What do the following movies have in common: Mission: Impossible, Minority Report, and Top Gun? That’s right. Tom freaking Cruise, explosions, guns, exploding guns (probably), and they are not filmed in a game. “What?”, I hear you think. “Not filmed in a game? Pfftsj, that is the lamest thing I have ever heard.” And that is true. That is the lamest thing you have ever heard.

So, we have implemented a new feature in Castaway Paradise. It is called Everyplay. With this you now have the option to record everything you do in the game. From playing a quest to recording the cool decorations in your house. You can publish the video right-a-way to the interwebs and share it with your friends!

Take a look at this video:

This is a nice and relaxing video where the player is decorating his house. Soothing isn’t it? This is probably also the first time you have heard the music in the game. There is much more music, but we will let you hear that another time. The camera in the (almost) top left corner indicates that you are recording and pressing the camera again will stop the recording. Making a movie has never been easier!

Obviously, you cannot wait to make your own videos. Be it a tour of your island, or a remake one of the greatest movies ever made in the history of Steven Seagal: Under Siege*. However, to remake a movie, you need props and objects to fill a set. We realized this and we instantly made a set full of nautical objects and uniforms, so you can Seagal’s masterwork yourself!

Dress your actor as you like and place the objects on the set. Nobody can any longer stand in your way to make your own movie. We hope you will like this feature. If you have any feedback on Everyplay, the nautical set, or the game in general, feel free to leave it in the comments. And.. Hey Tom! What is it? Aaaww, come on, please stop crying. Your movies are not that lame. Alright, alright, sorry. It’s unfair to compare you, or anyone for that matter, to the greatest actor and movie maker of all time. Steven freaking Seagal: The man who only needs one emotion.

The one true hero

*Disclaimer for all the die hard Seagal fans: the best Steven Seagal movies are obviously Exit Wounds and The Glimmer Man, but I used Under Siege for the sake of the nautical set.

Stolen Couch Games is looking for interns who want to help us develop Castaway Paradise, our free to play game which we want to release late this year. Are you the person we are looking for? Find out using our Q&A.

Q: Can I be an intern at Stolen Couch Games?

A: Well, that depends. First you have to be able to be at our office in Utrecht, The Netherlands 5 days a week. You’ll also have be seriously skilled in order to work with our awesome team.

Q: What kind of interns are you looking for?

A: We’re looking for all kinds of interns, but we will only select a few, the best. We’re looking for:

• C# programmers with Unity experience.
• Game Designers who can create and balance quests
• Narrative Designers/writers who can write monologues
• Artists 2D who can create assets/textures for our game.
• Artist 3D who can create lots of low poly models, animations etc.
• Marketing people who can come up with localized marketing efforts to make our game super popular
• Analytics/monetization experts who can do wonders with numbers
• Anyone who can make Castaway Paradise a huge success!

Q: How skilled to I have to be?

A: We offer a learning environment in which interns can grow their skills within the convinces of a discipline. If you would like to learn how to program a real time multiplayer game, we’d love to help you with it. In fact we’d love you to implement that feature in Castaway Paradise. If your goals fits with the goals we have with Castaway Paradise anything is possible.

There are a number of skills an intern has to posses in order to apply:

1) Have a great portfolio

2) Be adept at your discipline (Game design, Marketing, Programming (C#), 2d/3d art, analytics)

3) Have a nice set of brains.

4) Be a teamplayer

Q: When can I start?

A: Right away! Or whenever you can start.

Q: How much moulah will I get?

A: Nothingness. Sorry we’re a small company and have yet to make our first million euros. But we do offer some perks like, the internet, a bureau and 80s music!

Q: How do I apply?

A: Just send an email to info(at)stolencouchgames.com with a link to your portfolio and a great reason why you’d like to be an intern at Stolen Couch Games.

It has been a long time since we started developing Castaway Paradise. Ok.. not dinosaur-age kind of long, but still, since-the-discovery-of-Higgs-Boson-particle kind of long. By the way, did you know the word ‘dinosaur’ means ‘terrible lizard’? Weird, is it not? Dinosaurs are not lizards. But hey, who are we to argue with Wikipedia!
Anyway, we have been working hard on the game and of course want to keep you updated with the progress of the game.

The latest addition to the game, of which we showed the sketches in the last update, is the Town Hall. Our designers have been implementing the new building into the game and we can now show you this architectural masterpiece through the player’s eyes.

In this picture you can see the gold colored vault door. Look how shiny it is! It would probably not surprise you that this vault has been designed by Impenetrable Gold Colored Vaults Inc. It may be expensive, but hey: if it can stop Tom Cruise from entering, it is worth it, right?

If you did not know of the fact about dinosaurs, you may as well not know about the following fact: llamas are amazing upsellers. Before I met Marcèl, I did not even know I liked sunglasses and now, as you can see in the screenshot, he sold me this fabulous pair of hipster sunglasses designed by a llama designer company all the way in France of which, according to Marcèl, you probably never even have heard of.

The third and last screenshot shows what the inventory will look like. This particular inventory is only half full, but as you spend more time in the game and complete more quests, you will get many more items to fill your rucksack.

As you can see the game is getting into great shape. The basic mechanics of the game are as good as finished, but there is still work to be done: more quests and dialogue have to be written, objects, clothing and other cool stuff has to be designed, etcetera, etcetera. We are working hard on the game and we hope you like what we have done so far. If you have any feedback, please let us know in the comments!

Ps.: We found Marcèl in real life!

Welcome to the town hall of Castaway Paradise. Home to not only the most secure, but also to the only bank on the island! Just look at the big vault in the back. No thief will ever be able to touch anything behind that steel door. And even if someone can get him or herself behind that door, you cannot imagine the amount of lasers protecting all the valuables; Not even Tom Cruise himself can steal something from it. Your money and gems sure will be safe here.

As you can see, the blueprint of the vault itself has not yet been published. What actually lies hidden behind the door to the vault, besides money and gems, is only known to our game designer. He takes the safety of the vault in high regard and will only say that there is a surprise waiting for the players. However, this surprise will probably not be ready when the game launches, but remember: all things comes to those who wait!

Next to the vault is the bank’s counter. At the counter, the clerks help you buy new gems and store your valuables in the vault. Using the latest technology on the island, the clerks are directly connected to each other and the stock market via pneumatic tubes. This awesome tubing system not only once helped an ex-KGB officer escape in the James Bond flick The Living Daylights (link!), but also serves as a fast way of delivering messages!

These pneumatic tubes also reach the Wall Street of the island. At the stock exchange you can invest in stock and try to make a couple of gems. When you have invested your gems, you can track how your stock is doing by looking at the green lines on the rolling white paper. These lines represent the current value of your stock. The higher the better.

Outside of the town hall you can find the news bulletin board of the island which will keep you up to date. News from the villagers, update information, and many more newsworthy items will be presented on this board.

The town hall is the heart of the island. Many quests will be found here and the bulletin board keeps you up to date with the news and upcoming events. We hope you all like the design and art of the town hall. Feel free to leave your feedback in the comments!

Tired of not getting recognized as the brilliant artist you are? At the Stuff2Buy you can buy these great French outfits so you can finally look like one. Fashion director Marcèl will be happy to help you choose a nice new artistic beret or fashionable sunglasses.

Although the French Revolution made sure that France lost its monarchy, you want your character to live like a true king. And is there any king more true than le Roi-Soleil, Louis XIV of France? We actually don’t know. But we sure liked his furniture! We tried to resemble his style in the furniture, so you can decorate your character’s house like a palace.

And of what use would a French set be without the baguette? To complete the French set, we put a French baker on the island: Gustave. This friendly moose is a master baker who provides delicious bread for the whole island. He has to wake up very early every morning, but you will never find him grumpy. “Why?” I hear you ask. Well.. besides being a master baker, Gustave follows the teachings of the zen, making him a zenmaestro. You can ask him all about that in the game and he will be happy to tell you.

In the following image you can see Gustave next to his bakery. When you visit the island please visit him. He has got great stories to tell. Also, make sure to taste his pastries, they are delicious. We hope you all like the set. If you have any feedback, please leave a comment. Au revoir!

Here you can see cool new decorations you can buy for your house, like the medieval fireplace, to keep your house nice and warm. Also, you can buy the medieval outfits at the Stuff2go, the main store on the island, so you can even dress like Robin Hood! And on top of this, check out the new medieval hairstyles. If you ask Marcèl nicely, he will cut your hair to complete your freshly achieved medieval look.

Speaking of Marcèl, please let me introduce this fabulous hairdresser to you: Marcèl (a.k.a. Mr. Fabulous) is the fashion director on the island. In need of a new haircut? He is your go-to-llama!

Marcèl loves to make people a lot prettier by dressing them and cutting their hair. Also, Mr. Fabulous likes to chat with his clients. A lot. He has got many stories to tell and is more than happy to share them with you.

Marcèl is just one of the many characters you can encounter on the island. In the upcoming posts we will introduce some more characters living on the island, and show you new graphics, designs, and keep you up to date in general on the development of Castaway Paradise.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t already, please take a look at the Castaway Paradise trailer!

The nine games in the bundle are:

• Paranormal
• Beware Planet Earth!
• Hairy Tales
• Dwarf Quest
• Depth Hunter
• Potatoman Seeks the Troof
• Megabyte Punch
• Gear Jack
• Aeon Command

View the Green Light Bundle website:
http://www.thegreenlightbundle.com

Early 2011, everyone at Stolen Couch Games was still in school developing our exam year project Kids vs Goblins. Jay van Hutten, a fellow year mate, was developing a game of his own called Ichi. It was a elegant puzzle game that utilized a one-button mechanic in a way that didn’t feel gimmicky. The goal of the game was to guide a ball past a number of rings on the screen. By touching the screen you rotate bumpers, which caused the ball to change in direction. You could also hold your finger down to draw a line, once the ball hit the line it would travel back in the direction it came from.

About a half year later we spoke to Jay at a congress were he was demoing his game. I (Eric) shared my interesting in redeveloping Ichi for multiple platforms and making it a really great commercial product. Jay loved the idea and the day we finished Kids vs Goblins we were working together to make a bigger and better version of Ichi.
 

No developers were harmed during the making of this game

Getting featured

We knew that many people would consider Ichi as just another puzzle game, so we had to let people know how special the game really is. We spent about a week contacting the press about our game and we got a nice amount of coverage. But press alone won’t make your game a hit. If you read any guide on marketing for mobile games you always get to the point were the importance of getting a feature by Apple/Amazon/Google is expressed. We already got a feature on the Mac app store for our first game, but our published arranged that. We didn’t have a direct contact within Apple, so we had to come up with a way to contact them.

Luckily we had a few device IDs that belonged to Apple employees on our Testflight account. So we found out the matching email addresses and we send separate emails to every one of them. 2 of them, responsible for the iOS AppStore, loved the game and showed the game to the rest of the team. Our contact from the Mac AppStore was in love with the game. We Skyped for a few hours and everything was set.

Ichi was Apple’s Editor’s Choice for a week on the Mac AppStore and on iOS we were bumped to the new and noteworthy category and we got a small banner in the games section.

Ichi was Apple’s Editor’s Choice for a week on the Mac AppStore and on iOS we were bumped to the new and noteworthy category and we got a small banner in the games section.

We’ve seen developers doing no marketing at all for their games because they believe they’re games will sell themselves. This is mentality is wrong. Just look at the top grossing games on iOS. Almost all of them spend enormous amount of time and money on marketing. Only by spending time and money, will you actually earn money.

Mayday, mayday!

The lessons we learned from this is that you should be prepared for something you can’t predict or test. We expected our server to send just numbers to the game, instead it was sending lines of random code. For our next games we’re making sure that the game handles these rare cases the correct way. One day of extra development time is better than losing thousands of dollars in revenue.

Monetizing

We launched the game with 50 built-in levels and player could play 10 user created levels for free. At the end of 2012 only 300 people out of 400.000 bought the in app purchase, an insanely low percentage. Why did almost no-one buy the in app purchase? We think it’s because people were done with Ichi after playing 50 build in levels. Nobody is going to play 10.000 user created levels, let alone 100. Ichi’s retention wasn’t high enough.

Getting a lot of players, quickly

Ichi featured in the Amazon AppStore

Free app of the day promotions are great. Unfortunately it is unlikely that your app will become super popular once the promotion is over. We earned only $80 from the days after the FAAD promotion. But still it is better than nothing. One good tactic might be to get a lot of downloads using these promotions and then switch to a freemium model. You will have hundreds of thousands of players who will generate revenue though ads and/or in app purchases.

Critically, Ichi is a great success. We’ve gotten wonderful reviews and players seem to love the game. But commercially the game hasn’t done that well. We barely broke even on the development costs. Most of the revenue came from the Mac version, mainly due to the feature by Apple. iOS came in second, revenue-wise. The Android, PC and Linux versions didn’t make more than a few hundred dollars. Despite all of this we feel that Ichi was worth our time, it was great developing it and we delivered something we’re proud of.

Stolen Couch Games is a young Dutch game studio formed by six alumni from the Utrecht School of Arts who decided to continue working together after their college projects. A part of the team came together to make a multiplayer prototype for XBLA and PSN title Chime made by developer Zoe Mode in collaboration with the One Big Game initiative. Stolen Couch Games then reformed and expanded the core team with an extra programmer and artist. Their first big title fresh out of the Utrecht School of Arts was Kids vs Goblins.

Building Kids vs Goblins

The Kids vs Goblins team from left to right: Bart Delissen, Casper van Beuzekom, Arthur Koopmans, Daan Boon, Eric Diepeveen, Selma Oors and Bjorn Spies. Not featured in this image, but equally important, is sound designer Rutger Muller.

When we initially started out Stolen Couch Games, we wanted to make something that would appeal to a large audience and show our potential as a start-up game studio. It was important for us to use our first product as a kick start into full time game development. After a prototype and concept phase, we formed the core idea for Kids vs Goblins. We decided to go all in on it, and for eleven months we poured our time, energy, and above all love, into this project. We strive for high quality in all our projects, but this one was particularly important for the team. Unfortunately, attaining perfection is impossible. Sometimes things went right and sometimes things went wrong, and then sometimes things just went completely awful. We would gladly like to share some of these moments with you.

Our team has had plenty of experience with designing and developing videogames, from concept to completion. Most of this experience took place in a learning environment where many mistakes and blunders were accepted as a normal part of an educational project. Transitioning to the real world was hard, as commercial game development can be very harsh and unforgiving. Our team had experience with Unity 3D before starting the Kids vs Goblins project and the Unity engine was a logical first choice that fit our requirements neatly. We also worked with software such as Photoshop, 3DS Max, and SVN along with a free A* pathfinding plugin as well as a series of commercial plugins by Prime 31, such as the StoreKit, iCloud and Etcetera plugins. We worked on Kids vs Goblins for slightly more than eleven months in total. Pre-production, or the design period, lasted about one month.

A Light and Casual RPG is born

Kids vs Goblins is a bite-sized lite RPG action adventure game for iOS devices, but optimized for the iPad2. The story of the game revolves around a trio of young heroes that are in search of their kidnapped little brother. During a storm at sea they get stranded on a magical island. During the night their little brother is kidnapped by two goblins that take him to the evil goblin king. While the children are planning their attack they find a magical stone that transforms them into three powerful heroes. With magical spells and different tactics the player takes on the battle against all kinds of enemies in various surroundings.

The player controls the three characters with simple finger movements while attacking the enemies. Dragging spells on the enemies will give the player total tactical control over the combat situation. The goal of the game is to defeat the waves of enemies and surviving the different level conditions. For example the Roulette mode is a variant in which you get random spells which you need to use to win the game. But do not use too many because for each spell you use you pay a couple of stones (the in-game currency). You can use the stones you gather during the game to buy spells and thus customize your characters and define the strategy for the next battle. The RPG elements in Kids vs Goblins are very light and casual. With over 60 spells and 6 different levels and 30 missions, Kids vs Goblins gives the player at least 3 hours of gameplay.

Now head over to Gamesauce.org and read the rest of the story.

A few months ago Steam launched Greenlight. A community driven approval process to get games onto the Steam store. We’ve been one of the first developers to be on Greenlight with our two games Ichi and Castaway Paradise. Besides that we created the Green Light Bundle, a bundle website where you can try out games that are on Greenlight. It gives developers a chance to show their games to the consumers, get some money and votes in the process. Today I’d like to share some info about how Ichi, Castaway Paradise and the Green Light Bundle are doing.

Let’s start with the Green Light Bundle. We have released two big bundles with 9 games each and we’re now experimenting with highlighting just a single game at a time. You can purchase each bundle as a Pay What You Want sale. The first Green Light Bundle got a decent amount of exposure from the press. We sold more than 2000 bundles worth more than $10.000 in revenue. Almost all the revenue went to the developers, of course. The second bundle sold a little bit less but the average price was a bit higher, around $5.50USD. After these two big bundle we launched two small “bundles” which just one game each. These two games, Out There Somewhere and Aeon Command, skyrocketed on the Greenlight charts despite less than expected sales.

Right now we’re working on another big bundle with great games. It might take some time since it’s increasingly difficult to find great games between the hundreds of less than stellar games on Greenlight. If you know a great game that would be perfect for our bundle do not hesitate to email us at support@greenlightbundle.com.