Only 5 days until we go public. Crazy! While we have a huge list of little things to get through we’re very happy to be at functional complete. So a lot of play testing and a lot of refinement to go on over the next few days ensuring that we get the best possible game out to you on Monday. Wish us luck!

It’s really nice when things work out. Like our awesome new quest system, new grove, and revised layout to the forest. We were talking today about how difficult it is to nail that last 10% of any creative project, how you can find yourself lost in a soup of self doubt and hopelessness at struggling to find a solution that you can truly be proud of. But those times when you break through and end up with something awesome really make it worth while.

We’ve decided on a live date, and it is Monday 2nd of August, 10 days from now. Exciting! We’ll also be ramping up our public exposure, starting with a new Twitter domination plan orchestrated by our resident funny-man Mark. You can follow us here, and here.

If you’re in Dunedin and keen to do some play testing later next week, message us on Facebook or in the comments here. We’re getting brutal on refining the user experience and need fresh people’s clicks to analyse (wow that didn’t sound creepy at all).

Couple of things that we thought were really cool this week:

Transformer Owl

Kevin Butler takes on New Zealand TV3

Ian Bogost presents a Facebook game parodying Facebook games

Final Staracraft 2 story trailer

Woah intensity. We’re into our final ~week of development before we reset for good, and while everything is looking awesome I gotta tell you, we’re certainly running this one down to the wire! We’ve responded to a stack of your feedback asking for tweaks to the movement, load time, and the implementation of a quest system. That info we get through the surveys and feedback form is hugely valuable so keep it coming.

Oh, thats a peek at the new background graphic above. Heaps of the art assets have been overhauled and we’re working hard to make sure the environment is bursting with life (and secrets!).

Thanks so much to those people that played through to Level 20 for us, you’ll be getting a real boost next week and we’ll announce who got there first very soon. The data we got from your play throughs has allowed us to adjust the XP model so its smoother and more rewarding to progress in the game. We’re very interested in hearing from everyone on what they like / dislike about: a) social posting through Facebook e.g. announcing an achievement on your wall, and b) premium item sets (what would be of huge value that you could see yourself paying for in the game). Fire us your comments below, on Facebook, or by email.

We move into our new home in a few weeks, and we have also been quite into animated GIFs recently (swimming in our overtime madness) so these two facets of Runaway life bred this abomination:

Hang tight, we’ll have something pretty awesome for you next week

Naughty Dog

Midnight Juggernauts