Abel Girmay over at Destructooooooid has some coverage on Cloudberry. Cut to the good stuff:

Unlike Super Meat Boy, challenge isn't what the game is built around. The big draw of Cloudberry Kingdom is in its randomness; an algorithm that randomizes every facet of the game is the focus. So while the difficulty curves in the same way each time, the enemies, traps, power-ups, and more switch up. What's cool about this is that it really changes the way you play, especially in a competitive setting. Topping leaderboards, showing up friends, or even just outdoing yourself has little to do with the traditional tropes of pattern memorization, and all about how adaptive your reflexes are.

Finally someone that understands what we're aiming for!

It's like the rest of the world thinks we're just trying to making a hardcore platformer or something =D I wonder what could have possibly caused that misconception.

And now for something completely different

Looking back on our last few blog posts you were probably starting to think we were all narcissists, what with the endless pictures of ourselves and the incessant focus on our beards. Well, you were right, we are narcissists, but that doesn't mean we don't recognize good entertainment when we see it!

For today's viewing pleasure, I give you... a fan ad!


I think we should hire this guy as our mascot.

Also, where can we get one of those pony masks? That thing is awesome.

Freedom!

Beard Date 538183235

All console versions are done and submitted, ready for testing by Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Technically the game isn't done, because those tests (which take about 2 weeks) may come back with bugs that we'll have to fix. Also the Steam version isn't quite done.

But!

Close enough. The Beard of Crunch Time has lived past its usefulness and is ready to be purged.

Now that I have some free time I don't really know what to do with myself. It makes me... strangely happy and uncomfortable.

Onward to the next Crunch Time!

(PS: Yes, that is Dark Souls in the background. I still haven't beat it, but I will not yet concede that it is harder than Cloudberry. MUCH MORE FRUSTRATING THOUGH. GARRRGGGHH)

SHUT UP WE ARE STARS

So, one day Ubisoft comes up to us and says, "Hey, Pwnee, guys. You're like, super scrappy. We want to make a heartfelt story about the bromance that is Pwnee, how it held you together in times of need, and how love conquers all foes, real or imaginary."

And we were like, what the hell, we're not emo, we just make games. But they insisted, so they totally fabricated this entire story about us

OK, that is our real story I guess. I GUESS.

...

Made me tear up a little. Probably the sleep deprivation.

Announcement!!!

A lot has been going on in the last 2 days.

For one, it looks like we've finished up production of Cloudberry Kingdom! Not only that, but we can finally announce a few little secrets we've been hiding.

First up, something we've been pushing incredibly hard for has finally come to fruition. We're going to be launching Cloudberry on all system, including Wii U and Steam as promised, but also Playstation 3, Vita, and Xbox 360! Ironically, Cloudberry started off as an Xbox game 4 years ago when we began. The Xbox version was the first version done, but we we're doomed to never sell it, because we couldn't get a deal with XBLA. But now we have one!

You're probably thinking, Oh! So that's what's been taking so long. And it has, only backwards. This whole time we've been working on porting from Xbox to Wii U. It's been a huge undertaking that included re-writing the entire game line-by-line (hundreds of thousands of lines). We've never done anything like that, and honestly... we really underestimated how long the process would take by about... a factor of four. Every week was "the last week of all-nighters", until months later when our families basically treated us like P.O.W.s, sneaking in virtual kisses at 7 am as they woke up before we crashed for an hour or two on the office floor.

We're really sorry the game has taken so long to finish. But it's finally done! FEELS GOOD!

OK, so that's the first announcement. The second announcement is the answer to this question: how the hell did we get the distribution deals to put Cloudberry on all the consoles? The answer, our partner of about a year now, Ubisoft.

We landed Ubisoft a few weeks after our Kickstarter ended last year, and have been working with them ever since to get the game everywhere we wanted it to be. We were of course pretty hesitant to jump on board with a big pub, but as things turned out Ubisoft has been nothing but awesome to work with. They've never said a word to us about the direction of the game (although they've had lots of words to say about progress on finishing the game! =P ), but have been everywhere we needed them to be to get the game out, to protect our interests, and to help us in places we were totally noobs.

Unfortunately we couldn't announce our partnership until today, because Ubisoft wanted it to be a surprise as part of their grand marketing scheme leading up to launch. That's been hard to deal with for a year, but we're pumped to be finally announcing it!

Third, there's a new website up! Check it out at www.pwnee.com. Probably not the biggest announcement today, but we needed something to better represent the game now that we're finally finishing up. I put this together somewhere between not-sleeping-flying-toSan-Francisco and not-sleeping-returning-to-NY-last-night. I apologize in advance for the loopiness of the writing.

Wooh! OK, what now? Lots of stuff to come as we near launch.

Beard date 454598742048286782

After a harrowing all night freak-out-athon we fixed the final list of bugs (we think!), delivered the builds to quality assurance testing, and took a 5 minute nap before boarding a cross country flight. Well, that last part was just me, the rest of the team is probably passed out. But not I! Here I sit in sunny San Francisco, jet-lagged and sleep deprived, with my pretty gross looking beard still intact. Ready to kick some ass!

Why am I in San Francisco? I'm sure I'll remember once I have a few more cups of coffee. Does it have something to do with our announcement of a big upcoming update I spoke of earlier? Quite possibly maybe.

Beard Diary, Update 2

Captain's log, beard date 10448234

Today, tragedy. Itchiness reached an all time high, and one team member could not rise to the beard challenge. I regret to report that TJ has eliminated himself from glory. May he rest in peace, free from beard itch.

While taking my daily cookie break I reflected on the loss of a beard today. With a chocolate chip melting in my mouth, I thought I heard a rousing grumble: ephemeral, as if from a ghoulish soul trapped in torment. I caught this picture:

Was this TJ's beard soul, manifesting itself because it is still trapped in this world? Forever hairless and green? Nothing makes sense anymore.

Sleep deprivation

Not really sure exactly what was going on in our heads, but this morning we all swore a solemn pack to not shave our honestly kind of gross looking beards until Cloudberry is done.

THIS IS THE SACRIFICE WE MUST MAKE.

Also, we have not slept more than 10 hours collectively this week, and may be on the verge of death by coffee and dunkin' donut overdoses.

Let these semi-daily beard updates be our beacon to the world that we haven't died and that Cloudberry is still probably maybe going to ship before Duke Nukem Forever 2.

I swear my life on it. THE TEAM'S LIVES TOO.

Updaaaate!

WHAT HAVE WE BEEN DOING FOR THE LAST 2 MONTHS???

Mostly whiling away the best years of our lives in front of the glowy haze of a demanding compiler. The crew and I took a few hours off yesterday to celebrate my birthday and to watch Les Miserable. It was AWESOME. I choked back man-tears while singing along. The rest of the last 2 months have been spent on Cloudberry. We can't say everything just yet, but it's taken 100 gibajillion times more work than expected, and will hopefully let everyone play Cloudberry on their preferred DON'T READ THIS  IT'S CENSORED of choice. Pretty exciting.

We've also gotten all our ducks lined up to get the game sold in Europe, South America, and Asia! (You too Australia!). Turns out international business regulations are ridiculous, but hopefully totally worth it. We've been working on all sorts of different localizations. Here's what Cloudberry looks like in Japanese!

Was I too lazy to crop that image, or was I trying to give you a cryptic glimpse into what the developer's world looks like? I'm too lazy to say for sure.

Anyway! Exciting temporary news for now: we've got French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Russian up and running in the beta, along with some nice polish. There's also Chinese and Korean, but currently those translation we're done by a robot and suck major  YOU REALLY WANT TO READ SOMETHING DIRTY, HUH? But we're working on them, because I'll be damned if we don't get this game into the hands of some gosu Korean h4kz0r wizards.

If you speak one of the languages we support you can switch to it in the options menu on the title page. Apologies in advance for any swear words or grotesque abuses of grammar. I don't speak Japanese and can't really verify anything our translators give us. If you see a word that looks like it could use a change, let us know. Feedback is awesome.