Launch, Légumes, and a Livestream?

Guys! We’re on the map! The first product we’ve worked on has released! and yes! I’m finally allowed to talk about it! So if you’ll forgive what is basically a massive plug, let’s dive into last fortnight!

This is Tens! Say hello to Tens! everyone. This is the first project released that my #EgoProblems has touched. John and I have been working on Tens! with the team at SockMonkey Studios for a few months now (on and off for periods of it), and we’re very proud of the work we’ve done, and of the overall project.

But what is it? One reviewer helpfully summed it up as a fusion of Tetris and Sudoku, which seems pretty apt. You have a grid of numbers, and a constant stream of dice for you to place. Each dice you can place anywhere on the grid, with the goal being to make a line that adds up to ten. At which point the line disappears and you get points. Here, why not see it in action:

Pretty cool, right? And it has been reviewing really well, one reviewer that hasn’t yet made it to Metacritic even gave it that coveted 85/100. Which will mean more as a sentence to some of you than others I’m sure. Don’t worry about it.

John and I worked on pretty much every aspect of the game over time, even dipping into things like layout and animations occasionally, which was a strange leap out of our comfort zone! It’s nice because it really does feel like we make a real impact on this game, we added new features, changed gameplay that wasn’t quite working and we were even involved in some of the design discussions that went on.

Of course, that isn’t to detract from anything the other devs working on it did. They also did an amazing job. They laid the groundwork, made a really excellent codebase to work in, and were invaluable to helping us learn how things worked in the project when we first jumped in. The QA are also fantastic, and without them the level of polish would not be there! Oh, and did I mention the art? I don’t have to, it speaks for itself!

As you can tell, I’m really chuffed, and am super grateful to SockMonkey and Kwalee for trusting us to help get this wonderful little game out the door! Now, go play it! It’s on PC, Mac, and Switch. I’d recommend the Switch version personally, but that’s mostly because that’s the version I spent most of my time working on!

In other news, someone was chatting to me recently, and asked about the next livestream. I’ve been thinking about this. So the problem I’m having at the moment is that the game is at a point where there is a bunch of relatively boring things to do, and they just need doing. This does not necessarily make for good livestream content. If you guys want, I could livestream it, and just chat/answer questions while I’m on, but it will definitely be a drier affair than last time I reckon. If you still want to see that, I’ll put out a call for someone to join me again, largely to relay questions and fill the void – Richard really helped last time I think.

And finally, I never got around to following up on the pumpkin carving last post, that’s largely due to oversight on my part – I still need to work on that “share share share” mindset for stuff like this. Anyway, here y’are:

This was my second ever pumpkin carve, so I’m super proud of my Gengar! And as a reward for your patience, now check out what a horror he became after repeated usage and withering:

Yeah. I think he ended up scarier than Gengar has ever been before. And on that harrowing image….
Matt out.