Hi Nitromians

You may remember this game was featured as a preview a few months back and finally we now have our game Rainbogeddon ready for you all to play!

This is Nitromes take on the maze munching genre established by Pacman and more recently reimagined by the likes of iOS game Forget-me-not and indeed Namco’s own Pacman C.E .

While we have kept the main aim of munching pixels to finish each level we have focused on adding variety to the format with different monster (ghost?) types, some new level elements and most notably by the inclusion of several power ups which vastly alter the gameplay!

Drill through the level with the drill attachment, teleport from enemies with a handy placement of your teleporter, create protective bubble zones to hide in and more.

Click to play!

Please note that this may be the only post this week due to Tom posting this from his holls. We will resume normal blog service however next week!

by Mat

Friday is here Nitromians!

Thanks again to everyone who supported us in the Mochis by nominating our games!

We hope you enjoyed the latest category in the blog 'Memory Lane' and finding out a little more trivia about Square Meal. We look forward to you joining us again next week whilst we bring you more Nitrome goodness!
Have a great weekend! :D

by Tom

Hi Nitromians!

Thanks goes out to everyone that voted for our games over at the Mochis! We have now got three of our games into the Mochis as finalists!

Best Strategy Game: Steamlands
Best Puzzle Game: Rubble Trouble Tokyo
Best Action Game: Mega Mash

We are really happy to receive such awesome support from our fans! We will keep you up to date as to how we do in the awards!

Thanks again for playing our games and supporting us!

by Tom

Welcome to our newest blog category ‘Memory Lane’. Every time we feature this in the blog we will be picking out one of our past games to reminisce about. This reminiscing might feature points of interest about the games development, initial sketches or other interesting things about the franchise as a whole.

On the front page there is a picks section (when we haven’t got a category such as winter taking its place) every time we feature something in memory lane, it will take place in one of the game slots. We will use this feature to keep the section fresh and make you aware of some of our older classics.

Our first pick for memory lane is Square Meal which was our last game before we expanded to our London based offices and started taking on more staff. Of more interest to people though would be the fact that we started development on a follow-up which later got put on hold and we never got back to. The Halloween skin actually features one of the new enemies that were intended to be in the game… the Weresquare!

The idea of the enemy was that it would be timid and run away from you but then transform into a beast that would come after you! Although we don’t have any immediate plans we may still go back at some point and make the game, but for now it’s still on hold.

Weresquare: Click Here!
Can you find the Weresquare in the horror skin?: Click Here!
Square Meal: Click Here!  

by Mat

Friday is here Nitromians!

We hope that you have lots of fun battling it out in our latest update to our game Lockehorn. We’re sorry we didn’t manage to get the chance to start up our new blog category this week as we had the release of Lockehorn. Next week we will start our new blog category up and bring you much more besides!

Until then, have a Great weekend!

by Tom

This is what we are proposing to have in the version 2.1 update. Some things are subject to change as the site develops and takes shape but this is what we are aiming towards and hope to achieve in 2.1

Login System and Accounts

You will be able to create a Nitrome account. You can also log into the system using your Facebook or Twitter account. You will have the ability to link your Facebook and Twitter to a Nitrome account to utilise the features of each system.

Avatars System

You will be able to select from a range of Nitrome characters to represent you as your avatar. There will also be more avatars that can be found in games and around the site. Some may also be rewarded for completing tasks. This ground work with avatars will both be expanded in future updates and form the backbone for a potential achievements based system.

Search System

You will be able to search through our games, blog posts and find users by using a brand new search bar.

Friends System

You can send friend requests to any users that you see on Nitrome be it from a blog post or high score. You can manually enter a friend’s user name to find them on Nitrome and send a request. You can search for a user via a user name, email address or any other details that they add to their account including usernames from other gaming platforms. You can also invite friends from Twitter and Facebook if you have chosen to link your accounts to Nitrome. You can also accept friend requests from other people.

Profiles

Your profile will include your friends list, avatar list, chosen avatar, recently played games, hearted games list, comments and your Nitrome number.

You will also be able to view other people’s public profile page information.

Hearting System

When you heart Nitrome games they will be added to your hearted games list, you will be able to see a list of your hearted games so others can see which of our games you like the most.

Commenting System

You will be able to comment on our blog posts, our games and reply to other user’s comments.

Games

There will be a high scores update that will tie to the friends system (we will roll this out on a per game basis).

You will be able to save game information to accounts. This will be in new games, a selection of existing games and will be added to older games over time (Generally the newer the game and or the more popular the game will dictate the order in which they get updated).

This will work in harmony with the current save system that doesn’t require a login. If you do not want to log in, you don’t have to and the game information will save as before. The new system however will work to prevent your saves from getting lost as may happen when relying on the limitation inherent in shared objects. Login saves will not require users to recomplete start games from scratch as it can get data from your shared objects. Users will be able to access their account from any PC so no need to start from scratch there either :)

We will also start tagging the games that you have completed but this will not be visualised in the 2.1 update.

Facebook

You will have the ability to link your Facebook account to Nitrome. This will allow us to tie our high scores with your Facebook. We will also allow you to filter the scores to let you see who has the best scores out of you and your friends.

Twitter

You will have the ability to you to link your Twitter account to Nitrome. This will allow us to let you express your score that you achieved for a game and tell your Twitter followers

Visual Revamps

There will be a few minor revamps to the functionality and visuals of the existing pages.

We are really excited about the features that we are currently working on and hope to bring them to you in the near future!

by Mat

Hey Nitromians,

It’s time for our big Lockehorn (ver 2.0) update!

We have added an all new battle mode with 14 brand new arenas so grab a buddy and see who can be the rightful leader of the Elk tribe!

We have also included a new easy mode for the one player mode so those of you who found the original too hard can give it another shot! You can toggle between easy and normal modes on the level select screen so feel free if you want to up the challenge or make it a little simpler if you get stuck! We have had bags of fun testing this and hope you enjoy it as much as we have!

Lockehorn 2 Player: Click to Play!

Enjoy!

by Jon

It’s Friday again and we have loads of cool stuff coming your way next week!

First up, we are gonna have the release of our big Lockehorn 2 player update, so get your buddy ready! We are also going to have that full feature list of what to expect for the Nitrome 2.1 Website Update and finally, if that wasn’t enough we will be introducing yet another section within the blog next week so look out for that!

Until then, have a Great Weekend!

by Tom

Great news on the horizon for Lockehorn fans!

We have been working on a significant update for the game which offers a robust 2 Player versus game mode. Basically, if you look at what we did with Test Subject Arena, we will be offering something with just as much if not more substance but this time within the actual Lockehorn game.

The game will also contain an all new ‘easy mode’ and some small bug fixes. This is something that we would have liked to have included in the original release, but due to it being a winter game and that ideally tying to Christmas, it unfortunately had to be released. We are thrilled that the game is doing well enough that we are now able to add in more content. Thanks for all that keep playing the game!

Lockehorn 2 Player Preview: Click Here
Play Lockehorn: Click Here

Look out for this very soon!

by Mat

You can now start voting for your favourite Flash Games from 2011!

Jay is Games have got their Best Games of 2011 section live on their site and we are happy to tell you that Nitrome games have been nominated for various categories within the browser games section which is great!

Our Nominated Games:
Canary
Rubble Trouble Moscow
Nitrome Must Die
Test Subject Blue
Steamlands

If you wish to vote for your game choice as 'Game of the Year', be sure to check the 'Game of the Year' checkbox on the page before casting a vote!

Thanks for voting!

by Tom

Hi Nitromians!

We are very excited to reveal just what’s going to be appearing under that ‘Coming Soon’ panel in the top right hand corner of our site. As has been suspected and requested by many people, we are going to have a new login system for the site!

This is going to be a completely optional feature. If you choose not to use it you will be able to play the games as you could before but we will be introducing (both at launch and going forward) tons of cool new features made possible through logging in!

You may also notice that we have a new search bar coming to the site. This too has been a highly requested feature for a while that we will be happy to deliver :)

It has been no small undertaking to bring these features to life in a site as established as Nitrome. A lot of ground work has had to be done and has caused us to take longer than initially planned. Hopefully at launch you will appreciate the effort that has been made and will be able to enjoy a more stable and feature rich Nitrome site in the future.

We will be giving a full lowdown on what to expect in the Nitrome 2.1 update next week so stay tuned!

Website Features Preview: Click Here!

by Tom

Firstly welcome to our newest blog section - Industry News.

Industry News will cover significant events that may affect or influence Nitrome Development. We will use this as an opportunity not just to highlight the event but to give our opinion or highlight potential benefits or problems that arise. Our old 'News' category will still continue to cover events that are directly involving Nitrome.

Our first story to cover is about the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) that are currently being discussed. The aim of the SOPA is to stop online piracy by giving more power to the American government in effect allowing them to turn off any site that they feel infringes piracy laws and a lot of film and music studios are pushing for this bill to pass.

On the other side, a lot of powerful web based companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Reddit etc.) are against the act as they suggest it may cause big changes to popular sites and web services. Imagine if Youtube was taken down as a result of a user uploading copyrighted material for example.

So how does this affect Nitrome?

Well, as we make all of our own content, hopefully it wouldn’t have any direct impact either way, but some services that we use such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube could be affected so it’s not without consequence. Lots of sites such as those mentioned (i.e. Reddit) are planning to take their services offline from 18th January in protest of the bill. Although Nitrome is in opposition of the 'Stop Online Piracy Act' we will be keeping the site online as per normal. You may however find disruption to the social sites that we use. So take this as a heads up just incase! :)

SOPA Article on Wikipedia: Click Here
SOPA in the News: Click Here

by Mat

Hi Nitromians!

We almost forgot to mention that Jay is Games has got an interview up over on their site featuring Matthew Annal!

It seems that it was posted on the same day that we finished for Christmas holidays.

The interview features some pretty cool questions including what our biggest challenges in game development have been and how Nitrome plan to move in the game development space for 2012.

Jay is Games Interview - Click Here!

by Tom

Hi Nitromians!

Wow! 100,000 likes our Facebook Page! That really IS incredible! Thanks so much to everyone for supporting us and playing our games!

We were so happy to come into the office today and see that our Facebook Page had reached over 100,000 Nitromians - What a great start to the week! :D

If you haven't yet like our Facebook page and would like to, please feel free, we will keep you updated as to all things Nitrome!

Nitrome on Facebook: Click Here!

We also have a Twitter page where you can follow us.

Nitrome on Twitter: Click Here!

by Tom

Welcome to our first Friday Update of the New Year!

We have had a lot of things to sort out since we have been back in the office and as a result it has been a little quiet in the blog this week.

Stay tuned next week as we will be bringing you much more news on what we are up to including information on what we are currently working on for our website!

We will also be adding a new category to the blog next week, so watch out for that!

Until then, have a great weekend! :D

by Tom