Spicy Horse Art Store Launched

Mistaken Identity

Mistaken Identity by Ken Wong

Spicy Horse is proud to announce the launch of its online art store. Now you can purchase original illustrations by the talented artists who power the studio – the same people driving the imagery for projects like “Alice 2”. The store currently features artwork by Ken Wong and Luis Melo. In the future we’ll include artwork from “Alice 2” and other studio projects.

Details from the store:

From the trusty band of artists at Spicy Horse comes the chance to own authentic pieces of art produced by our video game artists. Each image is specially licensed and produced on canvas for a lifetime of viewing pleasure, and each piece is licensed, numbered and signed.

Head over to the store and grab your own signed print today!

Spicy Horse Online Art Store

An Argument for Ugly Characters

Ugly NPCs

Ugly NPCs

Here’s something I wrote a while back when trying to convince the team that our online racing game should allow for ugly characters. Does it convince you?

Online games dependent on micro-transactions and purchase of items must create and maintain a compelling library of buyable content. Generally this content is geared towards improving player’s abilities in-game, either upgrading performance of a vehicle, allowing access to a bigger weapon, or resupplying ammo/fuel for those weapons and vehicles. Purchases can also be purely cosmetic – improving Player’s outfit, hair style, or physique.

Play imbalance is created when Players with money are able to purchase upgrades that improve their in-game ability. This influences their win/lose ratio, making it possible for inferior Player to defeat superior Players, simply because they spent money. In a system like this it is impossible to maintain a culture of fairness. Every defeat is “unfair” because the opponent likely used a purchased upgrade to attain it. Every win is “hollow” because no real skill was used in attaining it.

It is agreed that in a fair and balanced PvP environment purchased items should not upgrade or influence a Player’s ability to win. This means purchased items are purely cosmetic.

Purely cosmetic upgrades create a problem, specifically “Why would anyone purchase them?”

This question goes to the root of all purchases, virtual or real.
Purchased items fall into two categories: “Necessities for Survival” (needs) or “Items of Desire” (wants).
Necessities for Survival include food, clothing, shelter, medicine.
Items of desire include jewelry, designer clothes, and general “luxury” objects.
Necessities are things every person needs to survive. Items of desire only matter in context of a social group.

Marketing tells us we need objects in order to be better people, feel better about ourselves, and impress our peers. If not for marketing, every person in the world might exist on the same basic set of durable goods. Marketing tells us we aren’t enough, that more is needed to be “complete”. As such, purchasing is ultimately driven by fear.

In-game the ability to visually register the material worth of a character is limited. How can I know the worth of your shoes upon immediate inspection?

Solution: Our brains have evolved to be powerful facial characteristic readers. We are walking face “value scanners”. A game geared towards the creation and maintenance of facial “value” taps into this most basic skill of the human brain.
Facial beauty is a function of ratios and relational harmonies. A character creation system with built-in flaws limits Player to creating only ugly faces.
Real-world marketing tells us their products will make us more beautiful, more handsome – but without radical and expensive surgery these promises are unattainable. In a virtual environment, the promise can be a reality.

Typical facial creation systems assume Player will build a face at the start of the game and then leave it until the end. By linking the facial manipulation mechanic into the store we create a constant driver to spend time/money on making a player character more and more attractive. The promise of all those marketing campaigns becomes a reality.

Races (crashes specifically) will deliver damage to Player Character’s face, clothing and body.

This way we create an instantly recognizable value system within the game which can be monetized through make-up, insurance, surgery and more.

Image reference for ugly characters taken from this Game Informer article.

“Crooked House” Review @ iPhone Life

American McGee's Crooked App

Crooked House Screen

Nate Adcock over at iPhone Life Magazine was kind enough to post a review of “American McGee’s Crooked House“. Though admittedly not a typical fan of puzzle game apps, Nate still manages to find some compelling elements inside our wicked little house. From the review:

“Bottom line, the crooked little mouse is caught in the weird crooked house, and your job is to help it escape the various crooked rooms without dying. The death is typically a shredding by cat claws, smashed into pulp, or similar gory ending. The puzzles amount to sliding objects around until your mouse can run unmolested through to the goal.”

Read the full review here.

Nate makes a few suggestions for improvements, like more randomized death events (cool!) and a visible cat paw when the mouse is killed after running out of time (yay!) – both of these I think are great, so we’ll add them into the next release, which will hit the streets alongside the iPad version. Keep your eyes open for that – I’ll alert you here.

Driven by recent reviews and customer word-of-mouth both “Crooked House” and our previously released IQ challenger “DexIQ” have both been selling like hotcakes. If this keeps up we might just have to release another game app – question is… what should it be? Another fairytale-inspired title, IQ challenge, or ??? Leave your suggestions in the comments!

Crooked House on the App Store
DexIQ on the App Store
Spicy Pony Home

148apps Reviews Crooked House

Spicy Pony Poster

Spicy Pony Poster

Spicy Pony‘s latest iPhone game “Crooked House” has, since launch, received praise and attention beyond expectation – but the just-posted review over at 148apps.com cements for me the success of the concept with gamers and critics alike. From the review:

I’m always impressed when a game can really make good use of the unique functionality available to the iDevice lineup. American McGee’s Crooked House does just that. This puzzle based game uses an Aurora Feint approach to moving items around by shifting the orientation of the iDevice.

Read the entire review: www.148apps.com

I’m really happy to read that Spicy Pony has impressed with their latest game. The team put a lot of creativity and love into “Crooked” and their previous title “DexIQ“. Both apps are now selling at a volume that convinces us of the validity of the iPhone development and distribution model. Rapid development, small teams, digital distribution and a closeness with critics and audiences all feel *right* – and capture so much of what’s been lost with “big” game development, titanic publishers and overblown marketing campaigns.

If you’ve not done so already, maybe now’s the time to join the fun?

Spicy Pony Home
Crooked House on App Store
DexIQ on App Store

“Crooked House” Review @ Techland

Crooked Screen 2

The Crooked House

Peter Ha over at Techland has posted a mini-review of “American McGee’s Crooked House” inside a feature on “Top 10 Hottest iPhone Games Right Meow“.

The latest from American McGee’s Spicy Pony is dark, vile and wicked fun for a puzzle game. It’s simple, really. Help your little mouse friend escape the Crooked House. A handful of the puzzles (there are 72) are difficult to solve but I’d rather be challenged then waste $2 on a mindless game.

Speaking of Crooked House, our iPhone dev team Spicy Pony is putting the finishing touches on an iPad version of the game. It’ll feature higher-res graphics and a number of improvements suggested by users like yourself. The iPhone version will receive an update at release of the iPad version. More reasons to get crooked now!

Crooked House on the App Store [iTunes]

Sleep is Death

Sleep is Death (screenshot)

Sleep is Death

The first time I heard of “Sleep is Death” was :30 minutes before the pre-order window for it closed. If you’ve played Jason Rohrer‘s other games you might understand why I wondered if this was perhaps a psychological trick played on everyone who visited the site – to entice them into ordering before the window closed… Turns out the countdown was real – and the game was in fact just released shortly after my order.

Though it was difficult to tell from the description and screenshots what exactly “Sleep is Death” would be like – it was based on my experience with Jason’s previous games that I was willing to risk a “blind” purchase to find out. “Passage“, one of his previous titles, brought tears to my eyes – a rare experience that left me wondering what was next.

Now having spent some time (with my girlfriend – you need 2 to play) with “Sleep” – all I can say is how impressed I am. The concept, execution and play experience are all exceptional and unique. As a computer game it has managed to capture so many elements of what make “play” in real life (between real people) fun. Like “The Sims” when it was first released, “Sleep” taps into deceptively simple, yet thoroughly engaging instinctual interaction concepts – taking the “doll house” concept forward another step.

I’d like to describe the “what” of the game – but am afraid that’d be giving away something important. Something you should discover on your own. Suffice to say it is quite literally a toy box – made for two people to enjoy together. In my play testing (again, with my girlfriend) the toy box transformed into a dizzying array of scenarios, interactions and fun. Hours can be spent with this toy – unfolding the possibilities.

Outside the box… another thing I really like about “Sleep” is the publishing model behind it. Jason’s a one-man developer and self-publisher. It’s a pure and simple model which works as a function of the quality of his products and the positive reactions they create in the people that play them. No fancy marketing, no retail supply chain, and no gimmicks – just a one-to-one relationship between you, a game and its developer. So here’s my part in the model – go buy “Sleep is Death”.

“Sleep is Death” Home
Jason’s Rohrer Homepage

Some video tutorials of “Sleep have been posted HERE
Along with a rapidly expanding community collection HERE