So, behold Holdfast: A Gamebook of Dwarven Vengeance! Down in the deeps of the Stormwall mountains lay vast kingdoms of worked stone, jeweled lanterns and polished axes. Gon Durul, Halsond and the Westerdeep…their proud halls are no more: their great treasuries laid bare, their warriors slain at the gates, and their crowns hidden away in Seven Helms.

Clanless though you may be, the fires of anger against those that have stolen from, shamed and injured your people burn as hot in you as in any dwarf. Now, the tale can be told of how a chance discovery in a forgotten tomb will lead you to a ruined fortress, and how, through courage, battle and cunning you will carve out a Holdfast of your people in the Deeps!

We’ll be working with Black Chicken Studios to bring the gamebook to iOS, Android and desktop, using our gamebook engine to take their booky version into the digital realm. To do this though, BCS still need your help to raise $20,000. Check out their Holdfast Kickstarter page for more details about the project! Currently they’ve raised just over $7000 and have 22 days left, so YOU can make the difference.

RELEASE THE CLONE!

So April saw our big release of Zach Weinersmith’s Trial of the Clone, which was very well received and chalked up a number of glowing reviews across the interwebz! It was a staggered release across Google Play first, which coincided with our attendence at PAX East, and then later released across the iOS App Store and later, Amazon Appstore for Android and Nook Apps.

Highlights of the release, other than the great reviews, was our Pocket Gamer ‘Game of the Week’ (due we think to our awesome Facebook following) and the our rankings in the Books category of the iOS App Store. We reached to #1 in the UK iPhone Books chart for a couple of days (as well as Finland strangely) and climbed as high as #5 in the US iPhone Books chart too – also charting at #2 in Canada and New Zealand. We also had a strong showing in the iPad charts too, which overall catapulted Trial of the Clone into the Overall Apps charts in a few countries.

So what does this mean for sales? Well, seeing as Books is a relatively new category for us, we can now see how many gamebooks we need to sell to scale that chart. We did notice a quick drop-off should numbers dip, even slightly. Overall it was a good insight into a side of the iOS App Store that we’ve not visited very often. Time will tell whether we go into Books again, or stay in the Games category. One thing we’re pretty sure of is that because of the age rating, it probably won’t be featured, which is a shame considering we got press coverage everywhere.

As a final treat, Zach Weiner made a hop over to the UK from the US last week and hung out with Neil, who is currently based there for a short time. The aim was to throw as much Englishness at Zach as possible, which was achieved we think. You can’t go wrong with an old thatched pub in the middle of the countryside called The Green Dragon.

WE CAN SEE THE WOOD DESPITE THE TREES!

Talking of forests and dragons, The Forest of Doom is about 95% complete for Android and iOS. We know we said in our last round-up that we would like to see a release in April, but sadly that hasn’t happened, so we’re really sorry about that. This is due to a number of factors, one of which we can’t discuss. We can reveal we have spent the last two weeks working on something that, if it comes off, is very cool and will be a big boost to Tin Man Games in the future.

So expect to see The Forest of Doom making the news on the blog in the next few weeks!

RECENT INTERVIEWS

Neil has been in a chatty mood recently and has been interviewed a LOT! If you’re interested in hearing/reading about our history, how we work and a bit about our future titles then check out the links below:

Pocket Gamer – How Melbourne became mobile’s secret success story

Digitally Downloaded – Interview: Tin Man Games on making a successful career out of the dead gamebook genre

Padvance – Neil Rennison interview – Tin Man Games, Trial of the Clone, and using your fingers as save games

Lloyd of Gamebooks – April A to Z – T is for Tin Man Games

Press 2 Reset – 92nd Transmission (audio podcast)

WE DIDN’T WIN, BUT WE DID GET THIS!

It’s our second year in the Pocket Gamer Awards. Last year we were undone by a pesky elf dressed in green and this year we have been undone by one of our own undead kind in the form of The Walking Dead!

We’ll let them off though, not because of their undead status, but more because we love the comic-books and the game is pretty awesome too. *grumble grumble*

IN DEVELOPMENT…

As previously mentioned, we’re currently finishing off The Forest of Doom. We’re also racing through our development of Deathtrap Dungeon too and hope to have that released in June! Fighting Fantasy fans will be keen to know that Appointment with FEAR and The Citadel of Chaos are also in full development.

French gamebook fans can also join in the FF fun soon as Le Manoir de l’Enfer is entering the last stages of testing and will arrive as an update to the iOS and Android versions soon. This will be followed by our first Gamebook Adventures Choices gamebook apps, Les Fils d’Uruzimé, a French-only gamebook put together by the awesome Studio 09 team. To find out more about that, check out our blog post here.

If you’re a fan of 80′s gamebooks then you’ll also be pleased to hear that Gary Chalk’s Gun Dogs and Grailquest 1: The Castle of Darkness are also now in development!

Finally, for all you Strange Loves: Vampire Boyfriends fans out there, Miellyn and Lacy are currently editing our second book in the series Hex Boyfriends! For more info on that then check our blog post here.

INCOMING…

As well as all the things we’ve discussed here, we have our Dredd team producing some amazing work for our Judge Dredd sequel, The Dark (more on that in the next couple of months). We also have 3 Gamebook Adventures titles incoming and nearly have all the artwork completed for those, which look amazing!! Further afield, we’re taking part in a couple of Kickstarter projects to be announced and we’re also in discussions about licensing some other old gamebook series’. All will be revealed if, and when that happens.

Stay tuned gamebookers!

Gamebook Adventures 1: An Assassin in Orlandes -> $5.99 > $2.99

Gamebook Adventures 2: The Siege of the Necromancer -> $5.99 > $2.99

Gamebook Adventures 3: Slaves of Rema -> $5.99 > $2.99

Gamebook Adventures 4: Revenant Rising -> $5.99 > $2.99

Gamebook Adventures 5: Catacombs of the Undercity -> $5.99 > $2.99

Gamebook Adventures 6: The Wizard from Tarnath Tor -> $5.99 > $2.99

Gamebook Adventures 7: Temple of the Spider God -> $5.99 > $2.99

Judge Dredd: Countdown Sector 106 -> $5.99 > $2.99

Fighting Fantasy: Blood of the Zombies -> $5.99 > $2.99

Strange Loves 1: Vampire Boyfriends -> $2.99 > $0.99

REVIEWS

Pocket Gamer – “A hilariously entertaining new addition to the gamebook genre, Trial of the Clone is a brilliant way to spend a rainy afternoon” – 8/10 – Silver Award!

148Apps – “I won’t dawdle with getting this out there: I love Trial of the Clone. It made me laugh numerous times and it made me want to replay it many, many times just so I could see how things could work out differently. It’s simply brilliant.” – 4.5/5 – Editor’s Choice!

Gamezebo – “If you like the sense of humour, you’ll find this absolutely hilarious. Lengthy, solid story with excellent replay value for a gamebook.” – 4.5/5

Boing Boing – “I’ve finally gotten around to reading my copy and it’s an absolute delight.” (review based on the paperback version)

Android Rundown – “Lots of varying play, cool media and a funny story.” – 8.5/10

Hardcore Droid – “…interactive fiction on the Android doesn’t get any better than this.” – 3/5

Just Press Start – “If I really wanted to be lazy, I could summarize my review for Tin Man Games’ newest app Trial of the Clone like this: Buy the damn thing- NOW.”

GeekDad – “This story touches so many GeekDad hotspots, there is a possibility that this post may self-implode in the awesomeness described here. Page after page, choice after choice, Trial of the Clone is very funny. The result is a glorious experience.”

Gamezone – “If you enjoyed these types of books from childhood, then you should definitely experience them in mobile-app form at least once. It’s a great way to spend a lazy afternoon.”

Digitally Downloaded – “Oh, and there’s an option to “Turn Wil Wheaton” on. Select it and the voice of Wesley Crusher will narrate the entire book to you. There ya go. Now you have to buy it.” – 4/5

Sydney Morning Herald – “This title should appeal to a wide audience. Fans of comedic science fiction, such as Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Red Dwarf, and Hyperdrive should definitely have a look, and anyone who enjoys Weiner’s webcomics should also be an easy sell. It also reads well as a loving parody of gamebooks in general, so fans of Tin Man’s Gamebook Adventures or the Fighting Fantasy series are bound to enjoy it. Really, though, if you’re just looking for a laugh, you would be hard pressed to find a better buy for only four bucks.”

Stromstock (German) – “Those able to cope with the English language, are open-minded and fancy quirky humour, will find Trial of the Clone entertains them for hours.” – 4/5 (English translation)

Starburst Magazine – “Our personal high points are when the author breaks the fourth wall and insults the reader directly…” – 8/10

App Champ – “An addictive game that will advise you to play by the rules but totally lures you to cheat, if you are smart enough!”

Casual Gameplay (JayIsGames) – “If you know Zach or SMBC, then it should come as no surprise that Trial of the Clone is frakking hilarious.”

OTHER COVERAGE

Pocket Gamer – GAME OF THE WEEK!

Touch Arcade – New Tin Man Games Gamebook ‘Trial of the Clone’ Now Available, Features Narration by Wil Wheaton

App Spy – Trial of the Clone hits the App Store

VG24/7 – Trial of the Clone out now from Tin Man, SMBC creator, Wil Wheaton

Portable Gaming Region – “Listen to Wil Wheaton whisper things” in Trial of the Clone

Starburst Magazine – Gaming News: TRIAL OF THE CLONE Released on iOS & Android

Mighty Mega – Wil Wheaton narrates mobile game, Trial of the Clone

Padvance – Trial of the Clone brings you a traditional gamebook adventure, narrated by Wil Wheaton

Pocket Gamer – Don’t get too distracted by Wil Wheaton’s dulcet tones in new interactive iOS and Android novel Trial of the Clone

App Addict – ‘Trial of The Clone’ Gamebook From Tin Man Games and Zach Weinersmith Now Available w/ Narration By Wil Wheaton

MCV Pacific – Trial of the Clone released today

100% Indie – Cult Interactive Ebook Trial of the Clone on Samsung Apps

AppMyWorld – Top 5 iPhone and iPad Apps of the Week (5/9/13)

** DOWNLOAD HERE FOR iOS & ANDROID **

We’ll update this blog post with any new reviews and features as they appear!

You are a clone raised by the mysterious Silene Monks. Once the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, they have long since been superseded by modern technology. Now they spend most of their time hanging out and playing video games. But you are not like the rest of your clone brothers. You have been chosen for a special destiny. Make the right decisions and you’ll complete your training, explore a universe full of adventure, and prove yourself a hero. Make the wrong decisions and you’ll be dead. Really dead. It’s hard to emphasise just how dead you will be. So here’s a pro tip for you: try to make the right decisions.

Using their critically acclaimed gamebook engine, Tin Man Games has taken Zach’s hilarious interactive science-fiction adventure story, which was part-funded through Kickstarter, and transformed it into a digital experience on smartphones and tablets. Zach Weinersmith said, “Having written the greatest science fiction comedy adventure gamebook this year, I am excited to now have written the greatest science fiction comedy adventure gamebook application this year.”

Not being in paper and now being on your shiny digital computing device of choice, there are dynamic choice links, an automated character sheet that updates your skills, and also a very lovely hypnotic spinny thing that helps randomise numbers to help you win battles of fighting, wits and charisma. There is also the special guest appearance of Wil Wheaton, or Lord Wheaton, the omniscient “God of all Geeks”, as he is better known. Wil narrates the entire book as an option in the app to bring an all new audiogamebook experience to Tin Man Games’ digital gamebook library. Listen to Wil Wheaton whisper things like “love”, “plasmaster”, “moral ambiguity”, and “not in the face” into your ears! The app also contains brand new death endings written by Zach, exclusive to the digital version, as well as bookmarks that can be placed to remember your path, so you don’t get too annoyed when you read Zach’s new death endings.

With a specially composed soundtrack, new colour artwork by Chris Jones and lots of achievements and missions to complete, including finding an array of terrible jokes, puns and pointless quips said by your character, this is a fantastic science-fiction adventure story to be read by the whole family! Well actually not the whole family, as there’s some dirty jokes and mature content, so it’s intended for 17 years plus. Perhaps it’s not a great idea to let the kids read it.

Trial of the Clone is available to download from the iOS App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore and Nook Apps. It costs $3.99(US)/$4.49(Aus)/£2.49/ 3,59 €.

Tin Man Games maintain a site dedicated to their Gamebook Adventures apps at www.GamebookAdventures.com.

Zach Weinersmith’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal can be found at www.smbc-comics.com.

While we’re on the subject of Strange Loves, we can now announce that we’re into the final editing stage of Hex Boyfriends by Lacy Wilson, our bewitching follow-up to those sexy vampires. All illustrations have been complete and we hope to release this across our array of platforms sometime during May. Hot on the heels of that title will be Two-Faced Boyfriends that will complete the current trilogy – expect to see that around August!

If this is the first time you’ve come across Strange Loves before and want to get in the minds of the creators, then both Miellyn and Lacy were involved with a fantastic panel recently at PAX East called Foreplay: Romance in Games, which can be accessed as either video or audio right here.

First up…

Sneaky Google Play Android gamebookers will have already had a taste of this as we released it just over a week ago! We’re currently finalising our iOS submission and all being well should hit the App Store later this month. The iOS version will contain the Wil Wheaton voiceover as part of the download, unlike with the Android version where we have been hampered by filesize limits. We’ve had a few complaints from Droiders in that they need to be near wifi to stream the voiceover and would rather download it in one hit – well you can blame Android pirates for that sadly . As we have to host the sound files, it would cost us a lot of money for all those sneaky eye-patched, hook-handed, thieving morons to download the complete audio each time, especially if many are unlikely to play the gamebook through to completion. A big “Grrrrr”, but nothing we can do about it unfortunately.

Apart from that small matter we’ve had an incredible response from our Android Trial of the Clone fans and if you’ve bought it – THANK YOU! We’re currently holding a 4.7/5 star rating on Google Play and have had some awesome reviews. People are loving Zach’s book! If you haven’t read it and like a dose of intensely fun geekery mixed into a crazy sci-fi universe, with a hint of irony and introspective sardonic wit, then you’ll love it. It’s 17+, so not one for the kiddies!

Google Play download here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.tinmangames.trialoftheclone

And….next!

We’ve been getting a lot of enquiries as to when Ian Livingstone’s Forest of Doom (or The Forest of Doom as it may be known – we’re not sure yet) is being released. It’s around 75% complete with achievements, testing and some user-interface artwork still to be completed. We’re hoping to get our third Fighting Fantasy gamebook released by the end of April!

FOD also marks the debut of our new colourist, John-Paul Bove, best know for his wonderful colour work on IDW’s Transformers comics. As a sneaky treat here is the Wyvern from FOD that well and truly shows off John-Paul’s awesome abilities! He’ll also be colouring the upcoming Deathtrap Dungeon and Appointment with FEAR too.

J-P Bove’s deviantART page:

http://wordmongerer.deviantart.com/

Thirdly…

Speaking of Fighting Fantasy, we’re about to do a deal with Gallimard that will bring the option to read the gamebooks, known as Défis Fantastiques in France, to French readers! This is great news as it widens our market for the series in France, Canada and Belgium. It’s going to take a while, but we hope to offer the French versions pretty soon after the English release and this will be accessed in the options in the much the same way we do with our Gamebook Adventures French versions at the moment. Longer term we are also looking at Spanish, Portuguese, German and more.

The first French release will be House of Hell, better known as Le Manoir de l’Enfer!

Finally…

Seeing as we’re on French gamebooks, later this month we’ll also be looking to release our French only gamebook (English to come) and first Gamebook Adventures Choices release, Les Fils d’Uruzimé. This is a lovingly crafted Lovecraftian tale with some gorgeous artwork as you can see here. We’re just sorting the achievements and organising some testing, after which we’ll get the submission process rolling…

So potentially four new releases across iOS and Android and we haven’t even mentioned GA7: Temple of the Spider God coming to desktop as well as Judge Dredd: Countdown Sector 106 and Infinite Universe hitting Android too! Best get cracking.

First up, we hit Kotaku in an article called This Is Why Australian Developers Head To PAX East! Neil is interviewed about just why we make the bi-annual PAX migrations.

Secondly is an interview with GAME.minder’s Jeremy Handel:

One of Neil’s highlights of the con was getting to spend an hour attending the Foreplay: Romance in Games panel hosted by Fire Hose Games’ Sean Baptiste and including our very own Miellyn Barrows and Lacy Wilson! The great thing is that it was filmed and recorded so choose your posion and check out a highly amusing 60 mins.

Audio on  the Nerd Appropriate podcast…

Video from Press2Reset:

Gamebook Adventures also gets featured in Exiled in Geeksville’s Indie Games and Music take over PAX.

Neil gives a  great audio interview with Just Press Start!

A very tired looking Neil gets interviewed by a toy superhero figurine in The Inanimate Players Return To PAX East.

We also get a mention on Lifehacker in an article titled Why Promoting Your Software Can Work Better In Person.

Another video interview on Casual Gameplay – also lot of other links to the other indies in the Megabooth!

Yest another video interview has surfaced (showing a less tired looking Neil) on BoardGameGeek.

Full article link with other PAX interviews.

(Watch out for the Special Guest Appearance of Spiderman!)

We’ll be adding more stuff as it appears!

All of the indies I’ve met over the weekend are super-talented people with some amazing games (seriously, there are some that are gonna rock the gaming world this year) and were willing to talk and share their experiences of what they do and how they do it. It’s amazing just how many similarities there are in regards to certain issues that we face, even in different countries, and these events are great to give and receive advice, swap dev-notes and basically just help each other out. The star of the Megabooth has to be Kelly Wallick, a tireless indie crusader, who organised the whole thing and her crew of volunteers (massive high-fives to head volunteer wrangler, Eric Chon and PAX enforcer, Kim Garnett) that made sure we were well looked after throughout the show. I even attended Kelly’s talk on Saturday evening about running the Megabooth and it was a great insight to the 2-3 year history and amazing to see how far it had come. Thank Kelly if you are reading this – you are awesome!

So what did we do this year? Well we had a bunch of banners covering the booth and a couple of iPad stands for people to play on as well as a huge TV and speaker system showing off our recent trailers. Blood of the Zombies and Temple of the Spider God had a lot of play-time, but Dredd, Vampire Boyfriends and House of Hell also got some action. I had Trial of the Clone demo-ing on the Kindle Fire and we had some massive Zach Weinersmith fans come and take a look (attracted by our cool new banner), many of them involved with his original Kickstarter. On the stand this year was regular PAXer and super-talented Strange Loves writer/producer, Miellyn Barrows, and joining us for the first time was our good Aussie friend, Kamina Vincent (pictured above) who danced her way into the hearts of many of the passers-by! A huge thanks to them both as I really don’t know what I would have done without them, especially when I was dead on my feet. Also a quick thanks to Megabooth volunteer, Eric Chi who helped me out on Sunday morning!

One of the highlights of the show for me was the Foreplay: Romance in Games panel that Miellyn had organised on Sunday morning. It was hosted by the long-time friend of TMG, the amazing Sean Baptiste from Fire Hose Games and they were joined by Lacy Wilson (writer for our upcoming Hex Boyfriends), our favourite Tin Man Games groupies from Press2Reset, Melissa Kay and Aenne Schumann as well as Hilary Shapiro from BioWare and one of the voice actors from Mass Effect. There was a number of subjects that were covered and they each discussed how romance was used in both modern and retro games. They told highly amusing personal stories of their romantic gaming encounters – both successful and complete disasters. The audience loved it and it was a real success! Miellyn also plugged us a fair bit too, which was great!

Happy to say that PAX East was a great year for us this year. As we now have iOS, Android and desktop versions as well as covering multiple genres in fantasy, sci-fi, horror, comics and supernatural romance I felt that we had something to offer every visitor to the booth. Most went away, either promising to buy one of our apps or recommending us to someone they knew. We ended up handing out around 1500 flyers and over 1000 postcards advertising a range of our apps so hopefully they have now made their way to the various corners of the US. I was able to meet with some old fans that I recognised and made a ton of new ones. If you’re reading this and were one of the ones that visited our booth – thank you.

I also want to give a blog shout out to some of the awesome indies that you should check out: Nyamyam (Tengami), Young Horses (Octodad), Popcannibal (Girls Like Robots), Fire Hose Games (Go Home Dinosaurs), Dejobaan (Drunken Robot Pornography), Muteki (Dragon Fantasy 2), Compulsion Games (Contrast), Kumobius (Time Surfer) and Facepalm Games (The Swapper). There are tons more and I seriously recommend you check out indiemegabooth.com. I want to also thank Sean Baptiste for pointing a couple of amazing networking opportunities in my direction and his wife for also making sure we were fed and had enough coffee. Also a big thank you to Miellyn’s husband, Shaun, for all his help with lugging around my stupidly heavy bags and boxes and for helping set up and break down the booth. Finally I want to lastly say an official blog thanks to the awesome Canadian indie devs, Cantankerous Games, who took me out for seafood last night. Ones to watch!

It’s Monday night and the hotel lobby where I am writing this right now was full of boardgamers and RPG gamers over the weekend but sadly is now replaced by suits and business chatter. So PAX East really is over. Time to go back to my lovely little family. I’ve missed them loads!

Neil