CACTUSQUID in TIME

Jordan Fehr notified me earlier on Twitter that my site was spotted at #42 in TIME's 50 Best Websites 2010, getting the number two spot in the games category. I don't have any idea how this happened, but I'm very happy and excited about it of course. Thank you TIME STAFF for making me feel special!


Speaking of this, maybe it's about time I update the game's page and clean it up a bit.

Game Over / Continue & GDC

So, I finally got home from GDC. During my stay I got to do a talk at Independent Games Summit, a very small acting performance complementing a much grander act by Petri Purho, as well as a quick game for Giant Robot. Productivity wise that's not bad compared to last year.


The talk went great, (for some weird reason) I wasn't as nervous as I would've expected at all. And people actually came up to me and said they liked my talk afterwards, so that felt really good to me, as I had been really nervous about it the days before.

People who want to see it badly can grab a bootleg copy floating around on The Pirate Bay (or watch a stream of it here, courtesy of Noobfarm), and my slides are available here (although a lot of it won't make sense without narration).


The Giant Robot thing went well too. I got teamed up with a great cat loving artist, called Deth P Sun, which is basically the coolest name I've ever heard. I programmed the game the night before the event, and for the first time did joypad input for a weird arcade hotseat experience. Unfortunately, the game is currently Giant Robot exclusive (along with Anna Anthropy's, Derek Yu's and Petri Purho's way more awesome games). The game has not been bootlegged yet either, so you guys will have to go to SF to play it (or something, I really don't know). Ask Adam Robezzoli, who was the awesome dude who set it up.

If you haven't already, you should have a look at Derek's awesome write up of the Indie Game Maker Rant. The last part about Petri Purho's attempt at making a game in five minutes was one of the conference's highlights for sure, and Derek managed to paint a really vivid picture of it using his delicate way with words. The other rants were also awesome, so basically you should read the whole thing.

Finally, I would like to say that I was so happy that my good friend Erik Svedäng won the grandprize with his amazing game Bluberry Garden.

I could say a lot more, because GDC this year has been one of the most amazing things that has happened to me... But there are so many people and events to thank for that, that I'm scared to even try to list them. I'm already looking forward to next year!

Avecom, IndieCade and PC Gamer

A while back I was contacted about having my games displayed at a dutch game/art festival called AveCom. They were real nice about it, and I just had a look at their site and saw that a lot of other cool art and games had been on display.


Click here to check it out
Eurogamer wrote a bit about my games as they were displayed at IndieCade this year. It's a shame I didn't get to go there, but I was pretty broke at the time. Hopefully I'll get another chance soon enough.


Click here for the article.
In other news, I hear Xoldiers will be featured on the cover disc of the next issue of PC Gamer UK. Always nice with a bit of publicity.