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Apple just posted their second Indie Game showcase to their editorial section and this time it features Kumobius who are best known on the app store for their hit game Duet and their pixelrific Time Surfer an Beans Quest.

More relevant to Nitrome is that they very kindly chose Icebreaker as one of their favourite games which is highlighted in the piece. Always awesome to get in the App Store editorial section! Thanks Kumobius!

Indie Game Showcase

by Mat

Hi Nitromians,

We are finally ready to reveal the release date for Icebreaker on Google Play and Android and the launch of the Kraken pack update accross both Android and iOS!

Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage and the Kraken update will be available on May the 7^th!

Not long to go J

by Mat

Hey Nitromians,

With our HUGE Icebreaker update now submitted to stores and under review. We thought we would share a something AWESOME whilst we wait. That something being ‘Delicious Caviar’ of course...

This has got to be one of the coolest and playful additions to the new Kraken pack yet. Giant caviar (fish eggs) can be found deep within the body of the giant sea beast. They’re pop-able like bubble wrap, stick to almost anything, they can fire from cannons, build bridges, work as safety nets... kinda useful no?

On a further note:

For those of you who missed our announcement on Thursday. The update has been submitted for review on the stores (Play, Amazon and App Store). Just to give you all a rough timeframe, the stores give a guide of up to a maximum of two weeks to review an app. When Icebreaker has been given the go ahead by these, then we can finally let you guys know a release date.

As we have previously mentioned, we want to make as big as splash as possible with Icebreaker: A Viking voyage and keep updates in sync. So we want the big update to be a simultaneous launch across Android, iOS and Amazon stores. 

More news on the release and update of Icebreaker when it becomes available.

by Jon

Hi Nitromians,

How about playing Shybot, an awesome Pixel Love game to start the week off and brighten up your Monday? We thought so!

Shybot is an awesome game brought to you by the same team that made Killer Corral.

This game sounds great, has beautiful visuals and has progressive and varied challenges in it's platforming gameplay.

Click to Play!

Have fun, we'll bring you another Pixel Love game next week.

by Tom

Happy Easter Nitromians,

We hope you have had a blast finding all of the new avatars this week in our Easter “eggvatar” hunt.
We really tried to put them in some devious and tricky places this time around.

Did you like the clue we gave on Friday???
Mwa ha ha (we are so mean)

Also, have any of you managed to find them all?

Don’t worry if you haven’t, as they will still be available to find after the Easter holidays.

See you next week.

=0)

by Jon

Hi Nitromians,

Great news! The issue we were having with Icebreaker on iOS has finally (after a bit of a wait) been resolved. If you check the App store right now you can see that both the HD and regular versions of Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage are now listed on Nitrome’s account… yay!

So what now?

Well, we are now going to submit the update to the various app stores for review. Once they have approved the game, we will let you all know an official release date.

Not long to wait now!

by Nitrome

Hi Nitromians,

We have had a busy day today here at Nitrome towers. There have already been two blog posts prior to this but if you hadn’t already noticed then today marks the start of our awesome Easter Avatar hunt (Eggvatar hunt?).

To join in simply login to your Nitrome account and go to the Avatars page here. The new Avatar is at the bottom of the page!

If you don't have a Nitrome account yet you can easily make one for free in less than a minute here. Oh and it's totally free!

Follow the clue to claim your prize! Happy Hunting and join us tomorrow for the second Egg in this week long event!

by Mat

It's Monday which can mean only one thing... It's time for a Pixel Love game.

This week we have chosen to highlight Killer Corral. It looks stunning. This is a simple idea executed very well with a very clean charismatic art style and fluid controls. This all makes for a really enjoyable experience for players.

You are tasked with saving your pigs whilst avoiding the alien onslaught. You can ride the pigs around / push them to safety whilst shooting at the waves of enemy. You plant seeds to grow your ammo, so make sure you sow them into strategic positions, as your ammo can get very scarce at times.

The music speeds up as the time of day progresses.  It really adds to the already frantic, fast moving nature of this game.

Click to Play

Have fun everyone, we'll bring you another Pixel Love next week!

by Tom

Hi Nitromians,

We have just been updating a few areas on the accounts system. Apologies to anyone that may have experienced disruptions to their gaming sessions.

These changes were to fix some issues with the comments and private messaging reply system.

If you know of any more bugs around the site, let us know and we'll get onto  fixing them as soon as we can. :)

Thanks for your patience everyone.

Happy gaming!

by Tom

Hi Nitromians,

Starting Monday and every day up to and including Easter Sunday itself, there is going to be an Easter Egg that you have to find in games and site! Kind of like what we did at Christmas with the Advent Calender, only this time with Eggs! Finding the Eggs will unlock Avatars and the artists at Nitrome have really drawn some nice ones for this, so I think you're going to want them all!

Also worth noting is that we put some time into the Avatar system for this, that now means we can put avatars in almost any of our games. In the first iteration we were only picking games that were side on…we expanded things to include more custom sprites in the Christmas update but there were technical reasons why a lot of games were not possible to be included. We have now overcome this issue so were finally able to put the Avatars in places we have been keen to do for a while!

Also this time around we have not put the Avatars in any games that already have one, or more than one in any of the upcoming games!

So who do you think is going to make the new Avatars list?

See you Monday J

by Mat

Hi Nitromians,

We are running the latest version of openssl on our servers. This patch was released to fix a security flaw in which SSL encrypted data could be read. It is strongly advised that you change the password that you use to access your nitrome account; you can do this in the settings area of your account.

We also recommend that you DO NOT change your password for other sites unless they issue a similar message like this one that we've posted. Un-patched websites will still have the security flaw and changing your password will be ineffectual on those websites.

If you are unsure if a website has performed the relevant patches, contact them first!

Thanks for reading!

by Tom

Hey Nitromians,

We have updated our EULA and Terms of Service and DMCA Policy, which we know that some of you may find a bit boring while reading, but please do. You can find them here and here. :)

The most interesting section for fans is probably section 8 of the EULA page.

TL; DR of section 8 of EULA

You can upload "Let's Play" videos with ads on YouTube, create fan art and create non-commercial mods of Nitrome content. We really love seeing your artistic ideas and takes on our stuff and we may even feature the best work we find/get sent in our blog.

Also, if you spot any typos in the EULA or DMCA pages, please let us know and we'll fix them because we know that from time to time we can sometimes accidentally a whole sentence!

Thanks for reading the End User License Agreement, DMCA Policy and Terms of Service!

by Tom

Hi Nitromians,

We have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage update  is ready for submission on iOS and Android. Now here's the bad news. Although the game is ready, due to events not being in our control this is not going to happen just yet. We want to be as open about this as possible so that hopefully you will understand this final delay.

The problem is to do with iOS not Android, but before everyone says 'just launch it on Android', we have been working for a very long time and we stand the best chance to make a splash with this update to go live across all formats at the same time.

Not many of you probably noticed but Icebreaker HD (the iPad version) is now on the Nitrome account rather than the Rovio Stars one on the App Store. The decision to transfer Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage from Rovio Stars to Nitrome was mutual. At this point of the game’s life cycle it made financial sense for both Rovio and Nitrome to transfer the future updates and upkeep of the game to Nitrome. The decision was a mutual win-win.

The iPhone version should at this point also be on our account but it's not.

On trying to transfer the game file using Apples official method one of the in-app-purchase ids conflicted with an in-app-purchase id of the same name on Nitrome's account and caused it to fail. We tried many things to solve it but none worked and we now need Apple's help in order to fix this. If we uploaded a new build of the game to our account, current owners would not get the upcoming free update. I'm sure you would agree is unacceptable. We have been in communication directly with Apple about the issue for around a week and a half and are waiting for one of their engineers to review the situation. Once that happens they hopefully will provide a fix but they might not.

We have a sort of "Plan B" if all this fails, which we're working on for the worst case scenario but it's not as straight forward and certainly not perfect but would mean that current users still get the update, which is the most important thing.

So we are waiting at the moment and can't even submit the update until this is resolved. This could be a few days or it could be weeks, we just can't tell. Hopefully it will be the former and you will see the game pretty soon. In the meantime we will still be running some more teasers while we sort this all out. We'll keep you all updated on how this progresses.

Two final things that need mentioning. In-app-purchases are currently not working in the iPhone build of the game (the none HD version). This is to do with us trying to transfer the game and will be fixed as soon as we do transfer it. We are sorry to anyone who wanted to buy God Powers in the meantime. On a more positive note, we have made the HD version universal so now iPad users can also play Icebreaker on their iPhone and iPods... nice!

We know this is a bit of a long read, we just wanted to be totally transparent on the situation because we want this update out as much as you do! We will update you on the latest news as and when it happens.

:0)

by The Nitrome Team

Hi Nitromians,

Today's Pixel Love game is Spiderling by Martin Pertini. This game is really beautifully crafted, both in terms of the visuals and the game play.

You play as a spiderling which uses a string like web to move around the levels. The web mechanic really makes for some clever puzzles and level design ideas.

In this game you'll encounter different creatures, which are all wonderfully animated. You can also interact with them in interesting ways. For example, centipedes can be used like "trams" that can transport you across otherwise impassable drops. Snails can become stepping stones to climb higher in the level.

Click to Play

We hope you all enjoy this great game, we'll bring you another Pixel Love next Monday.

Have fun!

by Tom

Hey Nitromains,

It’s time to reveal another glimpse into our HUGE free upcoming Icebreaker update.
The Glorious Gloves.

Some experienced  Icebreaker veterans may recognise this “handy” tool from our web release. We always wanted to include them in the initial launch but never got around to it. However we are really pleased to say that they’re back and better than ever before.

For those who have missed it in our previous post. The plan is to have the Android release arrive alongside this update. So Android users can finally be in sync with the latest Icebreaker build.

Oh... and did we forget to say that the ‘iPad’ version is going Universal!  And not only that, the universal build should finally have cloud saving alongside this big update. So (fingers and toes crossed) both of your devices will at-last be in sync.

You can help spread the news by sharing the Trailer: http://youtu.be/OcqUM1ARcN8

Please stay tuned for more Icebreaker news. =)

by Jon