PLATFORM:

DEVELOPER: Australian Bureau of Statistics

GENRE: Simulation

RELEASE DATE:  Out now

PRICING:  Free

STORE LINKS:  App Store 

DESCRIPTION

Run That Town is a strategy game with a twist.

It lets you take control of any neighbourhood in Australia.

Use real Census data to discover who’s who in your area, and make decisions that will sway popular opinion in your favour. Choose from hundreds of projects for your town – from the practical to the preposterous.

What kind of leader will you be? Will you be treated to a ticker tape parade, or chased out of town by an angry mob?

Have you ever thought your local area could be run better? Well, why don’t we put you in charge? Run That Town is a strategy game with a twist – it lets you take control of any neighbourhood in Australia. Use real Census data to discover who’s who in your area, and make decisions that will sway popular opinion in your favour. What kind of leader will you be? Will you be showered with praise, or chased out of town by an angry mob?

KEY FEATURES

• Play with any Australian postal area
• Every game is created using real Census data, making it unique to your neighbourhood
• Choose from hundreds of projects for your town – from the practical to the preposterous
• Consult the locals to make popular decisions
• Read about your exploits in the infamous local paper

ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENT

Run That Town is designed to be a fun and engaging way to help Australians understand how Census data is used, to think about how it can affect them and the area they live in. It challenges them to think and experience how the use of Census data can impact decision making and the results of those decisions.

The game was commissioned by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, produced by Leo Burnett and developed by Millipede Creative Development.

Run That Town YouTube page.

Run That Town web page.

Australian Bureau of Statistics.

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Driven by a tight-knit team of highly experienced professionals, and utilising all that the development community has to offer, LoG is a product of passion and love for the development of interactive entertainment.

Surprise Attack has worked with the Geeks since late 2011, assisting with securing funding from both Film Victoria and Screen Australia and providing strategy, PR, monetisation and general marketing services for Armello, the Geek’s ambitious digital board game.

After months of pre-production and seeking funding for the studio and debut project, Framed, Josh and Adrian knew that Loveshack was missing someone. That missing piece was filled when Ollie Browne announced he was moving on from Firemonkeys, the studio formed when EA merged Firemint with Iron Monkeys. With Ollie joining at the start of March 2013, the trio was complete and the Loveshack was officially ready to go.

Loveshack engaged Surprise Attack in their early days and we worked with them to apply for and successfully secure funding from Screen Australia and Film Victoria. Once they were officially up and running we also handled the announcement of the studio and Framed in February 2013, achieving extensive press coverage across global gaming media.

Our role encompassed a broad sweep of tasks including developing a marketing plan and the messaging around the game, assisting with designing the monetisation within the game and feedback on the design as the game developed, handling PR around the announcement and launch and analysing the metrics post launch, providing direction on the optimisation and operation of the game.

DEVELOPER: Jixor

RELEASE: Coming Soon

PRICING: TBC

DESCRIPTION:

Dungeon Dashers is an action packed, turn-based, co-operative dungeon crawler, bringing the enjoyment of a tabletop board game with friends to the PC. Dungeon Dashers streamlines the core dungeon crawler experience to its essentials, for an intense, loot-grabbing adventure.

Dungeon Dashers takes place over a range of different landscapes and terrain. Some levels feature puzzle elements where your heroes must defuse lever-driven mechanical traps, other levels entail large scale battles where death is more likely than you think.

Will you use your agility to sneak past malicious traps or will you use those same traps on your enemies, pulling a lever at the right moment and plunging them into a pit of spikes?

Aim to get a perfect score in every quest by successfully completing additional objectives such as surviving with all of your party members or finishing the quest in a certain number of turns. Beating these challenges with friends adds hours and hours of replayability.

GAME FEATURES:

• Online co-operative gameplay for up to 4 players
• Epic boss battles and over 20 enemies to face
• Custom loadouts for each class based on loot found in dungeons
• Over 30 player skills
• 40 levels spread out across 5 environments
• More than 30 unlockable pieces of equipment including swords, armour and potions
• Level editor with user campaign creation support
• Hardcore mode for those who finish the game and want more of a challenge

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DEVELOPER: Current Circus

RELEASE: Coming Soon

PRICING: TBC

DESCRIPTION:

Collaborative composition through motion and play.

Dive into Muse, a collaborative musical playground just waiting to be explored.

Navigating an organic, freeform environment, players lead a growing flock of musical creatures through a world that expands both visually, sonically and in gameplay complexity.

The creatures represent ‘musical events’ that combine together to create a musical composition. These compositions can be tweaked, remixed and re-composed by engaging with ‘Wonders’—interactive entities that change different aspects of the music in unique and interesting ways. The compositions you create can then be exported and shared via social media or within the Muse community.

The core focus of Muse is to engage an audience and embrace expressive and natural movements to create a musical experience. This experience is expanded across a range of platforms, and integrates tactile, natural and intuitive input methods. Muse is also designed to support multiple and varying displays – ranging from the conventional single screen experience and modern second-screen gameplay to custom-display installations.

At the heart of Muse is an exploration of a collaborative space, which will be developed together with the Muse community. As the community grows, so too will the Muse universe. The first Muse world will be released mid-2013 on PC, and will evolve and expand over time with the feedback and support of the community.

GAME FEATURES:

• Freeform gameplay – providing players with a unique world to play in and enjoy at whatever level they choose. They can play an adventurer, a musician, or both.

• Expanding and Evolving Universe – explore an ever-expanding universe, with new worlds and sounds to be uncovered as the game grows.

• Universal Expression – a comprehensive set of powerful music creation tools, toys and mini-games that enable people to create music without any musical skill or knowledge.

• Award-winning Audio Engine – the games audio is powered by FabFilter’s professional audio synthesiser Twin 2.

• Musical collaboration – experience the world with other players online, as you create and share unique musical experiences.

• Community development – Muse is a living and breathing organic initiative and will be built in collaboration with its community. The first Muse world will be release mid-2013 for PC, with ongoing development based on community feedback and involvement.

• Multi-screen experience – designed to be experienced across multiple displays and contexts – from the single screen living-room experience to custom multi-display public installations!

• Outstanding Concept Art – original concept art by renowned visual artist Andrew “Android Jones, founding member of Massive Black and famous for his work with Nintendo and Industrial Light and Magic.

• Procedural Music and Sound System – The Muse Sound System is designed based on music theory principles and digital audio workstations. This system opens up an infinite and constantly expanding soundscape.

ABOUT THE DEVELOPER:

Current Circus is an innovative and creative collective that specialises in tactile and motion-controlled entertainment software and immersive environments. You can often find the team members kicking around the inner city suburbs of Melbourne, Australia – the home of Aussie football, Federation Square, laneway bars and drop-bears.

Opening their doors in early 2010, the studio consists of experienced and talented professionals from the fields of video games, visual arts, music and film – all of who are extremely passionate about what they do.

After collaborating on different project in the past, the team came together to form Current Circus in order to create emotional experiences delivered through motion and play.

Our developers have worked on console games dating back to the 32-bit era, and have created games in many different genres.

Muse has organically grown over the past 3 years, and is the studio’s biggest project to date.

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Surprise Attack Expands Focus on PC Games with New Hire

Former Product and Digital Distribution Manager at Iceberg Interactive joins Australian agency Surprise Attack to spearhead PC-based initiative

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, March 11, 2012 — Surprise Attack, an Australian-based marketing agency focused on independent game developers, today announced the appointment of Lex Suurland, former Product Manager of Iceberg Interactive. The hire is a strategic move to expand the operations of the agency and Suurland will be responsible for developing and delivering important services to assist PC game developers.

In his previous role as Product and Digital Distribution Manager at Dutch PC publisher Iceberg Interactive, Suurland worked on games including Endless Space, Killing Floor, APB Reloaded and the Wings of Prey series. He was heavily involved in growing the digital distribution side of Iceberg’s business, setting up and managing relationships with digital stores such as Steam, EA Origin and Amazon.

Surprise Attack has recently signed projects for several Australian PC developers including Melbourne’s Current Circus and Jigxor and Sydney’s Membraine Studios.

“We started Surprise Attack with a focus on mobile games as that was the platform most local developers were working on,” commented Chris Wright, Managing Director at Surprise Attack. “However, we always felt expanding to PC was critical and we jumped at the chance to bring Lex and his wealth of experience on board.”

“We’re already working with several studios on PC projects and are hard at work developing some new PC-specific services beyond our general strategic and promotional activity.”

- ENDS -

About Surprise Attack

Surprise Attack is a specialist marketing agency for the video games industry. Launching in October 2011 with an initial focus on independent game developers, Surprise Attack now has a team of nine highly experienced marketing experts and operations in both Melbourne and Sydney.

The company’s work encompasses global campaigns for Australia’s independent developers, Australian marketing campaigns for overseas publishers and guidance for brands wanting to reach the gamer audience.

By providing scale, expertise, connections and manpower, Surprise Attack helps independent developers build their studio brand, promote their games, gain commercial viability and grow. With years of expertise and strong local presence in the Australian market, the agency delivers a full range of marketing services for games publishers, larger developers looking for a local presence or brands hoping to reach the gamer audience.

For more information, visit http://surpriseattack.com.au
Follow Surprise Attack on Twitter: @supattack

Trio of Former EA Firemint Developers Form New Studio Loveshack Entertainment

Core team behind SPY mouse reveal innovative debut project for tablets and PC

Melbourne, March 13, 2013: Three former senior developers at EA’s Firemint game development studio today announced they have formed Loveshack Entertainment, a new studio focused on pushing creative boundaries and developing more personal projects.  The team also revealed debut project, Framed, an innovative narrative-based puzzle game in which players must rewrite the story, a twist on a hard-boiled procedural.

Loveshack Entertainment’s Joshua Boggs, Adrian Moore and Ollie Browne are veteran game developers with particular experience in mobile and PC games. Boggs and Moore shared the lead development role on Firemint’s SPY mouse and between them the trio have worked on award-winning titles such as The Movies (Lionhead Studios), Populous, Theme Hospital, Syndicate Wars (Bullfrog), Rolling with Katamari (Namco Bandai) and Real Racing 2 and 3 (Firemint/Firemonkeys).

“Josh and I really clicked when we worked together on SPY mouse. But we were also both finding that whilst we loved working at Firemint, we wanted to stretch our creative muscles outside of a larger company,” said Adrian Moore, co-founder of Loveshack Entertainment. “With Ollie joining the team, we’re now ready to unleash our love on the world.”

The team’s debut project, Framed is an innovative puzzle game set in a noir comic book world. Presented as an animated storyboard and played in ‘chapters’, each panel depicts an important action or event. After watching the scene unfold, players can rearrange the order of the panels, changing the way the events play out and the outcome of the narrative. With each action “framed” by the last, context is everything.

In pre-production for the last six months, Framed has received funding from both Screen Australia and Film Victoria and is targeted for release on tablets and PC in late 2013.

Media Contact: For preview code, questions, interviews, please contact stephen@surpriseattack.com.au

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More details on Loveshack Entertainment

Loveshack Entertainment was formed in August 2012 when Adrian Moore and Joshua Boggs wanted to re-establish their creative freedom after leaving Firemint, an EA game development studio based in Melbourne, Australia. Both had worked on the hit game SPY mouse together, and felt they had found a particularly strong creative chemistry but were restricted in what they could achieve under a large company.

After months of pre-production and seeking funding for the studio and debut project, Framed, Josh and Adrian knew that Loveshack was missing someone. That missing piece was filled when Ollie Browne announced he was moving on from Firemonkeys, the studio formed when EA merged Firemint with Iron Monkeys. With Ollie joining at the start of March 2013, the trio was complete and the Loveshack was officially ready to go.

About the team

Joshua Boggs is a New Zealander who has both an artistic and technical background, contributing code, design and production work to many games at Melbourne-based Firemint/EA including Flight Control Rocket and Real Racing 2. He led the programming and co-designed the hit iOS game SPY mouse.

Adrian Moore is from the UK and began his career in games development as a 15 year old school boy, working at Peter Molyneux’s Bullfrog studio. After several years away from games, working as a music engineer with artists such as Seal, Pearl Jam, Black Sabbath and Sade, Adrian returned to game development and Bullfrog in the early nineties as an audio engineer and level designer. He eventually followed Molyneux to Lionhead Studios, and was Lead Designer of The Movies, which went on to win a BAFTA for best simulation. Settling in Melbourne in 2007 he joined Firemint where he led the design of games such as Rolling with­ Katamari, Mega Monsters and co-designed the acclaimed SPY mouse with Josh.

Ollie Browne, from Melbourne, Australia, was an indie-rock front man, winning an Aria for “Best Alternative Release” with Art of Fighting in 2001. During those rock ‘n’ roll days he had a parallel career in QA in game development, working for many Melbourne studios before becoming a game designer at Firemint in 2007. He contributed design work to many games there including Rolling with Katamari, Mega Monsters, SPY mouse, and Real Racing 3.

Website: http://www.loveshackentertainment.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoveshackEntertainment

Twitter: @loveshackers

DEVELOPER: Ken Wong

GENRE: Arcade

RELEASE: Out Now

PRICING: $1.99

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DESCRIPTION:

Save really cute cats from exploding. By kicking them.

Tap cats to bounce them in the air. If any cat hits the ground, it’s game over! Choose your athlete and join the official Hackycat competition!

NOTE: All the cats in this game are trained professionals. Do not try this at home with your domestic grade pets.

KEY FEATURES:

Simple Controls! - Tap anywhere to kick, knee or headbutt! That’s it.

Frantic score-attack gameplay - don’t let the hackycats touch the floor!

Collect Cheezburgers - Spend them in the shop to unlock new cats, athletes and locations!

Adopt them all! - Over two dozen hackycats to collect and kick, including Hipstacat, Sir Pussington, Pickles (zombie cat), Sprinkles (unicorn cat), Mustachio, Bucket (robot cat), Taco Cat and many more.

Pro skills! - Use powerups, combos and superkicks to achieve epic high scores! Dozens of mini-goals to complete! Level up your athlete!

Hand-drawn art style - lovingly hand-drawn art and lo-fi aesthetic inspired by films of Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums) and Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite)

Fully equipped - Universal app; Game Center achievements and leaderboards; retina and iPhone 5 ready

ABOUT THE DEVELOPER:

Ken Wong is a well known digital artist and illustrator from Adelaide, Australia. He spent many years working with American McGee as Art Director at Spicy Horse Games, leading the art team on games including Grimm and Alice Madness Returns.

He has contributed work to iam8bit and the Sword and Sworcery AV jam, is a regular presenter at the Animex Games and Animation Festival and was one of 28 artists profiles in Karen Haber’s 2011 book, Masters of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art.

Hackycat is Ken’s first independent game, and his first to feature a cat dressed as a taco.

You can explore more of Ken’s work at:

His website
On Facebook
On Twitter

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PLATFORM:

DEVELOPER: Kumobius

GENRE: Endless Runner / Action

RELEASE DATE:  January 10th, 2013

PRICING: US$0.99 / £0.69 / €0.89 / AU $0.99

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DESCRIPTION:

Time Surfer follows the last surfer travelling through the galaxy, haunted by an inevitable, destructive force: the end of universe itself. The surfer’s only defense? He can cheat death by rewinding time.

Time Surfer mashes up two very different game ideas to make something new: Tiny Wing’s simple physics-based slingshot gameplay and Braid’s mind-bending time reversal. The result? A twitch-based, time-rewinding, amped-up ride across the fabric of time and space.

Can you outrun the end of the universe?

KEY FEATURES:

Rewind time to fix your mistakes and perfect your surfing – use your rewind power to cheat death, surf the perfect curve, or thread a path through obstacles and enemies – just don’t let it run out!

Stomp on aliens and asteroids, avoid spikes and pits – the fabric of time and space is a dangerous place. Stomp on enemies to get speed boosts and steer clear of the deadly spikes and pits to avoid an untimely demise.

Heaps of Special Surfers to unlock – including a police box, a time-travelling car, the monkey king on a cloud and even a cameo from Emilio from Bean’s Quest.

Unlock pets to help your chances – Unlock cute pets with special abilities. These little friends will join your surf and give you crazy, new abilities!

80’s pop-culture on full display – psychedelic visuals backed up by a pumping chiptune soundtrack and numerous references to 80’s icons.

Hell Zone mode – turns the difficulty up to 11 with a spike-infested hellscape. For those who really love a challenge.

ABOUT THE DEVELOPER:

Kumobius is a Melbourne-based indie studio made up of two brothers – James and Tom Greenaway—and Ivan Neeson. Their first project was the critically acclaimed Bean’s Quest, which appeared on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, PC, Mac and Linux.

Actively involved in the Australian indie community, Kumobius recently won Best Game and Jammer’s Choice at the Global Game Jam 2012 – Melbourne for their puzzle platformer, Omelette Boris.

Time Surfer marks their first major project since the release of Bean’s Quest in 2011.

Visit their website

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Time Surfer from Kumobius on Vimeo.

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