GameTunnel has published a preview of Harvest: Massive Encounter, just a few days before the release. Here’s an excerpt:

First impressions of the game are a little bit mixed. At first its all a bit confusing, there’s not much outline as to what you’re supposed to do and what does what. After a short while of figuring this out, Harvest shines. The game is fantastic to play! Finishing your first game you’ll readily want to take in the animated graphs and look over your explorations and weaponry. However, the game soon becomes a little tedious as the game grows ridiculously hard.

The version they have examined is the closed beta, which was developed last year. Read the whole preview here: http://www.gametunnel.com/gamespace.php?id=406&tab=2

/jeb

Only a week until the release of Harvest: Massive Encounter! We are very excited! The game will be released for Mac OS X and Windows, and launch with support for at least 6 languages (English, Swedish, Portuguese, German, French and Korean). If you plan to buy the game, you better hurry up to get the pre-order discount! We will have this option available up to this Sunday (March 2).

Hit the jump to see our release trailer!

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The forums at the Whispers in Akarra hub site are now available. If you are having problems with the game’s source code, or maybe the game itself, you can ask for help there.

Speaking of the source code… If you add new features, bug fixes or simply tweak the source, please let me know! I’d love to see what happens with the project. So far I’ve only heard that the source is “clean”, which sounds good, and the expected “how do I compile?” questions. I hope you will be able to create some cool stuff with the server.

/jeb

The Korean site Pig-min.com covers independent games from all over the world, and has now written a post about our Korean translation of Harvest. Head over there to see two previously unreleased screenshots of Harvest in Korean!

/jeb

During last year we had an office in a barracks owned by the university. This was a great opportunity for us to try working together in a shared environment. Unfortunately this offer was only available for up to one year, so we had to move out sooner or later (we managed to get an extra two months, muhaha). Since we didn’t want to go back to working from our own appartments, we looked for a new office, and found one not far from where we had been.

Two weeks ago we moved our stuff to the new place and I took pictures. Hit the jump to get it all!

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Derek Yu has posted the Independent Games Festival winners over at TIGSource. The grand prize winner is quite surprising, in my opinion, but still very cool! I had vouched for World of Goo, which won two other prizes, or Hammerfall, which had to leave with nothing.

Unfortunately, none of the three Swedish games won anything… better luck next year! Hit the jump for the full list.

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During the early years of thewreck’s life (yes I know I’m speaking of myself in third person!), he spent most of his time either making games or playing them.

It all stared a time long ago, in the age of the Amstrad. His father had just sold the tape-version in favor of a diskette version! Oh the joy of basic 1.0 - Many text adventures and fake operating systems later thewreck felt ready to take on his first sprites - and on what system you ask?

On the Atari of course! This is where he made his first acquaintance with Clickteam through their game making environment STOS. It came complete with a lovely scripting language and a sprite editor! In it he made many feeble attempts including the legendary ninja game where the shuriken was on the same sprite as the character (what was he thinking really?)…

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As I wrote earlier, Dawn of Daria and, in essence, Oxeye Game Studio have a past in an online role-playing game called Whispers in Akarra. The game was never completed - it barely reached alpha stage - but the editors and server were released to the public and a number of shards were started. Several years have passed since then, and I think it’s time to add the server’s source code to the list of available tools…

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In my humble opinion, the best part about working with game development is that it potentially involves many different skills, like programming, sound editing, composing and graphic design.
The downside of this of course being that each branch comes with an expensive license for the application involved.

Or does it?

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All of us have different ways of maintaining the glamourous life of independent game development, such as part-time jobs or standing at the corner friday nights. thewreck’s method is to study “Interaction Design” in Malmö. Every now and then, they make installments that are intended to make people interact with other people, as well as with the installments themselves.

The most recent mischief they’ve made is a “LED door sign,” which could be changed by various switches, placed on the toilet doors at a night club in Malmö. They recorded the event with a camera, and it’s quite fun to see people reactions when the “lady’s room” and “men’s room” signs switch places.

You can read more about the project on this link, or follow the jump to see one of the clips. Noteable highlight: the guy in the beginning (testing the signs) is thewreck!

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