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Do you hum the music to our games? Well, so does our musician Dave! In fact he hums them before they are even made.

Confused? Then read on...

We were surprised to discover that Dave rarely composes the tunes directly at the computer and often thinks of them at other times, sometimes even after he has gone to bed. If that happens, he needs to remember it later. The way he does that is to record himself humming the tune into his phone... genius!

Now we know what your thinking... show us, we want to hear. Well, we thought the same and Dave kindly agreed to share his hummed track along side the final track it became for the upcoming Icebreaker level pack update.

Hummed Version:

Final Version:

(did we just exclusively show a glimpse of the next Icebreaker track in a post about humming? Yup!)

Enjoy!

by Tom

Today's Pixel Love game is Captain Commander created by the clever fellows over at PixelJam!

As you may know by now, we are fans of pixelJam and their ultra retro pixel art style. We love the use of the 2:1 pixel ratio, it's used to great affect and helps give Captain Commander that ultra chunky feel. The vibrant pallete also adds a wonderful clarity to the characters.

The controls are very responsive too. You can choose to either aim your weapon with the mouse or WASD keys.

We feel you will have a lot of fun playing this!

Play Captain Commander: Click Here!

Enjoy, we will bring you another Pixel Love game next week!

by Tom

Hey Nitromians!

So who is enjoying Test Subject Arena 2?

A lot of you were mentioning the difficulty level in the single player challenges. The reason for this is that we wanted to create an engaging training mode so that you can hone your skills, ready for your multi-player battles!

A few handy hints for those of you that are struggling.

• Bullets move faster than the characters and also wrap through portals, so use this to your advantage. You'll be a lot faster!
• Shoot and start walking to the next target before the bullet hits it's target. This is another way to shave of valuable time.

We have managed to complete each challenge whilst testing the game to prove that it can be done. Sim is currently the only Nitromian to accomplish the full set of challenges and has been rewarded the ultra cool bonus avatar, so a big congratulation goes out to him!

That's right! We reward skilled players with avatars which you can collect by completing each of the single player stages. There are nine in all to collect, so go and get 'em all!

For anyone that has missed out on the news earlier this week, we have launched some pretty neat achievements in Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage, check out the video!

See you on Monday for more Pixel Love (we've got a really good one lined up!). Have a great weekend.

by Jon

Hello all,

We know it's been a while since our last release but we've been hard at work on many things and so we are very happy to announce that today is the day we release Test Subject Arena 2!

We've had lots of fun playing... er... we mean testing this game! With up to 4 players fighting against each other (need Touchy for more than 2 players) simultaneously, this game gets frantic!

For those of you who want to hone your skills on your own, there is a single player mode. Where each character has it's own level to beat.

We hope you enjoy our latest addition to the Test Subject Universe. We'll be watching those high score tables!

Play Test Subject Arena 2: Click Here!

Happy gaming!

by JK

Hi Nitromians,

We have some special news for all our iOS fans out there! Our first update for Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage is now live!

In the 1.1 update we have really gone to work on adding our own unique take on achievements to Icebreaker.

We have an all new character called the watcher who sets you missions on little sign posts around the game.

Missions range from trying to strike a chicken enough times before it flys off screen to a pack wide treasure hunt and even a mission that will involve some detective work finding the Vikings that are ever so subtlety different....ooohhh! We have made every effort to go beyond what you would normally expect from achievements to something we really feel expands the game world!

We also took the time in 1.1 to fix a few bugs including one to do with iOS7 and magnet of the gods so if you were having problems there it should now work without a hitch.

We have a swanky new video to go with this release which you can check out...it's not strictly gameplay so it's worth a watch even if you have the game already!

If you were on the fence before this may convince you to take the plunge and if you already have the game what are you waiting for update now!

Get Icebreaker: Click Here!

by Mat

Todays Pixel Love goes out to Enough Plumbers 2 by Glen Forrester.

The concept of having many expendable heroes all trying to achieve the same goal is great fun when executed well and we feel that Enough Plumbers 2 really pushes the scope of what can be achieved with this idea.

You start the game by diving into the toilets to make your way through various well designed levels finding out early on that sacrificing your plumbers is something very unavoidable. Fear not! As long as one of the heroes is alive you may still pass the level.

To help you on your way, you get power-ups that let a single plumber take on new abilities, abilities that are very important in completing the levels.

This game has a lot of depth and we feel it is a great choice for some Pixel Love!

Play Enough Plumbers 2: Click Here!

Have fun, we will bring you all another Pixel Love next week!

by Tom

Hey Nitromians,

Wow... time has absolutely flown this week at Nitrome HQ. Some of our keen followers may have noticed a lack of news this week in our blog.

Don’t worry, that is because we are extremely busy developing new games and simply haven’t had the time to spend making interesting posts. Hopefully we can cram some more news for you all in our blog next week.

Until then you may be glad to hear that our latest game Test subject arena two is in its final stages and should (fingers crossed) be released next week. We are all very happy with the result and feel that it’s one of our best multiplayer games to date. And for all of you Touchy supporters, it’s an absolute blast in four players.

See you all next week for Pixelove on Monday. Have a great weekend.

by Jon

It's been a little while since we talked about Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage's Android plans so we wanted to give you a little update.

To recap we currently have a team working on the Android version and the iOS team have been working on two updates for the game in the form of an Achievements/Challenges based update and the next level pack!

All areas are progressing smoothly but this time we want to let you know a little more about the Android side of things.

The basic port of Icebreaker was up and running on Android in about a week but even then we knew it was going to be hard work to get to the point that we could actually release it. There are many, many small differences that have an impact on the Android build. The most obvious is the screen sizes and resolutions available on Android compared to iOS. The game has two set levels that it scales to and it does not follow a character so getting this working has meant a lot of adjustments and testing...Peter literally has a pile of Android devices on his desk covering all the major variations we are supporting. Beyond this there is a proper testing team hired that go through everything we do with a fine tooth comb so even more devices are tested on beyond what we have in the office.

We have (touch wood) sorted out everything for the screen sizes now and it's been tested to verify this. There are however still more things we need to do. By the time this is out we expect the iOS version to have received an update and we want at launch the Android version to be every bit as good as the iOS one. Currently the Android build does not include any of this so we need to merge the more up to date iOS game data and Android data to make a build that contains updates and Android specific elements. We also plan to hook the achievements to Google Plays achievement system!

If you missed the previous news we're pleased to say that we also plan to launch the Android version on the Amazon App Store. There is a little work to hook a few things up here too but we felt it was worth it to get it on as many devices as possible!

Finally we want to best set peoples expectations correctly for which devices you can expect us to support. We built Icebreaker on iOS to run on a 3GS and it took some optimising to make that run well. With that in mind your phone would have to be a better Android equivalent device. The same goes for screen dimensions...if you have less than 480 x 320 pixels then it was too hard to cater for sorry. To give you some real life phone examples we have tested it personally on a Samsung Galaxy S2 and it runs fine. For those interested here are the full list of devices we tested it on internally at Nitrome:

Full list of devices tested by Nitrome:

• LG E610
• Samsung Galaxy s2+ 
• Samsung Galaxy s2 
• Samsung Galaxy s3 
• Samsung Galaxy s4 
• Nook HD 
• Nook HD+ 
• Kindle Fire 
• Kindle Fire HD 
• Nexus 4 
• Nexus 7 (2012) 
• Nexus 7 (2013) 
• Nexus 10

*Please note that the list of devices used by the actual testing team Rovio supplied is far, far greater!

The other things that affect the support of your device are the processor. We only support arm7 devices (which is the same as the iOS build).

Operating system wise we require 2.3 (gingerbread) or above in order to run.

We know you're going to ask about price but we're not revealing that until release I'm afraid but I wouldn't expect any nasty surprises.

So that's it for now. Unfortunately it is still impossible to say when we expect it to be ready but we're making good progress!

by Mat

Hi Nitromians!

Today's Pixel Love game is... Naya's Quest created by Terry Cavanagh.

This is a real mind bender of a game. You set out on your quest making your way to the "edge". Along the way you will have to traverse some very tricky levels, using your trusty cross-section scanner as a means to better judge your next move. We thought the concept of this game was great, and fell for nearly all of the illusion based traps!

Play Naya's Quest: Click Here

Terry Cavanagh also has a fast paced, frantic avoidance game out for iPhone that we also think is awesome. Check Out Super Hexagon

Have fun everyone, we'll bring you more pixel love next week!

by Tom

It's been a little while since we talked about Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage and we're currently planning some updates to give you news on how the various areas are progressing. There is one little bit of information though that we couldn't keep to ourselves until then!

by Mat

We have chosen a great Pixel Love for you all this week. It's called Exposure and was made by Zillix. This is something quite special.

We love its 3d pixel landscape and the relaxed explorative nature of this game. Your aim is to explore the desert and interact with the other people there. Maybe they can expose the secrets of the orbs? Besides these mystical orbs, you will also find items around the desert which will hold different properties after exposure to the sunlight for 10 seconds.

There are also multiple endings to this game, can you find them all?

Click to Play Exposure

Have fun everyone. We will bring you more Pixel Love next week!

by Tom

It's been another busy week here at Nitrome.

We are glad to see how excited you have all been in regards to the previews of our upcoming games, Test Subject Arena 2 and Cheesedreams: New Moon!

Also, as we followed the first announcement from Steam earlier on in the week, the second announcement was Steam Machines which details what their approach will be in terms of introducing their living room gaming hardware. Also, Steam have (within the hour) just released their latest announcement... The Steam Controller!

So at first glance, what do you think of it? Let us know in the comments below!

Have a great weekend Nitromians, we will catch you all next week for more Nitrome goodness!

by Tom

Following on from the news of Cheese Dreams: New Moon yesterday we thought we would update you all on the progress made with Test Subject Arena 2. The game is currently working very nicely in multiplayer mode where with Touchy you can now play with up to 4 people! We have been making various arenas and have been testing and balancing the abilities of the various characters. 

Each character is a little different from each other this time round so the Rex suit can hang on ceilings and to compensate other characters have different advantages. Some characters are faster than others or shoot faster but there are also some other one off properties too that we will let you guess at for now!

The game in multiplayer is getting fairly far along now so we wanted to look again at single player, which is something we didn't have in the original.

We spent some time in the original trying to make a convincing AI opponent and failed dismally! Though we could make a character move around the arena... getting it to do this intelligently and to choose when to stand and shoot or when to run just proved too big of a challenge for the time we had.

It would have taken far longer than the whole of the rest of the game and it was decided not to be worth it in what was realistically a multiplayer game.

The same is still the case now but this time out we have some different ideas for what we could do for single player. We are only just looking at this now so it may yet not pan out but hey at least you know we're looking at it right!? Plus at this stage if you want to speculate on what the single player entails you may even suggest something we hadn't considered and make it even better!

You can look forward to Test Subject Arena 2 soon...ish!

by Mat

A long time ago we announced and gave you a demo of a remake of one of our older games Cheese Dreams and then nothing! 

The game was fairly far into development but various other projects meant we had to put it on hold and then (even more) various other projects stopped us coming back to it. We're thrilled to finally let you all know that we are now back working on it!

The game now has a proper title 'Cheese Dreams: New Moon' which we think covers well what the project is. For those who maybe don't know what this is about here is a recap.

Cheese Dreams: New Moon is a remake of our 2007 game 'Cheese Dreams'. It has the same basic bouncing mechanic but remade in a new engine that now supports full physics for all game elements rather than a few hard coded ones. It has the same mouse ship setting and basic story and shares some elements but beyond that is a brand new game that could be considered a sequel if it weren't for having the same storyline. If your still not clear then trying out both the demo and the original game should give you a good idea of the difference.

So why did we decide to remake it and not make a sequel? ...for fans of the original there is an obvious direction for a sequel given at the end of the game. We love the concept of the Moon being abducted by mice and although we would love to explore what happens next the general feeling was that so much time had passed that people in general would not remember what happened in the original particularly as it was a pretty hard game to beat.

The project is still a little while off so don't expect it in a week or two!

Although we did a lot of work on this before it was put on hold the fact is that the game had became bloated with content and elements, so much so that making the levels and finishing off the art and code for what is already there is still quite a big task! Jon went through everything that has been built for the new project and said there was already enough for two projects worth of content!...in fact we may put the project out in two parts both to get this out quicker and so as to not waste any elements!

At the time of writing this it is intended to be the next browser game after Test Subject Arena 2 so that should give you a rough idea of the timescale we're looking at.

To wrap up we wanted to share one tip bit of info in this post. In Cheese Dreams: New Moon your going to not only see the moon but also some other planets too....hmmm how mysterious!

by Mat

With us having a game that has now been Greenlit for Steam distribution we are taking a special interest in the three Steam announcements that are taking place this week. The first of these announcements has now passed and Valve have announced 'Steam OS' a free operating system that people can put onto their PC. It is an extension of their Big Picture Mode that they introduced last year which basically makes it so you can play PC games on your TV in a more friendly and intuitive way, all controlled with a gamepad.

Steam OS means that you don't need Windows on that PC as Steam OS will automatically take the user into Big Picture mode! The OS is built upon Linux which does mean that not a lot of the catalogue will run on the platform straight away but Valve also talk about the ability to stream any other Steam content from your Mac or PC that you have elsewhere in the house, plus it seems that now there is a real reason to support it, Linux support is likely to go through the roof. You can find the full announcement here: http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

Everyone fully expects one of the further two announcements to be Valves Steam Box which would be a standalone piece of hardware that runs the new OS. This could have a pretty interesting knock on affect for Nitrome as we would suddenly be in a position where our Flightless game on completion would be available on what is essentially a console. Pretty exciting stuff!

So what do you think? Is this a big deal for the gaming industry or do you think it is hype that will quickly die away? What else do you think Valve are going to announce in their other two announcements? What do you think the knock on effects are for Nitrome? Now that we have comments we finally have a place to chat about such things! :)

by Mat