We are still waiting for our final release of “The Hearts of Men: Throne of Deceit” to get through the xblig review process.  What a pain in the ass.  Plain and simple.  We’re hoping to release soon, and will have news forthcoming once we get through submissions.  One of these days, you will get to actually see all the great efforts that came forward to bring a former Indie Game of the Week, to a Game of the Year!  We extended this game far beyond  its development time, with results that show throughout the game.  Before revising the control scheme, we actually reached the final tier of entrants for the Indie Summer Uprising, but did not make the final cut.  There’s so much to speak of thats new to the game, we’ll have to hold off until we are ready to release.

Besides all that XBLIG nonsense, we moved forward–by leaps and bounds.  In the beginning of December, 2011, we decided it was time to get going, so we started development on our follow up game “Cradle to the Grave”, a sort of tower defense game.  Having worked together for 2 years, Simon and I became the machine, and today we stand prepared to release the beta version of the game, just 2.5 months later.  While THoM was a much larger game in some ways, our new agile method has turned us into a speeding bullet of development, cutting through all our shortcomings on our first game and allowing us to streamline production in unprecedented ways.  Besides making a 50 level game with over 100 craftable items, numerous enemies and even cutscenes, Simon implemented a full backend that will allow us to connect users through social medias like twitter and facebook, as well as our own server to keep up-to-the-minute scoring and interactions.  We’re doing it folks, and we’re doing it 100.  We don’t know anyway different than to get better, and we can’t wait to unleash our next game, “Cradle to the Grave”, onto the WP7 and other platforms this spring, 2012.  Very soon, we’ll be looking for beta testers and players alike, as well as releasing content.

We’ll be continuing to update and drop what content we can, and hope to hear from the community…we’re tired of sitting idly by and watching!  We players in this game, and we want the ball!!!  Thankfully, we are already seeing great results with “Cradle to the Grave”, so I’m sure we’ll be hearing quite a bit of feedback.  MS has sent us phones, there’s some buzz going on, and we’re feeling alright.  Being in that final phase of a game is truly painstaking, but shoot, pros execute in that last 5%–when they see the finish line, they start sprinting towards it.  That’s where we are, and it’s what we’re doing.  Now…where’s that pic I wanted to post…

The day started very early – I had to wander out in the dark reach the storage room in order to find my more ‘pro looking’ jacket – gotta look nice you know?! Sadly I wasn’t able to take a lot of great pictures at the event, there was never room for such! But I did manage to get a few so feast folks! Oh by the way – the new soon-to-be-released Nokia WP7 phone is delicious!

One main goal with the event was also to test out our new exciting project on the actual phones and let some people have a peak at it! And wow, what an amazing response – having people gathering to try out our next amazing product. Such good response after this minimal amount of time spent is thrilling!

In addition to all of this there was so many interesting discussions done with great people, and gosh I learned alot! There was also great people leading very informative workshops, one of the most interesting one to me was about the future of Microsoft XNA and Windows 8 lead by a former Microsoft employee. Oh by the way, thank you for the Pizza’s Microsoft – nothing was spared!

To say the least, we have MS themselves looking at our game–Kinect and Mobile–interested in what we’re doing.

Big, big UPS to Simon for going out and getting it.  I couldnt help myself and had to give a precursor here.  Pics and much, much more info to come soon.  Oh yeah, The Hearts of Men: Throne of Deceit is in peer review, so if you are on it, please test for us so we can release for the Holiday 2011!

We’re still waiting on approval from Xbox Live, but soon will also be on the marketplace.  If you just can’t wait, it’s time to jump into this Holidays biggest indie title release for a portion of the price on PC.  Just click the banner above to go directly to the purchase page!

Oh yeah, and we updated the site a little bit – IT’S EPIC!

[Show as slideshow]

Cheers folks!
~ Simon Jäger

To begin the game kickoff, we’re doing a few things, one is gonna be reaching as many people as we can.  We’re also offering a bit of incentive for fans, gamers, game devs, and anybody else to follow us on twitter and Facebook.  As it stands, our marketing and PR is pretty atrocious, but we want to correct this with our first official, final release of a game we’ve become quite proud of over the last few months.

With the pc demo coming THIS WEEK and going into XNA submissions, we’re going to do a promo where anybody that likes us on Facebook will get the demo early!

We’re also getting ready to announce our post mortem, and hoping this will take–we’re doing it LIVE!!!  Yes, this is kind of new, but its the only way I’ve ever enjoyed a post mortem is with immediate feedback.  We are planning on doing this through Google+ Hangouts, so we’ll be doing some tests to see what can actually be handled in such a format.  Could turn out pretty cool.

And, we have other big announcement coming, but we’ll save those for later

Once again tho…After 1.5 years developing this game, we’re DONE!  Submitted to Steam and a few other notable Digital Distributors, now waiting on approvals. OH!!  The game is going to be purchasable directly from our website too!!!  Paypal, credit card…I’m even considering food stamps folks

Seriously, even Back to the Future???  How can you even begin, as a writer, to place something so far out of context into Doc Browns mouth as this filth?  In no way, would Doc Brown ever say the word “Shit”, and this isn’t even a freudian slip, this is blatant, said just to be saying it.  There is no impact here, only degradation.

MK, rated M, does NOT use rubbish, cheap language.  Go figure.

Here’s the point:  I know the game industry is immature for the most part, and alot of those involved are generally sheltered super dorks that at 30, and finally ready to leave mom’s basement.  But, once we grow up, we’ll look back and see how amateur it is.  I understand what cursing is–it’s a quicker way to adding punctuation on notations, but generally not every person in the world talks in such filth every sentence.  I don’t need somebody to say “They’re fucking shooting at me” in order to let me know somebody is shooting at me.  I certainly don’t need Doc Brown saying anything other than “Great Scott”, or “1.1 Gigawatts” to keep my enthusiasm up.  Really, it breaks the immersion when we take away the established character to egocentrify something that isn’t ours (those characters).

I’ve never heard Mario, Link, Sonic, or any other of the most notable characters even come close to using any foul language.  Even solid Snake has never been more of a “Damn” type guy and he’s been around for 20 years at least.

My point:  Grow the Fuck up you worthless little shitbags.  Use it where its needed, don’t abuse it because you can–fuckers.

Some may recall we had already released The Hearts of Men on the Xbox Indie Games channel, and after some really great feedback we decided we couldn’t leave good enough alone.  Since the original design of the game had called for some of these things (upgradable stats, advanced pathfinding AI, destructible spawn points, multiplayer), and Dream.Build.Play was lining up with our estimated timeline, we figured what the heck, why not!?  Plus, every game we create is a statement about us, so we can’t do things in a half-assed manner, that’s just not who we  are.  After reading every review that was written about the game, most seemed to be asking for the same few things.  A very exciting aspect of releasing this final version will be the new reviews, especially since we did a pretty solid job on the original release, including an Indie Game of the Week at Dealspwn, amongst other 4 and 5 star reviews!!

Now of course comes the hard part for us, which is marketing our product.  I enjoy the idea of marketing something you can stand behind, but it’s such a full time hustle, you almost feel like you are begging people to give you the time of day, and then again trying to sell the game.  We’re really hoping our latest strategy will help us along, which includes releasing to the PC and Steam, alongside Xbox Live Indie Games.  This week we will be releasing a detailed preview and preparing to release the demo onto PC soon after.  Our goal is looking to release the game as soon as possible, so we’re hoping to breeze through the submissions process this type with less issues than we’ve previously dealt with.

And for now, that’s all.  I’m excited tho, we’re finally done, and that’s that.  After what seems like a lifetime, we’re putting this game on the shelf.  We pushed and pulled on this one…and we’re done!

There is not to much to report today, we keep our hands busy as usual. Last weeks has been quiet exciting I must say, as we are getting into some very cool stuff over here at COLTRAN Studios.

Tonight is “more polishing” of ‘THoM’ on the menu – and hopefully I can head to the beach tomorrow morning. It is not too bad to just lie there in the sun thinking and reflecting on where we are right now and where we are heading. We have worked so hard last year on our first title and you don’t really realize how much work you put into something once you relax a bit. It has been great actually, we learned so much! – And if people likes the results – so much the better!

So I am really excited about the future for us.

Now let me quit rambling and start working. I just wanted to make a quick post letting you folks know – yes we are still alive!

Cheers folks!
~ Simon Jäger

COLTRAN Studios is proud to launch their funding initiative through Kickstarter.com—Help Us Succeed!

Chicago, July 6th, 2011 – Come one, come all, and be part of a star being born. COLTRAN Studios is gearing up to launch their first game, “The Hearts of Men: Throne of Deceit”, in August of 2011. In just a month, gamers with a pc or Xbox 360 will be able to play through this amazing tale, playing with or against each other in a number of game modes. As the game nears completion and is set for launch, we need everybody we know to support our funding initiative, to ensure we can market the game properly, and continue our developments onto our next project. With the help of family and friends, and spreading the word, we can achieve our goals. We also have some great, one of a kind gifts for donators that fans and supporters will not want to miss out on.

Visit the Kickstarter page to view gifts and donate:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coltranstudios/the-hearts-of-men-the-dream-begins

“The Hearts of Men” will launch will a full set of features, game modes, and art to satisfy gamers of all ages. The game is a top down game, where players use a combination of attacks to defeat a horde of enemies, and defeat the castles bosses to succeed the evil overlord on the throne. Players can choose to play the story mode alone, or with 3 other players to help them along the way. There is also an arcade mode, that is also 4 player co-op and sees players pitted against a nonstop mass of enemies to gain the highest score and survive the longest. Another noteworthy addition that gamers will welcome is 8 player online multiplayer matches. Players can choose from classic gameplay modes such as Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag, or try all new challenging modes like Onslaught, and the explosive Bomb Run.

The game has been in development for almost 1.5 years now, and over the course of time has evolved. After a great alpha release, and gathering of feedback, the game has been revamped to better suit todays gamer. The inclusion of weapon and health upgrades, a dash/teleportation move, and superb artificial intelligence which will keep players on the edge of their seats for hours. Also, the User Interface has seen a significant upgrade, allowing more flow into the user experience, while using the comic graphics for backgrounds. The sound effects and soundtrack have also been updated to lend a more energetic pacing to the game. And finally, the story has been completely included, with 30 pages of comic art to tell the story of the characters and the outcome of the journey.

Check out more The Hearts of Men developments:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/COLTRAN-Studios/245333015480385?sk=wall

Webpage: http://coltranstudios.com/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/COLTRAN

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc3xiFx-JBs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO3Jwjy34HU&feature=related

***We can do this but we need YOUR support!***

With the Kickstarter initiative, we’re looking for a small donation from anybody that can, and would be willing to help us. We’ve set the amounts low with great rewards for donations, including getting your name in the game, receiving art from the game, tshirts, and even a first series, one of a kind comic book, signed by the artist. If we reach our goal, we will be able to market this game and gain new equipment necessary for our continued development. We’re asking for 2 things, one is any donation, the lowest is $1. The second thing we need, is for you to spread the word and forward this announcement, Like us on Facebook, retweet us on Twitter, and in general, support our initiative!!! In return we’re giving everything we can, and you can even show your credits in the game to friends and family!

Jason Zielinski

COLTRAN Studios

jz@coltranstudios.com