Angry Mango - Games design

GameCity

2011-10-30T07:04:00.000-07:00

The end of October is always a time we look forward to at Angry Mango - not for Halloween (although we are partial to fancy dress), but rather to the most exciting games industry event of the year: GameCity. For those who don't know, GameCity is an independent game festival held in Nottingham each year, and includes a variety of awesome events - from interesting and inspirational talks from big indie names, to street events that take over the city, to social evenings of crazy games like Joust and B.U.T.T.O.N.

This year, we were lucky enough to be showcasing Mush on the phone in the main tent for a total of five hours. It's always fantastic to get members of public playing the game, in particular seeing kids get so excited about it! For the first time, we were even handed some Mush fan art:

This inspired us to invite other visitors to draw some art on the blackboard by our display:

A huge thanks to everyone who came along to see us!

We also had a brilliant time taking part in other events, such as seeing the UK premier of the fantastically creative film Kooky, speaking on the Guardian gamesblog breakfast on Thursday alongside industry legend Richard Lemarchand (Naughty Dog) and my personal inspiration, Robin Hunicke (That Game Company), and watching Mush being played by Eric Chahi (From Dust)!

Sadly, it's all over now for another year. If you missed it, put next year's festival in your diary NOW - and Keep an eye out for the festival write up on the Guardian.

Mush is alive!

2011-09-10T09:44:00.000-07:00

Yes indeed, Mush is alive and well and, what's more, it was officially announced as an Xbox LIVE title at Gamescom last month! Mush was showcased along with thirteen other titles, which you can read all about here, at the Windows Phone 7 booth and it has been featured on this awesome Xbox LIVE trailer!

The news seems to have had a pretty positive response from the media again (wpcentral, among others), and it's great to be back in the limelight, shown alongside such fantastic titles as Kinectimals, after beavering away quietly for so long! We can also tell you what it is we've been doing (other than completing our studies), such as adding a fresh new interface for the Windows Phone 7, those all important achievements and polishing a-plenty.

In the many months since posting, there has of course been two other very exciting events for us! Firstly, we had the privilege of attending the GAME BAFTAs back in March, which was a fantastic evening and a fitting culmination of our Dare to be Digital experience. Sadly, the only trophies we came away with were the complimentary chocolate BAFTAs, which were a bit smaller than the real thing but nevertheless very tasty, but a (belated) congratulations is in order for the Ones to Watch winners, That Game Studio. The second event was our win at BAFTA Cymru in May (that's BAFTA Wales for any non-Welsh speakers!), at which we received the New Media Award against competition from the BBC and Ethos Creative.

We promise that Mush isn't too far away, and more amazing updates will be coming your way soon!

2011-01-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

We have a lot of thrilling news since the last blog post :)

After what seemed like a very long term last term working pretty solidly on Mush, with the aid of many energy drinks and the 24 hour corner shop, we managed to complete the game by the Christmas holiday and have a much, much needed break. Although the original plan was to submit Mush to the Marketplace in time for Christmas, we are currently discussing some exciting options with Microsoft, and unfortunately this has meant pushing back the release of the game.

We have also this week sent off a BAFTA goodie box!

As well as the phones and Zunes for the judges to play with, we included some promotional materials to help demonstrate marketability - hopefully the plushies will be as popular as they were at ProtoPlay! It also includes the brand new promotional video, which will be available for your viewing pleasure in the not too distant future...

And finally, if you've already bought your February edition of Edge magazine, you might already have found Mush in the preview section. If not, I would recommend it!

Progress and New Images

2010-11-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

So we've been in development a good few months now and we've learnt to realistically schedule (and work unrealistic hours) but we seem very much on track.

Most of the progress has been behind the scenes with level design, phone integration and some tasty new features that we'll announce shortly.

Here's a concept piece for a new world theme:

And here's a new level select screen, giving a sneak peek of how many levels will be in the final version:

GameCity - The Lounge

2010-10-31T10:50:00.002-07:00

Work is as intense as ever with the 10th December deadline beginning to loom. We've been mainly focusing on adding new content, creating some mega awesome levels and integrating a brand spanking new emotion to really mix things up.

The last few days we've been showcasing in the lounge down at GameCity in Nottingham. Having regular Vietnam-style flashbacks of ProtoPlay and intensely trying to sell the game to 5 year old's as if they were games industry veterans was an interesting experience. Note to self, this is no longer a competition and kids don't dig elevator pitches. All the same, everyone seemed to enjoy Mush and we got to meet some great people.

The highlight of the event for me had to be seeing Keita Takahashi playground designs. That and working with Studio Output in developing the Mush brand and how we should approach our viral video campaign.

Also, keep your eyes open when looking through Edge. There should be a delightful upcoming surprise.

Lots of Exciting News

2010-10-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

It's been quiet here on the Angry Mango blog for the last few weeks, and whilst I'd like to tell you that we've all been having a nice relaxing break, putting our feet up and watching Neighbours, the reality is that there has been little downtime in which to recover from the emotionally draining climax of Dare to be Digital. So here is an update of what has been going on behind the scenes and, more importantly, the plan for the coming months.

With four of us now back in Newport for third year, this week has been one of planning and scheduling. The new goal in mind is now finishing and releasing the game, which involves not only reworking some aspects of the prototype but also introducing an entirely new emotional theme and mechanic. With a shiny new level editor, a phone development model, a strict schedule and as close to nine to five working hours as possible when juggling final projects and dissertations, we are confident in aiming for a Christmas release.

Thanks to Microsoft we have had some awesome opportunities to get involved in industry events such as the WP7 developers conference in London, PDC 10 in Seattle and, excitingly, the WP7 UK launch party. We are also investigating the possibility of attending Game City 2010, which is a free public event, so we will keep you posted on that.

And there is yet another exciting piece of news! With all this professional experience we feel we have reached the logical point at which to officially open as a business. At these early stages we are still researching seeking advice from various sources, but it is pretty certain that within the next few weeks Angry Mango will be a legal company.

That's all for now, since we need to get a good night's sleep for a full day of work tomorrow - and every day - until the end of time. We will leave you with this lovely video interview in which Henry, Greg and Dennis chat to Ubelly.

We won!

2010-08-16T08:57:00.000-07:00

We won! The first ever mobile phone game nominated for a BAFTA Ones to Watch award is 'Mush' for the Windows Phone 7. It's also the first mobile phone game ever to win Dare to be Digital.

It's been a fantastic experience and we've really enjoyed the rollercoaster ride.

We're now pushing on with development and planning to release for the Windows Phone 7.

Thanks everyone for the support!

Huge Response!

2010-08-05T06:38:00.000-07:00

We never expected to have such a huge response for our current game in production 'Mush'. It spread like wildfire, one website got a hold of our promotional video, that soon spread to 3 websites, then to many more. Not only that, quite a lot of people on Twitter started to link our video or websites that have covered us. It feels great to be making this game and to have such a huge audience previewing it and wanting to play it.

This has created pressure for us as we do not want to let anyone down. We have our fears that people will not like it, but with the amount of good comments on our promotional video and many websites that have covered us, it gives us great hope that whoever will play our game will enjoy it as much as we have enjoyed making it(and still are!).

We would just like to take this time to create a thank you list for the websites who have covered us!

Develop-Online - http://www.develop-online.net/blog/125/Dare-Blogs-Angry-Mango

WMPoweruser - http://wmpoweruser.com/mush-another-extremely-pretty-windows-phone-7-game-in-the-works/comment-page-1/

1800Pocketpc - http://www.1800pocketpc.com/2010/08/03/windows-phone-7-games-mush.html

MobileTechWorld - http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2010/08/02/mush-for-windows-phone-7-locoroco-mixed-with-rolando/

Mobility Digest - http://mobilitydigest.com/mush-for-windows-phone-7/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+FuzeMobility+(Fuze+Mobility)

PC Applications - http://www.pcapplications.info/windows-phone-7-games-montage

Everythingwm - http://www.everythingwm.com/mush-an-emotion-filled-windows-phone-7-game/2010/08/03/

Week 7

2010-07-21T01:14:00.000-07:00

Midway through week 7 and Angry Mango progress is still good, although a little behind schedule. Having aimed to complete gameplay by the end of week 6, we still have a few bits and pieces to get through before it will be possible - the new deadline is now Friday.

So, whilst programmers continue to work on physics objects and exporting from the level editor, the artists have been getting on with sprucing up the levels, sorting out the parallax and that sort of thing. We also had a sound recording session yesterday which involved some very silly sounds that may or may not make it into the final game...

We are sorting out promotional material for Protoplay so that we can get it sent off to the printers in time for the exhibition. Aside from leaflets and posters, we have a few top secret ideas in the pipeline that will hopefully help draw in the public interest.

Finally, it has been a good week for getting out of the house, with a dolphin spotting trip on Sunday, in which we unexpectedly actually saw dolphins and hopefully gave some coherent interviews to the Channel 4 guys. We are looking forward to attending the ceilidh tomorrow night - or at least, I am, if only for the hilarity of the guys having to dance around in kilts..

Nearly complete!

2010-07-13T01:20:00.000-07:00

So, we're halfway through week six and we seem to be right on schedule. We've had it drilled into us all through University that games never stay on schedule and to stifle ambitions is a sacrifice for the greater good. Fortunately our ambitions remain unstifled, we have loads of solid foundations for expanded development and the gameplay is feeling like it will work nicely. By the end of this week we should have a completed game.

All three levels have now been built, with the first level now fully optimised and tested. All puzzle elements have been developed and can be assigned by the designers' in the level editor. Animations, physics, movement, camera, culling, and just about everything (except parallax integration, that's due for the end of the day) has been fully implemented for the core gameplay.

We have a weekly video blog that still needs editing but we'll upload it shortly, consisting of video footage of gameplay, workflow and the bespoke tools designed for the game.

The next three weeks are probably going to be the most vital in terms of honing gameplay, tweaking levels and making a game that's fun and instantly accessible. We're all really looking forward to the end result and we'll keep you posted on this blog in the weeks to come.

In the meantime here's a couple of screens:

An updated boat design:

The happy level in the editor:

The sad level in the editor:

Animation-orama

2010-07-05T06:11:00.000-07:00

It's been another busy, busy week here in Dundee. Luckily I have just enough time to bring you all the latest before getting back to our new, stricter schedule.

Art! Animation has been the word of the week, and between us we have essentially completed all the character animation for the game. Here is but a small selection:

Blimp Enemy

Mush Animations

Happy Boss (moustache not to be included!)

Today we drew up a complete task list, including a re-evaluation of all our assets so far and where improvement can be made.

The programmers have been beavering away as ever. Dennis has implemented Zune controls for the menu as well as a collectables system, which we hope will bring replayability to the game, and offer that extra something for the completionists out there. Ultimately, it will probably also tie in to Microsoft achievements on the Windows phone.

Greg has been continuing work on the game objects, ticking various things of the list, such as flying enemies and a rotating windmill, the latter of which proved to be quite an obstacle.

Meanwhile, Ahmed has been continuing the quest of the level editor, adding physics functionality which will help us greatly when it comes to testing and tweaking.

Music production is also underway, outsourced to a professional friend of Dennis'.

And finally, the most exciting news was of course Federer's shocking defeat in the quarter finals, although sadly both the mens' and women's finals were disappointingly straightforward.

Progress Update

2010-06-28T03:43:00.000-07:00

It's been a week since our last blog post so here's an update on our progress.

I have been working with the physics engine and gameplay mechanics.
I finished creating many of the objects that will be used in the game, including doors, rotating platforms, blowers(that blow you away when you are close), water and interactive switches. I have also integrated the emotion input with the character - it now switches sprites, changes size and behaves differently depending on the emotional state. I also manualy created a small test level because...
Ahmed is still working on creating a level editor.
A lot of effort has gone into it, but the amount of time we estimated it would take to finish was way off. Most of the functionality is there, but we still need the ability to read the level data, including physics data, from a file and generate the level from that in the game.
Dennis has focused on the GUI and gamestate management.
There is now a menu system that the user can navigate. Collectable objects were added and a prite appears on screen when the user collects them, then dissapears a few seconds later. The gamestate management will allow us to move from the menu to the game itself, and load level data when a new level is reached.
Henry continued his previous work.
Many more sprites have been created and the character design has progressed. GUI and menu sprites were made. An early version of the level editor was used to place sprites and evolve the level design.
Kate carried on her work from before.
A previous version of the level editor was used to create levels and design puzzles, more sprites were created.

Asset Progress

2010-06-22T01:17:00.000-07:00

Henry and I (Kate) have been continuing asset production. We've been working on the highest priority assets and have completed the majority needed for the first two levels.

Meanwhile, the programmers have been busy finishing the level editor and beginning work on the functions of the individual assets - so far, we have a blowing creature that blows Mush across the screen when he is floating or in water. Another important piece of progress is that we can now import a sprite and automatically generate a collision object from the sprite.

Mega Awesome Progress

2010-06-18T01:28:00.000-07:00

So we're nearing the end of the second week and progress has been pretty surprising, even for us and our optimistic predictions. We have a playable test build working on the Zune HD, fully functional physics, working and rather intuitive gesture recognition, a heavily featured level editor and all the terrain sprites. We've also nearly fully finished all art assets, including npc's, environment props, interactive assets and terrain.

We're at the stage now where we need to iron out any level editor bugs and begin the construction of our predesigned levels. We decided to go old school with the level design, stapling loads of sheets of paper together so we can spread our ideas out and get an overall idea of progression. One thing we wanted to distance ourselves from is the obvious distinction between levels, with the player being pulled in and out of level select screens. We wanted levels and themes to feed into each other naturally with a subtle, but less immersion-breaking distinction.

Kate has been an art machine, producing countless assets and asset variations. I (Henry) have been focusing mainly on the technical aspects of the art, producing terrain sprites using as little pixel space as possible, but maximising the capability to reproduce nice flowing curves. It's been interesting and feels a tad like reverse engineering a jigsaw puzzle.

Ahmed has been feature stuffing the level editor so we can optimise using minimum sprites; which is coming along really nicely and a lot faster than expected. He's really going beyond the call of duty, often working from 9 until 11 which is pretty intense but super productive.

(Level editor fully working with some placeholder assets)

Greg has been nailing all collisions, physics and is now starting work on the functions of the interactive assets. He's also making sure that everything works as it should on the Zune (which it is).

Matthew has now also fully integrated the menu and HUD systems.

So far so good!

Character Art

2010-06-15T05:35:00.000-07:00

Character Concepts:

Happy / Sad

Angry

A sign of relief...

2010-06-14T15:48:00.000-07:00

I am quite relieved right now. Here's an explanation!

The past weekend and today have been fairly hectic and demoralising! Not much was getting done because of various issues ranging from the ZuneHD's inability to support Vertex and primitive rendering to the Physics Engine's so-called coordinate system.

My relief is that finally we as a team have found our ways around these set backs and will recover.

I must admit it has been tough, but worth it for future career and that kind of stuff. Sadly it came at an expense of a week at Dare.

Tomorrow is going to be very important for us and we will catch up on a hell of a lot of things and hopefully a successful TEST BUILD!

stay tuned on www.angrymangogames.com

1 Week Down, Art Style Down, Zune Problems

2010-06-14T15:09:00.001-07:00

So our first week of Dare to be Digital has come and gone. It hasn't been as all-out intense as I had anticipated and we seem to be pacing ourselves quite well. The dreaded Zune HD device has given us an avalanche of problems, from lack of 3D support (the physics needed it despite being 2D) to the glitchy coordinate system in the Jello Physics library.

The art side of things have trundled along quite nicely. We now have three style boards that really sum up the feel of our levels:

One thing I've noticed about a lot of the other teams is that they don't have games designers which I'm struggling to comprehend. It seems things like gameplay design, pacing and harmonisation are being treated as finickity non-essential additions that anyone can decide at any stage of development. Our team is very much the opposite so far - we've meticulously planned sub-narratives, sociopolitical intertextualities, visual and ludological harmonisation as well as the really core essentials like pacing, progressive disclosure and timing. I think our University course has really helped us take a more comprehensive approach of games design and it may hopefully give us an edge.

Personally I'm really struggling with the early mornings and it's kind of grinding away at my work ethic. I'm used to working tirelessly through the night but so far have had to get to bed early, not really wake up until mid-afternoon and then go to bed early again. I seem to be down by about 6 hours which isn't really ideal. Hopefully routine may eventually kick in.

The last week has been really fantastic for industry feedback. We had a good chat with the guys from Rare who are now helping us get our hands on a development model of the Windows Phone 7 and were able to really help out in the art and design side of things.

Here's everyone hard at work:

Concept Pieces Finished & Zune Progress

2010-06-10T03:44:00.000-07:00

So this is my first entry on the Angry Mango blog.

Yesterday was a day of good progress for the art team. Having overcome most of our initial qualms with Illustrator, we began to get a feel for the visual style of the game and pick up the work pace. We have so far created two concept images, for the sad and happy levels, and a third is underway for the angry level.

Sad Level Concept (by Kate)

Happy Level Concept (by Henry)

On the programming side:

Tilt - a placeholder asset moves across the Zune screen when tilting the phone
Accelerometer - we can shake the Zune to change the colour, representing the anger mechanic
Testing - Dennis found people in the building to help test the draw recognition

Touch Input Recognition

Touch Input Recognition for Smile

The low point of yesterday had to be Henry's PC finally being delivered. This is the fourth PC to sustain damage whilst in transit with DHL, and by the looks of it, the worst off - we must be SA Computer World's best customers by now. Aside from the box looking severely beaten up, two graphics cards and the fan were ripped out, screws were missing, the case bent and some dubious sticky liquid seemed to have found its way in.

The terrible service from DHL and the refusal to accept any responsibility is pretty shocking from such as widely used and well known company. It's going to be a difficult process trying to gain back any of the substantial financial damage from them, but this kind of service is totally unacceptable. Hopefully, the interview with the Channel 4 crew might help our case.

Aside from the PC saga, then, a pretty good day for the team!

A setback... and progress

2010-06-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

Last night: We continued working into the night, Ahmed was working on porting the physics engine to the Zune platform, when disaster struck.

We discovered that one of the features we were going to use to draw our character to the screen was not available on the Zune HD platform.

This led to a lot of worrying and a mad panic to come up with alternatives to the rendering system we will use for the soft body animations.

Today: After discussing our options and a meeting with one of the Dare mentors, we were less panicked about the issue.

We have a number of options ahead of us, from writing our own rendering system for the soft body physics to scrapping Zune compatibility, though obviously that would be an absolute last resort.

By the end of the day we made significant progress in other areas of the game development.

Input recognition using a mouse was completed, I wrote a function that can determine if the user draws a happy or sad face. This will need to be ported over to the Zune to use touch screen input, but the logic used will be the same.

Camera movement is in progress, Dennis created a camera which can follow a sprite through the game world, with a couple of tweaks this camera will be ready to implement in the full game.

Ahmed continued work on porting the physics engine to the Zune, to the best of our knowledge it is working, though we still can't draw the objects on the screen to fully test it.

The artists spent much of the day planning and researching. Kate produced colour pallets and some concept drawings of the environment, while Henry also produced concept artwork.

Induction and Beginnings

2010-06-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

So it's been the first official day of Dare to be Digital and we all got inducted, briefed and had a little time left over to begin production. We've so far produced all the placeholder graphics, basically integrated the physics engine and have some basic tests running on our testing device: the Zune HD. We've also fixed some basic website stuff, got all the team Blogging, Tweeting and Facebooking and tightly integrated our pipeline with various social media.

It still doesn't entirely feel like we've begun production of an intensive game, though I think that's mainly because our sleeping patterns are all adjusting. Getting up at 7 this morning was pretty painful. We have some pretty realistic deadlines over the next few days, especially with the programmers having worked literally non-stop after induction. It looks like they'll be pumping out more code until the early hours of the morning.

The plan for the next few days is to get all placeholders working in a version that us artists can drag preliminary artwork into so we can gauge the level of detail needed. It's really easy for us to go overkill with complexity so the sooner we can establish an equilibrium the better.

We've seen some really nice inspirational illustration over the last couple of days - namely Nathan Jurevicius and Zebitz. Hopefully this inspiration digging will lead us in an interesting direction.

Finally you can see all the teams in a group photo on the official Dare to be Digital blog.

Planning of Mush (6th June 2010)

2010-06-06T13:38:00.000-07:00

Today has been a slow recovery session. Everyone has been a little worse for wear from an awesome night. Besides from that Angry Mango has now planned their game fully and ready to be implemented come tomorrow when the competition starts. The team is going to get a test build sorted so we have a safety net and build upon that to get a shiny tidy game for you all to pay!....i mean play.

Not really much to say about today as it has been a slow one. Tomorrow will be the hectic day for all!

Follow the postie trail

2010-06-06T04:45:00.000-07:00

What a brilliant day that was! These random people knocked on all the floors to say there was a party happening on the bottom floor. This was great other than 3 of our team members being at the cinema and no way of contacting them. Myself and kevin (Irish team) decided to use about 100 postie notes to make a trail from their doors and lead it to the party. I believe kevin has some photos of this so i will grab them later on.

This party was just awesome. We met all the teams and had a good drink with them. The Indian team are the funniest people I have ever met. I've never had a conversation that led to a 'God-Off'. We had an argument over who's God was the best. Their words to us were 'My God can strike you with lightning, so screw you'. I don't think anyone could reply to that. Many comments were made about Kev's hair for some reason as well. We also met the American, Swedish, English and a few French people which was fantastic.

That night needs to happen alot more as it was great fun but I guess I need to pick up those postie notes now...

PC Buggered

2010-06-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

After a night of rest with the sound of traffic keeping us up we have heard that my PC and Ahmed's PC were at the Dare Office. After picking them up we instantly found problems. With Ahmed's PC he had to update his bios. It wasnt really an urgent problem but of course we weren't sure if the rest of his hardware was fine. My PC has been a complete pain in the arse. To sum the whole day down, I had to run around Dundee town to find a computer shop to buy a new graphics card and then after a few hours of messing about with the graphics card i had to buy a new motherboard. Once getting those 2, my pc would still not turn on so i have left it in the PC shop to be fixed. Lets just say the price of all of this is about £150. Greg soon has his PC shortly after and his PC also had problems. Problems being with the motherboard also. He has also left it down in the same pc shop to be fixed. We are still waiting for Henry's PC to arrive but lets just say we will not be using a certain company called DHL again...ever.

Team eleMENTAL had arranged an evening of much beer and shots with all the teams. The teams that turned up were the Welsh, Irish, Swedish and Scottish team. This was alot of fun with poker, line of shots and alot of greeting and meeting. Everyone is very nice and kind and easy to get along with. We have definitely bonded well with the Irish team which is perfect since they are on our floor. The Irish team consist of Kevin, Kevin, Alan, Mark and Jamie 'Spoon'. These guys know how to handle their drink!

In Dundee! (5th June 2010)

2010-06-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

Angry Mango are now here in Dundee! We have been here for 2 days now meeting and greeting with everyone which has been fantastic. I have bought some internet time with BT so we can start these blogs and updates. Every day we will do a blog on what happened during the day and a few other blogs about our game which will be separate. We will also do a Video blog soon. All these are still to be decided in our team meeting tomorrow in prep for the competition.

Day #1 - Travel

2010-06-05T04:14:00.000-07:00

This was a bit of a hectic day in my opinion. Myself, Henry, Kate and Ahmed met up at Newport Train Station and Greg went straight to Southampton Airport. We (Being the 4) had to wait an hour for our train to come as we missed the other one by a few minutes. That hour flew by as we were just excited about everything and of course the topic of conversation was about Dare.
It was very teasing to be on that train as everyone else who was on it was only talking about "Barry Island" and of course it being summer and the sun is out we really wanted to go for a dip into the sea.

When we arrived at Cardiff Airport we were thinking about 2 questions that were frequently asked; How much hand luggage can we carry? How much in total can our bags weigh? Coming to the desk we found out it was 20kg for our bags and only 1 hand luggage per person. Each one of us though the same thing "Uh Oh!". Reason for this was 3 of our bags were over 20kg and Ahmed had brought 3 bits of hand luggage. Everything went well though, we hid most of it from the security ;).

I think i behalf on the team when i say that the pilot was the funniest guy ever. As soon as we stepped onto the plane, instant questions were thrown at us about our t-shirts (They had our team name on them). We had to explain the story quickly and then head to our seats. What made it fun was that the pilot came and had a chat with us about this and he was raised in Dundee. Obviously he would say that Dundee is pants but since we came from Newport i think it was a step up for us really. Instead of the normal chat over the tannoy that any pilot would do, this pilot decided to mix it up a bit to tell us to time him how long it would take for him to get to Scotland.

As we arrived in Scotland we were met by either Jane,Elaine or Eleanor (I cannot remember her name). We were given our room key, floor key and house key for Victoria Chambers. We were told that we had to wait about half hour for the Irish team to collect their bags and then we had a hour and half bus journey to Dundee Abertay. I must say, i never want to be on a bus like that again, the walls were vibrating like mad! Plus the heat was extreme. Other than that it was a good time for us to get to know the Irish team.

Arriving at Victoria Chambers our first confusion was which key opened the front door and then which key opened the floor and then which key opened the door. The floor is fantastic, about 7 toilets and 5 showers, 2 kitchens with about 4 fridges, 4 freezers and 2 ovens. All of this was perfect and ideal for us 10. Each room is a little bigger or a little smaller than the other but each is as good as the other. I will get a photo up soon of the one room, common room and kitchen.
To finish the first day, the Welsh team and Irish team hit the Chinese restaurant which is across the road from us and the pub that is next door to us. Perfect day!

Dare to be Digital Interviews

2010-05-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

We've been meticulously preparing and practicing for our Dare to be Digital 2010 interview. With over 100 teams entering internationally and only 10 or so getting through, the competition is going to be stiff.

Upon getting on the bus to London I realised I didn't know anything that I was saying off by heart. I crammed in 3 hours worth of memorising and had just about got all the info I needed in my brain by the time we arrived. After 5 or so group runthroughs we fixed any final problems and were confident in ourselves that we were good to go. To celebrate we went off to China Town and ate copious amounts of Chinese food.

The next day we woke up and went on our merry way to the interview. I had drugged away any nerves that I had with some lovely placebo rescue-remedy that really did the trick. We loitered around for a while before being invited in and introduced to guys from Sony and Sega. After several shaky technical failures we were able to get off to a good start and pitched really well. Then when the questions came round our extensive practicing came into play and we were able to fire off well researched answers, seemingly to the satisfaction of the judges.

We came out feeling like we'd pitched the game idea as well as we possibly could have. The super preparation really paid off and the attention to detail, such as getting matching T-shirts printed and having a fully animated presentation really paid off.

Website and Blog are Live!

2010-05-29T09:20:00.000-07:00

We have Dare to be Digital starting very soon now so we wanted to get off on the right foot with a new website and blog. We've created a whole load of social media profiles and interlinked them so when we start producing artwork, videos, tweets and blogs, we'll attract as large an audience as possible. Hopefully we'll have some great game design to show off!

This website isn't the final design for Angry Mango, though it should serve the purpose of a communication channel, where people can check for updates and new material on a regular basis. We'll make sure that when the competition starts we'll be updating everything on a daily basis including artwork, screenshots, builds and lots more.

So, while you're here, why not follow this blog, like us on Facebook, tweet with us, subscribe to our YouTube, eat our RSS or visit the website.

Also, check out our new funky avatars: