Blue Cat Jam - T-Shirt Designs

Blue Cat Jam is an exciting new side venture that I hope will be of interest to you all. A number of my graphical designs are now available for you to have printed on T-shirts in a range of four colours. You can also have them printed onto mugs and mouse-mats, too.

Also, if you have a need for a specifically original design, please don't hesitate to contact me with the details of your design request and I'll give you a quote.

Juniper Games - site re-design

Having had some niggling doubts about the relatively recent site re-design I did, I just spent the last day coming up with another design, which I believe is much stronger while retaining the warm and friendly colour scheme.

You can take a look, here.

Love Song

Thanks to my friend Mattsius for sending me the link to this song.

Acrasia - a beautiful cat, fondly remembered

Our cat, Acrasia, passed away this morning after more than nineteen years of life. She'd been growing frail for some time and in the end faded away very peacefully in her sleep. Tears have been shed - June quite profusely - and we placed Acrasia in a quiet corner of the garden as her final resting place.

It's more than a little sad to think she's no longer with us.

Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso - New Screenshot

I've just posted a new "Nutso" screenshot on the Juniper Games website. You can go to the screenshots page, here or directly to the screenshot, here.

The screen is still in progress, but I rather like the feel of it. :)

A Chat with Independent Developers

Over at Just Adventure+ a new feature has just been posted entitled, "A Chat with Independent Developers" which talks to a large number of developers about why we've chosen an independent route. It's a pretty large feature that's spread over a number of pages, but it's certainly interesting to contrast the different responses.

I believe that I'm at the top of the list only because I got my responses back first. :)

Animating sheep

At the moment I'm in the process of animating sheep for the game, Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso. One of the greatest things about developing this game is that I'm doing such a variety of stuff, much of which I never thought I'd get the chance to do again.

My mother is on the mend

After eleven weeks in intensive care, my mother has, over the last week, improved to the point where she's been taken off the ventilator and moved into the high dependency unit. Considering it was only a couple of weeks ago that the doctors were worried that they'd never get her off the ventilator, this is a major step forward for her. With a bit more luck she'll be home with my dad soon.

Cost of Gaming

This article over at The Escapist is an interesting look at why the game industry is struggling to have a more mainstream appeal. However, although a lot of what is contained in the piece is well thought through, it doesn't take into account the much more variable nature of people's tastes when it comes to interactive media.

Also, if you have a family of four sitting and watching the TV or a DVD, even if one of them doesn't fancy watching what's on the likelihood is that they will still do so because of its passive nature. If the DVD player also played games, the chances of all four people wanting to play a game at the same time are pretty small and even smaller if their gaming tastes are very different from each other. So, unless a new breed of games are created that will appeal to father, mother, son and daughter and offer four-player gameplay, how realistic is mainstream gaming going to be.

OBE for Ian Livingstone

Small piece on the MCV site about the announcement of Ian Livingstone being awarded the OBE for services to the games industry. Excellent news and congratulations to him.

Psychonauts - top game of 2005

In spite of the fact that it's yet to be released in Europe, Eurogamer put Psychonauts at the top of their top 50 games of the year. Congratulations to Tim Schafer and everyone at Double Fine.

I'm so pleased that a comedy game is the top game - it really confirms my feeling that we need more comedy and fun to balance the huge number of darker games.

More Comedy For 2006!