'Plinky Plonk' version 2 is out!

'Plinky Plonk' the piano app 

that Uclan games design team helped to make 

is now "Even Better" (in other words version 2!) is out 

- ready and waiting for all those iPads out there! 

If you download it, please stick a rating/review on the App Store.

A HUGE thanks from me, Bev Bush, to all the team

- Jane Cull, Hannah Spikings, Steph Mcstea, Emma Smith,  

Phil Bush and Sean Cull for all their support. 

Not to forget Jane's children and their friends who did the voices... 

It's only just out and had hundreds of downloads across the world so far!

Download here.

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White Paper Games Nominated for Develop Award

White Paper Games
Breaking news! Our Uclan Alumni- WhitePaperGames 'Ether 1' has been nominated for a Develop award. Great news and well done guys! 

White Paper Games is a small game development team based in Manchester, UK made up primarily of graduates from Games Design Uclan.They recently released their first title, ‘Ether 1’ for PC and Mac. We’re so proud to see the progress and development of this fine indie games team who are already making their mark in the world of games with many great reviews to be found on their game. Following the release of their game they are receiving a substantial amount of press attention.

Role models such as this are a great encouragement to the games design students, who can see from this example that it is possible to be entrepreneurial, create your own team and aspire to having your own business. 

Click link below for more....
 

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Freeablo is that Diablo engine remake we've been wishing for, is currenly looking for contributors (and general ravings about Diablo. In fact, mostly that)

Freeablo engine in its early stages

Who doesn't love the original Diablo? When it was first released in 1996, this game set a notable landmark for making the RPG genre more accessible to a broader audience, while still keeping many gameplay aspects of classic Rogue-derived RPGs, that kept the game fresh and unique even after being completed several times. This bridge between classic and modern aspects combined with an incredible attention to detail, a uniquely crafted atmosphere that still gives me the creeps, and a gameplay pacing and length that is just the right balance between level progression and grinding, has helped making Diablo one of my all time favourite games. Well, that and Battlenet, of course, we can never forget how Diablo was one of the first to make it so easy to just go dungeon crawling with a couple of friends online.

There is, however, one thing that I don't like about Diablo. One thing that annoyed me all over these years of repeated runs and occasional multiplayer meetups. And that is how Blizzard itself decided to neglect its maintenance and compatibility completely and practically drop all active support for it, despite keeping the Battlenet servers online. Yes, you will have a tough time trying to buy a fresh copy of this game nowadays, because Blizzard cares so much about their legacy games they don't even sell 'em anymore in their official store. But even if there still are plenty of used copies available online for cheap, running the game on modern systems can be a whole a new quest, given that the last patch is dated from 2000, which means no performance maintenance, no improved graphics compatibility, in fact, not even additional screen resolutions, and certainly no stability updates whatsoever. 

The first Cathedral levels loaded and randomly generated in Freeablo

As a matter of fact, Blizzard has a whole tradition of being disrespectful to legacy fans. They refuse to let resellers touch their games (physical Diablo II and Starcraft copies still go by $25 nowadays, with no Steam or GOG versions in sight), they frequently discourage and hamper any type of mod support or mod attempts, other than whatever's produced under their little walled garden editor-type programs and, obviously, they never ever released the source code of any of their games, just to make sure us, the plebeian fans, would never touch their precious abandoned heritage with our filthy paws.

Luckily, this might just be about to change, with the coming of a bold, new engine remake project most aptly named Freeablo. This project aims to rebuild and expand upon the original Diablo engine, keeping it fully portable and compatible with modern systems, as well as making it adaptable and moddable for anyone willing to modify the game. All of this while still paying due respect to Blizzard and requiring the original game files in order to run the game. Now isn't this nice? 

As of the current 0.1 release, there is still much to be done, which is why the project is open to contributors of all sorts. Hopefully, with enough time and effort, we can all free Diablo one day from the clutches of proprietary software and greedy corporate execs who are still stuck in a 90s mentality on how to commercialize and support video games.

Code License: GPLv3
Assets License: Relies on original proprietary data files

Official Website
Source Code (Github)

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BIG Congratulations to WHITE PAPER GAMES

BIG CONGRATULATIONS GO OUT to our very own Alumni - WHITEPAPERGAMES -
A small independent team that has just released Ether One: A first person adventure game for PC. 
Out now on Steam, GOG, Humble & Gamers Gate.

It’s now been a week since they released Ether One.

If you wanted to see what people have been saying about the game follow the link below from WPG website. 

Ether One Reviews / First Impressions

WPG attended the EGX Rezzed event in early April and had a great time! They also met some really great developers there! They created a list of some of our favourite games at the show so be sure to check the link below: 

Friends & Games from EGX Rezzed 2014

Rezzed is a really good event for anyone wanting to showcase their games. It has friendly atmosphere, the staff running the show are super helpful and it’s an overall good experience for developers & gamers alike!
WPG got some great feedback on Ether One

 Some awesome news!

Over the next few weeks WPG are going to be looking into getting Ether One onto one of the Playstation consoles. They still have a few details to work out but they’re really excited to have the opportunity to be working with Sony on Ether One.

Plus-

THE GADGET SHOW LIVE

The Gadget Show Live invited WPG to showcase Ether 1!
Well done to White Paer Games for the launch of Ether 1. We're SO proud of you all!
There's some great reviews of the game out there so far and we're sure it's that this is just the start!

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9-Bit Idol pitch for Dare To Be Digital

9-Bit Idol is a games design team made up of UCLan students who 

have developed a game pitch for Dare To Be Digital

You can see their intro video in the link below. CHECK IT OUT!

The students involved are:
Jay Z. Ashcroft- Team Leader, Designer
Matt Hoey- Character Artist, Designer
Becky Michelak- Concept and Environment art
Andrew (Montee) Montana- Environment and technical art
Niall McConnell- Programmer

Good luck in the competition guys!

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Vote for the LGA: May 2014 (OS game engine remakes)

And Holarse.de even did a small trailer:


P.S.: Sorry for the lack of updates lately. If you are interested helping out with the blog give us a notice here.

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