There was also some concept art for levels that never went into production.

Once we had a better idea of what the scope of our game would encompass, it was up to Augusto again to do some storyboarding.

Hope you enjoyed looking at these. Be sure to check out our Facebook page where we will post the rest of the concept art. Also follow us on Twitter!

Blue Demon Jr.

It has been one month since the release of Guacamelee and the official blogs from Playstation Europe and North America confirmed yesterday that Guacamelee is #1 on the PSN charts! Everybody here at Drinkbox is SUPER PUMPED. It’s a bit surreal seeing Guacamelee above Journey in the PlayStation Store charts. Well, maybe not that surreal, but we’d be lucky to be going as strong as Journey one year after its launch.

Highlights of the month:

Guacamelee got 9/10′s from IGN, GameSpot, Destructoid, and Polygon. And there’s pretty much universal praise for the game on the Guac PS3 and Vita Metacritic pages. Some reviewers criticized the game’s difficulty spikes, which is a fair knock.

Video-wise, we got a ‘BUY’ verdict from SourceFed, a glowing review from Reviews on the Run, and VintageBeef is currently doing a playthrough (with stellar voice acting).

Guacamelee was also at the centre of discussions about how other cultures are portrayed in video games. Over at VentureBeat, Kotaku, and TechNewsDaily, it seems that more people than not were satisfied with how we used Mexican culture in Guac.

One article in BuzzFeed pegged us as the next Lucas Arts.

And here are a few mixed reactions from our indie dev peers:

Finished Guacamelee tonight, it was over just as i was really loving it, but it had me entertained the whole way through.

— Edmund McMillen (@EdmundMcMillenn) April 13, 2013

GUACAMELEE. TODAY. @drinkboxstudios. GO BUY IT. VITA. PS3. CROSS-BUY. AMAZING REVIEWS. TORONTO. guacamelee.com

— Nathan Vella (@Capy_Nathan) April 9, 2013

That headband looks familiar somehow… love @drinkboxstudios multitude of game refs in Guacamelee! twitter.com/MareSheppard/s…

— Mare Sheppard (@MareSheppard) April 10, 2013

@konjak @jonbro @docky @pietepiet guacamelee is in this order: gorgeous, fun to listen to, an ok super metroid clone, an ok brawler

— Adam Atomic (@ADAMATOMIC) April 17, 2013

man, guacamelee looks pretty great, but all that reddit shit is really turning me off. whats the link between mexican folklore and reddit?

— PHIL FISH (@PHIL_FISH) April 10, 2013

Thanks for all the love you all sent to us on Twitter, Facebook, and good old-fashioned email! And thanks for helping us get to #1!

Before splitting up into four groups of three, everyone submitted one or two concepts for a game to the team. By vote, we determined which ideas resonated most with the whole team. Then, from the shortlist of game candidates, each team picked an idea to jam on.

While we’d love to share with you all the details of each team’s creation, but we’re keeping our cards close to our chest this time around. Who knows, one of these prototypes may evolve into the next Drinkbox game. Or we may just pick the best parts of one and take it in another direction. Here’s a vague summary of the prototypes!

1) This team had no artist. They had to use science to manipulate existing art assets from Guac and Mutant Blobs to create assets that fit with what they had in mind design-wise. There’s a tiny Juan there, he’s supposed to represent a powerful baby. Fun fact: this is what Guacamelee looks like before the an art pass.

2) This is a screen from my team’s prototype. These three menacing chaps seem to have a bone to pick with you.

3) This team used the Unity 3D engine. The editor we use for Guac doesn’t really do 3d right now, maybe some day it will. We haven’t leveled up our game engine in Game-Dev Tycoon either, and simulated Drinkbox Studios seems to be doing ok.

4) Last but not least, this prototype features four cats riding Roombas. The screenshot is concept art, but the prototype did not stray far from this idea.

Now back to work on Guac DLC. And good luck to the jammers at TOjam this weekend!

What a busy couple of weeks.

Just before leaving on the least life-threatening PAX-related road trip in recent Drinkbox Studios history, news about Guacamelee was emerging from all corners of the internet. IGN did a preview (see below). Polygon highlighted Guacamelee’s Mexican theme. Destructoid called our game “Guacamazing.” (That’s not a word, Destructoid.) There was a playthrough filmed with Revision 3. And GamesRadar had trouble pronouncing the title of the game, not that I blame them.

At PAX East, a.k.a. Boston, the guys made a day of the dead altar, and dressed up in popular Mexican attire, wearing guayaberas and bandanas (I checked with Augusto to make sure Wikipedia was correct in saying it’s popular Mexican attire), and Destructoid honoured Guacamelee as a ‘Must Play!‘ Hooray!

Road trip food.

Back in Toronto we were keeping busy showing the game off at Long Winter 5, a local music/arts festival put together by the band ‘Effed’ Up. We had a blast, especially Augusto, showing off Guac and helping our local game dev friends show off their games.

The week after was GDC where we were nominated for Excellence in Visual Art at the 15th IGF awards. While we didn’t win (we lost to the effing beautiful Kentucky Route Zero), we did get to drink free booze and sit next to the Spec Ops: The Line guys. Here is photographic, and I use that term loosely, evidence of Drinkbox at the IGF/GDC awards.

Oh, and we announced the release date for Guacamelee, probably setting a world record for shortest amount of time between the announcement of the release date and the release date. The game will be released on April 9th in the Americas, April 10th in Europe, and will support Cross-Buy for $14.99. Cross-Buy means you buy the game once and get both the PS3 and PS Vita versions. There’s also a Platinum Trophy!

Jope YOU enjoy Guacamelee!

The Guacamelee! Hype train is getting ready to roll down the tracks. April 9 hype hype hype. #Jope twitter.com/bigc_33/status…

— Brian Silva (@bigc_33) March 26, 2013

P.S. Muchas gracias to our PR team at VIM Global!

Also – be sure to check out Graham’s post over at the Playstation Blog. He gets really depressed when no one reads what he has to say, so do it as a favour for us.

We’ve all been hard at work  on Guacamelee! here at Drinkbox, so please excuse our absence from the blog page. Twitter is so much less work! Onwards to future blob news.

Ryan MacLean will be showing Mutant Blobs at GDC in San Francisco as a part of GDC Play from 1pm to 4pm on Tuesday, March 26th in the OMDC area. Try the new control scheme we’ve implemented for the PC version, say hi to Ryan (he’s a nice guy), then check out the rest of the amazing talent Ontario, Canada has to offer.

We’re also excited to be showing off Guacamelee! at the Independent Games Festival Pavilion in Moscone South from 10am to 6pm Wednesday to Thursday and 10am to 3pm on Friday of GDC week. For those not in the know, Guacamelee! was selected as a finalist for Excellence in Visual Art at this year’s IGF.

And in past blob news, Matt McKnight, a.k.a. LethalFrag, played Mutant Blobs Attack during day 382 of his 2 year livestream challenge. We’re honoured to be a part of your journey, Frag. Best of luck the rest of the way!

A Very Dapper Playthrough PT 1

A Very Dapper Playthrough PT 2

Fun Fact: LethalFrag has elected to not shave his beard for the duration of the challenge.

Not-so-fun Fact: Rosie, LethalFrag’s ferret pictured below, is not horse-sized.

This morning Steph and I headed out into the winter madness to record a promo video that’s going to be shown on Gamespot.com for the IGF. It will be part of a montage featuring all of the nominees.

We did a little rehearsing before stepping outside:

Things took a bit longer than expected to get a working take (17 attempts!). Here’s Take 3:

Keep an eye on Gamespot.com for the final montage!

Hey guys!

We have some amazingtacular news! Guacamelee is a finalist at this year’s Independent Games Festival for Excellence in Visual Art! A big congratulations to our art team who are working hard to make Guacamelee look so good. So to Steph, Augusto, Ben, Tameka, Jay, and Tanya: congratulations!

We still have a ways to go before Guacamelee is a finished product, but it’s great to get kudos like this to let us know we’re on the right track.

Would you like a closer look at the creative process here at Drinkbox Studios? Then take some time to watch Augusto and Graham chat it up in the short video we made for our 2012 Indiecade nomination.

Also, congrats to fellow Toronto devs Asteroid Base for Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime being a finalist for Excellence in Visual Art! All the finalists are so darned good-looking, what an honour!

Wow! What a year it has been! Way back in February, we pushed Mutant Blobs Attack out of our office and into your Playstation Vita. It received a tremendous reception as a console launch title. The metacritic gods were kind to us as we were consistently number two on the list for best games on the system early on in the year. The game also got consistently positive user reviews, so thanks guys!

All your community support and love made people stop and notice these Toronto indie devs. Thanks to you, we won IGN’s People’s Choice for Best Playstation Vita Network Game and gave the Besties Podcast over at Polygon a solid run for their ‘Sweet Sixteen‘ (we wound up doing better than Diablo 3). We were also nominated for GamesRadar’s Handheld of the Year, wound up on Game Informer’s Top 50 Games Of 2012, and won Best Handheld Game over at Digital Trends.

So thanks for buying, playing, and expressing how much you enjoyed Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack! It really means a lot to us! Aaaand if you don’t have a Vita, you can get it on Steam for $1.99 during the winter sale.

Here’s to an even better 2013!

I’m on a special top secret assignment from Drinkbox Studios that requires me to live 5 days ahead of everyone else. So for me, right now the date is Monday, November 19th, and, man, do I have great news. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 was amazing! Well worth the wait. I can’t believe that thing with Edward though, what a bummer.

So, by now you’ve probably heard that PlayStation Plus is coming to the Vita. I can confirm that this is true, time travelers honour. In case you missed out on the details, PlayStation Plus subscribers in North America will be able add Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack to their Playstation Vita game library for free on the 19th, European subscribers will be able to do so on the 21st. Not only will PS+ subscribers get Mutant Blobs Attack, you’ll also get a whackload of other cool games and discounts and exclusives. You should check PlayStation Plus out for yourself if you haven’t already.

As for me, I’ve got to hop on my hoverboard and get to Jodie Foster’s birthday party. Peace out!