50,000 in prize money, thanks to a new competition created by the Edinburgh Centre For Carbon Innovation and supported by the Scottish Government, Scottish & Southern Energy, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Microsoft and Scotland’s 2020 Climate Group.

The competition is open to developers and creators with *some* affiliation to Scotland and is looking for innovative, original and new ideas for tackling climate change.

Scotland has committed to a 42 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, so new ideas an innovation are vital to help the country achieve its objectives.

There’s more information, background and context on the Clean Informatics blog, should you need it.

If you are interested in the competition and in Edinburgh this Tuesday (1st May) you can learn more at the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation at 6pm for free environmentally friendly drinks, nibbles and networking.

To apply simply drop an email to enviroappsocial@smeenviroapp.com 

The closing date is MAY 15th 2012.  That’s in TWO WEEKS.

Apr 23 2012

It Was 30 Years Ago TODAY – The ZX Spectrum – Dundee’s Second Favourite Export

Originally  released on 23/04/1982, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was arguably (very arguably) the machine which inspired the home computer revolution in the UK and inspired a generation of owners to start making games.

Even Google is getting in on the act with a clever dual Google Doodle, celebrating St George’s Day, PLUS the far more important and significant ZX Spectrum day.

Manufactured by Timex in Dundee, the wicked black box of infernal magic is more or less directly responsible for the games industry in Scotland.

Happy 30th birthday Spectrum.

Apr 20 2012

New Breed Part 1 – New Update For APB: Reloaded

APB: Reloaded is the new free-to-play incarnation of APB, the action-based MMO released by Realtime Worlds shortly before its demise in 2010.

The game was acquired by US-based Gamers First and ongoing development was put into the hands of Reloaded Productions, now located in Edinburgh.

APB: Reloaded was released towards the end of 2011 and has been building a growing audience of players worldwide – and generating revenue from the sale of virtual goods.

Today marks the release of the game’s first major update.  Code-named New Breed Part 1, the update adds a huge amount of new content, new challenges as well as tweaks, improvements and fixes across the board.

 According to the press release you get:
  • Weekly Challenges added to the Fight Club zones. Players can now compete for several tiers of prizes using entirely new, heart-pounding game modes.
  • New Progression Contacts in the game, handing out new player levels and the very latest experimental gear and gadgets. By finding them, players can earn themselves cool new virtual gear.
  • New Mods and Features can be picked up from the new Contacts, bringing new capabilities to players including increased inventory, radar jammers, recoil decrease, opponent tracking and the ultimate high-tech way to lock vehicle speeds at MAX.
  • Combat has been enhanced with new marksmanship and mobility modifications and sweet new weapons.
  • New Custom Clothing Sets including this spring’s ‘must have’ Paramilitary rig.
  • New Vehicle Kits for both Criminals and Enforcers. Players can cruise in style and smash into buildings and opponents while looking even cooler than before.

“New Breed Part 1 is a major step forward for APB Reloaded. The team has been listening to players’ feedback and making sure that every update makes San Paro a more incredible place to play”, said Michael Boniface, General Manager of Reloaded Productions, when we asked him for a quote.

It’s genuinely exciting to see a game that the majority of the industry had dismissed and written off as dead-in-the-water not only making a comeback, but building such an active (and growing) audience.  We’ll be talking to Reloaded in the very near future, to find out more about their plans for the game, the evolution from a paid product to free-to-play and the response from the media and games industry to their trend-bucking.

In the meantime, you can download and play APB: Reloaded – free – on your PC.  Find the game’s blog, or community, find them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.


We’ll leave you with the genuinely awesome live action trailer for the game, which will add a dash of colour and excitement to your Friday morning.

Apr 17 2012

Not Just A Blog…

You can find us, like us, love us, join us, read us or participate with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ too.  Go on, you know you want to.

You can even sign up for a daily e-mail newsletter, should you work for an evil organisation.  Links on the right hand side of the screen there.  Enjoy!

Apr 9 2012

Developed By Chunk, Designed By Kids – Freewheelin’ – New For iOS & Android

There’s a new App on the block – or should that be up on blocks – for your nearest Apple or Android device.  Freewheelin’ was developed by Glasgow’s Chunk Games, but the design was created by a team of three (aged 16 & 17) from Earlston High School (in the Borders, near Melrose, for those non-geographical society readers).

The design was part of the Arnold Clark Scottish Schools Challenge.  A competition which challenged high schools throughout Scotland to come up with an innovative and original new game design for the company.

Chunk then took the team’s ideas and turned them into the fast-paced, tyre-based racing game, which is now available – for FREE – on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

The competition attracted over 700 entries from across the whole of Scotland (so how SG remained unaware of it and unaffiliated with the judging panel, we can only guess…) before being whittled down to the final 10 nominees at the end of 2011.

 The ‘Appy Chappies’ cliched the win and picked up a minibus for the school for the next two years, £5000 for the school to spend on computers and ‘an Apple MacBook’ (we hope that means each…)
According to Chunk:

They say everyone has a book in them and it seems the same could be said about mobile games. So Arnold Clark asked school students for their best mobile game ideas in return for a new school bus, some amazing Apple goodies and last, but not least, the chance to turn their idea into a fully-fledged game!

The brief for a simple, fun, and hopefully, addictive idea resulted in 700 brilliant storyboards and ideas from 150 schools across the country. Arnold Clark and Chunk had the hard job of picking the winner, but finally Tyre Trial, from the ‘Appy Chappies of Earlston High School, was chosen as the idea that best hit the brief.

We worked with the ‘Appy Chappies to develop the idea and features for the final game and Freewheelin’ was born. A game where you take a runaway tyre as far as you can down a tricky, twisting track; catching bonuses, picking up power-ups, pulling stunts and avoiding the evil Totafaces.

Congratulations to Ross, Stuart and Andrew.  Big thumbs up to Chunk for yet another nice release for smartphone owners and an impressed nod to Arnold Clark for what looks like an exciting new competition and opportunity for Scottish schools to support and foster creativity.  We look forward to the 2012 competition.

 You can find the game, free online now.  For Android, or for Apple.  Or you can check out the promo video…
Apr 6 2012

Out Now – Word Crasher For iPad & Mac – New From Pixels On Toast

Pixels on Toast is the development studio set up by games genius Kevin Ng.  Based in Edinburgh, Pixels On Toast is the studio behind games including Kick Flick Football, the forthcoming Food Run and the newly released Word Crasher.  Or indeed the newly enhanced version for the latest iPad – Word Crasher Blitz.

Billed as the tactile word game, Word Crasher challenges players to create words from a veritable deluge of gaily coloured tokens, which drop from the top of the playing area, like a pleasantly candy-coloured rain of lettered tokens, from a delightfully playful rain god, who fancies testing the vocabulary of his/her subjects, in some kind of celestial competition.


However, unlike an actual game played with a deity, whether letter-obsessed, responsible for weather, or not.  Word Crasher rarely ends in SACRIFICE and MUTILATION, unless those are words you make with your letter tokens.

As Pixels On Toast says:

As letters fall down and pile up on your screen, touch them to make words. Making long words and using rare letters is a risky strategy, but will score much higher. But watch out, if the letters reach the top of the screen it’s Game Over.

WordCrasher Blitz adds some new wrinkles into the gameplay, including individual letter score multipliers and a new game mode, “Quick Game”, designed to be played in that minute or two at the bus stop.

Like the original, WordCrasher Blitz tracks every unique word the player enters into the game, and uploads their vocabulary to Game Center and OpenFeint leaderboards. The current champion of the original WordCrasher has entered over 20k unique words. Compare this to the average English speaker’s total vocabulary of 10k-15k words, and this is impressive indeed.

Word Crasher Blitz has ultra-realistic tactile physics. Letters bounce, stack, roll and respond to you tilting, waggling and juggling your iPhone/iPad or iPod (which are all supported by the by…)

Each and every single game you play contributes to your WordMaster level, submitting your unique words and building your status as a wonderful word wizard, just like levelling up in an RPG, but with less brutal orc death.

Word Crasher Blitz features three game modes – Quick Game, Marathon and Flood Panic, in which your letters float delightfully in a glass of virtual water, which creeps ever upwards towards the top of the screen (at which point you die.  Horribly).

With over 190,000 words recognized in US, UK and International English, there’s something for even the most unliterate.

Best of all, Word Crasher Blitz comes for the magical price of FREE.  Or for $4.99 on your Mac.

Go visit Pixels On Toast online.  Join, like and contribute to their Facebook page, or follow, follow them on Twitter.  Kevin also has a development blog that we’d recommend highly.

Apr 4 2012

TONIGHT – Computer Animation: Where Science Meets Art

It’s a little last minute, but the Edinburgh Science Festival has a real live PIXAR veteran speaking tonight, as part of the event’s technology strand…

Computer animation comes about through a remarkable collaboration between scientists, technologists and artists. Top animation scientist Ronen Barzel, whose career includes a stint at award-winning Pixar, gives his take on the nature of the collaboration; how research and technology advances inspire artistic achievement, which in turn drives further research and technological development. The latest in an ongoing series of Sydney Michaelson Memorial Lectures.

It’s been put together by a number of knowledgeable Edinburgh technology ‘boffins’ and promises to explore the outer reaches of the world(s) of computer animation.

Tickets are priced at a very reasonable £8 (or £6 concession) and are available NOW.

Mar 26 2012

World Exclusive – Moops – New From Red Radiant Media

The past weekend saw the ever awesome Game In Scotland event take place in Dundee.  A recruitment fair, networking opportunity, platform for new talent and general shindig for the games industry in Scotland, it introduced a whole range of entirely new companies, working across a huge range of new and interesting areas of interactive entertainment.

Chief amongst these was Red Radiant Media.  Regular readers of Scottishgames will have come across the company before.  They let us know about a new augmented reality app towards the end of 2011, as well as looking for new staff.

At Game In Scotland however, Red Radiant emerged, as if from nowhere, with a number of fantastic announcements about new games, new projects, new partners and major plans for the rest of 2012 and much of 2013.

The first of these was Moops, an original new title being developed in conjunction with Darkside Animation.  Moops is somewhat platform-y, in which the player has to hunt and ‘thwack’ critters, so your trusty companion can vacuum them up and rid Barrel City of the nasty things.

From what we saw, the game uses a combination of gestures and physics-based gameplay, to create a cross between a classic platform game, with elements of Luigi’s Mansion.

Moops is due out in May 2012 for iOS devices.

A second title – Kitchen Games is due out later in 2012, though fewer details on this title were given.  iOS again and a cartoon style variety of indoor athletic events from what we could see.

Tahir, the head of Red Radiant also dropped a number of hints and showed a couple of screenshots for several new projects which the company has in the pipeline.  Another Moops title was mentioned, but the biggest reaction from the crowd was for a game based in the  underwater city of Atlantis.  Since Red Radiant boasts team members who are former members of Realtime Worlds and Irrational Games, with titles under their belts including Crackdown and Bioshock (I & II) – with sales of over 20,000,000 games and four BAFTA awards between various team members.

Only a single screenshot was shown, but the style and atmosphere was very reminiscent of everyone’s favourite underwater dystopia.  We won’t lie.  We’re excited.  Very excited.  Expect this one to get a rapturous welcome (sorry).

We hope to have more news and updates from Red Radiant Media in the near future.  In the meantime, Moops is coming to an iOS device near you soon.  We recommend you pick a copy up…

Mar 24 2012

Game In Scotland – On Now…

The 2012 Game In Scotland event is happening NOW in Dundee.  If you’re not here, you’re missing out.  LIVE on stage they have speakers from many of the country’s most rapidly evolving games companies.

Colin MacDonald, commissioning editor for games from Channel 4 opened proceedings and outlined how far ahead of the curve Scotland is in the interactive world.

You can follow the action on Facebook or over on Twitter.