Back on the ZX Spectrum, in my very early days of coding in BASIC, I made a little game where a fella was being made to walk the plank with a pirate asking multiplication questions. If you got it wrong, you got prodded one step closer to the inevitable game over splash. The idea behind that early game has bounced around inside my head ever since, picking up a whole load of various inspirations from my love of RPGs and other genres throughout the years. If I could figure out how to work an RTS, FPS or driving angle in there too, I totally would!

While we want to aim at a younger audience as they will stand to gain most from the maths based elements while at school, we are following our standard modus operandi at Infinite State Games and making games we ourselves also want to play. So the mechanics will be rich enough to satisfy the older gamer, while we will refrain from severed body parts and other non-child friendly themes that tend to accompany bladed melee based combat in order to keep our age rating down.

Any mental skill is just like a physical one – the more you practise it, the better you get. Maths is no different. And you’d be amazed at how much you use mental arithmetic in every day life, even if you don’t realise it… From working out if that shop keeper just short changed you, to working out how many times you can hit snooze before you absolutely have to get out of bed!

A little secret: I’m pretty rubbish at maths! Certainly relative to some of the guys I’ve worked with over the years. But to be honest, you don’t need great maths skills to be a great programmer, unless you want to get into hardcore graphics programming or make it big in the finance trading platforms world. Programming is more about logical thinking and getting a good overall picture of what you are trying to achieve in your head.

I wish! No, we had nothing like this when I was a kid, except my simple Speccy based prototype. My maths classes just followed the tried and tested methods of working through dusty old text books. However, in my later years of school, I was required to get a fancy calculator that let you write simple programs. So I then spent most of my maths lessons sitting at that back writing really basic games.

The game is pretty playable already, although it only has one environment prototyped so far. The combat model is largely in place, and so are the exploration mechanics. I’m a big fan of random map generation, because it adds to replayability. Especially in a game like this where exploring and looting are core components. But random map generation is a tricky thing to get right, so that is where most of the time has gone so far, and I’m pretty happy with where the geography generation is right now. There is still some work to do around environment specific generation, but the hardest part is done. Next up is loot though, then all the core components are in place so we can start building little ideas on the game’s main foundations while we tweak and add assets.

And of course, we’re just using place holder art currently.  We’re planning on having a very illustrated hand-drawn look to the finished product.  We’ll talk more about that in another dev diary post.

The random map generation was the part I was most dreading, mainly because I had a vague notion about how it would work, but hadn’t quite ironed out the actual nuts and bolts of it in my head. However I like to tackle the hardest problems first with any project, so I spent a few solid days getting the map generation outlined and am pleased with how it’s working now. There will probably be a few tweaks over the course of the project, but the hard part is done.

And with the hard part done, it means we can just focus on adding fun things which is what I most love about making games – the tweaking and the little touches that you always ad lib outside any official design document. They, to me, are what makes developing games so great.

Damn straight, man.  Cheers, Charlie that was awesome.

So, for the last couple of months, Charlie has been coding and designing the prototype for our next game and it’s now at a state where we can show it to you guys.

Starting a new game is a fantastic time where the team can share the birthing process of an idea, and as it grows each of us can find ways we can use our unique skills to make it the best game possible.

So what sort of game is it! Well, it’s what we’d call a mental arithmetic adventure RPG.

Travelling through distant lands you will meet monstrous creatures which you’ll battle using your powers of fast mental arithmetic as they pose you increasingly demanding maths problems.

What we’ve got right now is a vertical slice which show-cases the combat, navigation, animation and random map generation.  Let’s have a look at a video of the most recent prototype:

There’s a loooooooooooooong way to go now until we’ve got a completed concept, let alone the finished game. We still need to prototype quests, treasure chests, boss fights… along with any other features we choose to add to make the game play experience better.

The place-holder art you can see in the video will be replaced by the hand-drawn work of an illustrator (who we will tell you more about soon).

The music is in the process of being researched. Barry is up ’till the wee small hours every night researching medieval music to bring you a hint of authenticity in his own inimitable style.

Anyway, we hope you enjoyed the video and continue to follow the development of our game as it takes shape!

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/frutorious/id524952395?mt=8

Here’s the trailer!

Learn about what’s in the update here.  Have fun and tell your friends!

We’re all really excited about releasing this because we’ve added a whole load of content, put in lots of feedback we’ve had from our lovely players, added social features and fixed a few little bugs here and there.

Here’s a comprehensive run-down of everything we’ve crammed into the Off-World Pack

MARS NEEDS FRUTS!

One evening Mr Fruts was out looking for mushrooms with his best friend Frutorious F.I.G.  Suddenly, an ALIEN SPACE SHIP appeared and Mr Fruts was sucked aboard.  Those ghastly Aliens had come all the way from our game ‘Shepherd: Mars Needs Sheep!’ to steal all the fruits in Frutland!

Mr Fruts and everyone from Frutland were transported through space and time and across infinite dimensions ending up an awfully long way from home.

‘Don’t worry, Mr Fruts!’ said Frutorious F.I.G.  ’I got a rocket in my pocket!’

And off they went collecting all the fruits while trying to get back to Frutland…

‘OFF-WORLD’ DIMENSIONS & WORMHOLES

There’s a brand new 36 ‘Off-World’ levels for you to play in the update.  They are set over four different dimensions that the Aliens have transported you to.  Some are very weird, some are very strange but they’re all very FRUITY!

You’ll also encounter a new gameplay feature – the WORM HOLE! This circular tunnel in space-time will suck you in and then spit you out somewhere else in the level and leads to some very funky puzzles to solve.

Cosmic Dimension

A warm, dank and dark dimension filled with enormous mushrooms and giant wooden statues. Things here are quite easy and fun, and help you to start to get your head around the wormholes

Neon Dimension

When Mr Fruts was dropped into this telepathic dimension, it used his emotional energies to fashion plasma into the form of a place where Mr Fruts feels most happy: Frutland.

Peyote Dimension

Next, F.I.G drops Mr Fruts off  somewhere very hot and very confusing: a dimension where wool watches you; Peyote Dimension.  Things are really starting to get tricky now with cunning levels in distinctly trippy surroundings

Wax Dimension

This is a childish sketchy world full of streaks of colour and wormholes… along with the trickiest, most mind-bending Frutorious puzzles ever conceived!

Each dimension also has its own music, so there’s four new tunes encompassing funk, techno, trip-hop ad electropop.

SOCIAL FEATURES

As well as 36 brand new levels, the worm holes and the Aliens from Shepherd: Mars Needs Sheep, there’s some brand new social features!

You can now brag to your friends on Twitter or Facebook when you get a new Hi-Score on Frutorious Pro, and you can publish your progress in the main game on your favourite social media timeline too.  What’s more, every time you make a tweet or a post, Frutorious F.I.G. will give you some play-coins which you can spend on power-ups in the game!

FRUTORIOUS PRO IMPROVEMENTS

Everyone asked for it… so we made it happen! You can now play Frutorious Pro using either the retro art or the hand-made art.

We’ve also added an extra 5 seconds to the clock to give beginners more of a chance to get into the awesomeness that is Frutorious Pro.  It still provides the same challenge to the battle hardened Frutorious Pro players but we hope this will open up the score boards to some new contenders too.

We’ve also written a new tune for Frutorious Pro which we think suits the vibe better.

GAMEPLAY & BUG FIXES

We’ve made lots of tweaks to make the game more accessible, stable and fun.

• End of level menu – now instead of going automatically to the next level in the game, you’ll be able to choose whether to replay the last one, play the next one or quit to the menu.
• When playing a level you’ve played before, you  no longer to sit through the parachute sequence before you start.
• There’s two new fruits in the Off-World pack to collect as voted for on our Facebook poll – Watermelon and Pineapple
• We’ve added the list of ‘Frutorious Super-Chums’ to the credits!  Remember that?  We said that everyone who shares a post about Frutorious could get in the credits, and we done it!
• We’ve put a cool thing hidden in the shop… if you tap on Frutorious F.I.G’s dog (who’s name incidentally is Dog Doggy Dogg) you’ll be taken to our cool ‘Other Games’ viewer which tells you about our other AppStore games.
• We’ve made the amount of time it takes for Pedro to steal your fruit MUCH much quicker.  That means if you’re trailing loads of fruit and you get caught, you’ll be back up and collecting fruits again in a second.
• We’ve also written little descriptions underneath each power-up icon as suggested by Rev. Stuart Campbell, to help people understand what the power-ups do more clearly.
• Finally, to encourage progress, every world you complete will be unlocked to be used in Frutorious Pro.

So we had a tie between Pineapple and Watermelon.  Two fruts which you might think we’d put in to the initial release.  Well we’re not animals, you don’t spunk all your good stuff at once do you. So we are proud to announce, representing the more tropical of fruits, we will now have a watermelon and a pineapple in the fruits you can collect in the coming update…

FRUT FRUT FRUT

Now, one of the last teensy things to do is to name this update and we thought we’d turn to you guys.

We need a name for our update pack of levels.  We’ve got two names we need you to help us choose from…

“Off-World”

“Mars Needs Fruts”

You can vote on Facebook here http://apps.facebook.com/opinionpolls/poll?pid=ACFv6lnWMBw

Cheers m’dears!

It was a fantastic evening and we met loads of awesome, awesome people. The Stick Sports Ltd. team were ace, we got to chat to Gary Penn from Denki about TV detectives, and nice man from Edge magazine said he’d heard of our game! Hooray!

Lovely chandeliers at the Assembly Rooms in Bath

We know what you’re all wanting to know though… what was the food like?

Starter was celeriac with a pear and bits of blue cheese. It was quite nice.
Main was chicken with some potato. Lovely chicken, nice gravy. Charlie was particularly happy with the gravy.
Pudding was a really nice apple pie with a bit of ice cream, which is just what Barry fancied so he was happy too.

So even though we didn’t win, it was fun. We managed to flood the twitter feed at one point by orchestrating all our friends to simultaneously tweet about Frutorious. We also liberally scattered some fliers about encouraging game journos to support our tiny team and silly game. A few of them found their way onto the front of Future publishing but we have only the wine to blame for that.

Here’s a video of our evening’s highlights…

Other highlights included getting Bad Hotel’s nomination video soundtrack stuck in our heads (it was a spoof of M.E.T.H.O.D. Maaaaaaan but with B.A.D. H.O.T… Elllll.)
Also chatting to a lovely guy called George who made the lovely, zoney Cubes for iOS who offered to help us get our heads around Unity

Next stop – losing the BAFTAS!

It’s the TIGA 2012 awards tonight in Bath and we can’t flippin’ wait!  To celebrate, we’re making Frutorious FREE for a limited time, so tell all your chums they can GRAB IT for GRATIS before 5th of November! C’mon, let’s see if we can break that elusive top 100

Here’s the AppStore link https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/frutorious/id524952395?mt=8

BLACK HOLES!

In the mean time, we’re also busy beavering away on levels for the update! One of the new things that’ll be in the update are BLACK HOLES! Making levels with these are super good fun, and we’ve been banging them out on our lunch breaks at work and in the evenings.  Here’s a little video that’ll do a better job at explaining what they are like than I could in words…

THE BIG AWARDS QUESTION!

So all that’s left to do now is sit and wait to find out the answer to the question on everyone’s lips…  What food they doin’ at the meal? Charlie will be hungry after the long drive and I know what he’s like – he’ll want a bit of gravy.  Personally, I’m in the mood for a bit of ice cream!

Whatever is for dinner we know we’ll have a great evening.  Still hasn’t sunk in that we’re going!  We’re in categories with some really professional and amazingly popular titles, so for a game made by 3 guys with day jobs which has only had a handful of downloads this is a proper immeasurably massive whopping great big deal

GO DOWNLOAD FRUTORIOUS!

So yeah!  Please go share this, tell your palz and family, tell all your internet-chums and that woman you say hello to with the dog.  Impress hipster friends by introducing them to it, believe me, they wouldn’t have heard of it!

Here’s that link again…

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/frutorious/id524952395?mt=8

We’ve also never been to anything like an awards ceremony. It’s gonna be a totally awesome reunion and party for us. We’ve also got ChetMega from Townhouse Records and his entourage coming along to enjoy the event along with some other VIP guests who’ve supported Frutorious all the way from the beginning.

ChetMega – the voice of Frutorious F.I.G.

Another cosmic thing is we think we’re the smallest team up for a TIGA award with only three dudes! It would be a total underdog victory if we won anything, but we think we’ve really captured in our game the run away independent spirit of videogames in both casual and audio design and hope that gets recognition

We’re pumped. We’ve got Friday off. We’ve got our T-Shirts ready…

Look at our awesome t-shirts!

We’ve got our nomination announcement trailer ready…

We’ll be rockin the awards ceremony and representing at the after show. If you’re there too come along and say hi! Stop and have a drink! Pop out for a fag! Chat about games and music with us! We’re pretty awesome dudes, we’ll be the ones wearing Frutorious T-Shirts

See you there!

Here’s the official press release from TIGA 

The categories we’re in have some fantastic games and excellent examples of the best of British work, so being alongside them and having our game recognised by industry peers is really really cool.  Proper job!

Here’s the groups…

CASUAL

SCE London Studio – DanceStar™ Party
Aardman Digital and Turner Broadcasting – Dino Donkey Dash: The Amazing World of Gumball
Reflections a Ubisoft studio – Just Dance 4
Infinite State Games – Frutorious 
NaturalMotion Games –  CSR Racing
First Touch Games Ltd – Score! Classic Goals

AUDIO DESIGN

Lionhead, Microsoft Studios – Fable: The Journey
Infinite State Games – Frutorious
thechineseroom – Dear Esther
Fireproof Games – The Room
Reflections a Ubisoft Studio – Driver San Francisco
JohnnyTwoShoes – Prevail

We just wanted to thank everyone who voted for us.  You guys are all fantastic and we’re so grateful for your help in getting Frutorious and our tiny team nominated.  Without you guys playing our game, helping us and sharing our updates and taking the time to vote, we wouldn’t have got here.  It’d just have been me and Charlie voting and that would have been a sorry state of affairs.

Whatever happens at the awards, this is super exciting!  We’ll be sure to let you know how we get on… in the mean time though, we’ll be cracking on with the update for you all