Pens down! 

The campaign is done, and the news is sweet! 89 of the world's finest people gave us money to help us make Tasty Tasty Grandpa a reality, and for them we say a massive THANK YOU! We exceeded our $5000 goal, ultimately basking in the warm and mighty generous glow of $6511. Yeeehaaaar!

So what happens now? A few things simultaneously, actually. We start getting all the rewards out to our backers. We start looking for the perfect programmer who we can now pay (YES!) to help us finish our game. And we fire up the great Grandpa production machine to full heat and slam through our tasks to get this game into YOUR EAGER LIL' HANDS! It'll be a few months away yet, but thanks to you all, it won't be infinite months away. YOUZ IS AWESOME!

BEHOLD THE FINE FINE EIGHTY NINE!

TRENT kusters BIG rick MARK serrels DEREK proud TROY mitchell JENN sandercock PAUL callaghan GERRI mills MEREDITH tucker-evans NATHAN thomas SIMON bachelier TYSHAN carey PETER wayne JOYCE hwang JORDI fine DEAN natov BEN britten CLINTON shepherd LAURA van dyk SHU SHU zheng DREW taylor ROB caporetto GISELLE rosman ANDI spark ERIC hemal akmeemana ROBERT gallo DAVID woodman MICHELLE van dyk CHRISTOPHER hawkins ELROY el BEN mckenzie SARAH jansen MICHAEL davies NEIL fillingham ANDREA fillingham DOROTHY duturbure MATT curtis BRENDAN bottomley HELEN stuckey JOSHUA mapleston AARON dunton ALEX hutchinson JAMES filippone STEVE fillingham GERALD poon AMANDA kool JEFF brasket TIM rogers STEVE spangaro BRAD giblin DEREK elliot GOATi outsourcing BROOKE hodgman JEREMY kool STEVE duda FRED milgrom NICK grodzicki RUSSELL dilley CHEN-PO sun ANON ymous DANIELA palstra GREG palstra ENTER audio ANTHONY hayes DANNY mcgillick CRISPY brown NATALYA pemberton DENNIS mills ALSO anonymous BLAKE mizzi STU campbell BARKUS francis JOANNE haddon BEN pfarrer RUSSELL ashdown PETER madden RAHNI tucker ADAM rippon MARK morrison MELINDA chapman BEN crossman BRODIE court CLAUDIO gallo DAVID macminn ANTHONY o'dempsey PAUL green CRAIG peebles PASCAL stang HILARY armstrong LEENA van deventer JASON bakker KATE millett

And special thanks to Pozible for their support and their magical portal and to Freeplay Independent Games Festival for helping promote us. And to EVERYONE who retweeted, reFacebooked, re-emailed, and spread the word far and wide!

Target hit! Target hit!

Yesterday, 7 days remaining on the campaign clock, the magic happened. BOOM -- we hit the crucial target for our project's funding! Which means... we get the funding! WE GET THE FUNDING! You people are awesome! Thanks so much for supporting our project! We're holding off full celebrations until the campaign has come to a full stop, but for now, know that we're crazy happy with this and with you!

There are now 6 days left on the clock, and it turns out that we're already 1/4 of the way towards achieving the $2500 we need to hit our NEXT goal! THIS PROJECT IS STILL SEARING HOT! So yes, all lines are still open to help fund the project and help us hit our stretch goals. If you've been thinking about throwing in some lovin', we will be happy and also covered in lovin'. The more funds we get, the more content and polish the game will have, and the better THE WHOLE WORLD will be all round. You can pledge here!

So that's where we're at. If this were Toy Story, we'd be Buzz and Woody, clinging to the little car, after having lit our rocket. We're soaring, we're happy, we're a bit terrified... and we're overshooting the removal truck where we were originally headed... "We missed the truck!" screams Woody. "We're not aiming for the truck," replies Buzz, eyes on the sweet sweet sunroof ahead. 

AN UPDATED LIST OF AWESOME PEOPLE (NOW WITH MORE AWESOME):

(these folks are helping make our game a reality!)

TRENT kusters BIG rick MARK serrels DEREK proud TROY mitchell JENN sandercock PAUL callaghan GERRI mills MEREDITH tucker-evans NATHAN thomas SIMON bachelier TYSHAN carey PETER wayne JOYCE hwang JORDI fine DEAN natov BEN britten CLINTON shepherd LAURA van dyk SHU SHU zheng DREW taylor ROB caporetto GISELLE rosman ANDI spark ERIC hemal akmeemana ROBERT gallo DAVID woodman MICHELLE van dyk CHRISTOPHER hawkins ELROY el BEN mckenzie SARAH jansen MICHAEL davies NEIL fillingham ANDREA fillingham DOROTHY duturbure MATT curtis BRENDAN bottomley HELEN stuckey JOSHUA mapleston AARON dunton ALEX hutchinson JAMES filippone STEVE fillingham GERALD poon AMANDA kool JEFF brasket TIM rogers STEVE spangaro BRAD giblin DEREK elliot GOATi outsourcing BROOKE hodgman JEREMY kool STEVE duda FRED milgrom NICK grodzicki RUSSELL dilley CHEN-PO sun ANON ymous DANIELA palstra GREG palstra ENTER audio ANTHONY hayes DANNY mcgillick CRISPY brown NATALYA pemberton DENNIS mills ALSO anonymous BLAKE mizzi STU campbell BARKUS francis

To hang with the cool kids, you can pledge here!: Pozible Tasty Tasty Grandpa!

Funding enters the nail-biting final lap!

DING DING, friends! The bell's a-ringin', and that can mean only one thing -- there is one lap to go in the all-important, Olympic-style fundraising race we've set for ourselves to fund and finish Tasty Tasty Grandpa. 

WE'VE GOT JUST OVER 1 WEEK TO RAISE AS MUCH AS WE CAN! (Deadline: August 23!)

First up, we really want to say a massive THANKS to everyone who has pledged money to the project so far. We're stunned at the generosity of you fine, fine people. At the time of writing, we are at $4500 -- almost at our core goal of $5000! 

We now announce... THE STRETCH GOALS (and a project update)!

Stretch goals are what we promise to add to the value of the project and to your contribution if we can hit higher targets than the core $5000 goal. This is not about greed (since the core team members aren't getting any of the funding money -- it's all going towards hiring an extra programmer!). Rather, it's a way to hit higher targets of quality and features in the game. If we can reach the $5000, we'll be stoked. But if we can make more, then all that extra money above and beyond the $5000 will make the game EVEN BETTER and will be mighty, mighty appreciated. You can see the new stretch goals in a Pozible campaign update here. And if you're a first timer to the project, we welcome you! You can read the full description on the Pozible campaign main page here!

So, as we hit this final week of our funding campaign, we ask you (we down-on-knees beg you!) to please think about contributing if you can, and to share the links across the world with people who might be interested in the project. A lovely bunch of independent game developers trying to catch a break will be so grateful, and imagine the warm feelings of human kindness you'll experience, just like all the backers listed below!

THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE ARE AWESOME:

(thanks so much for already pledging to help our game live!)

TRENT kusters BIG rick MARK serrels DEREK proud TROY mitchell JENN sandercock PAUL callaghan GERRI mills MEREDITH tucker-evans NATHAN thomas SIMON bachelier TYSHAN carey PETER wayne JOYCE hwang JORDI fine DEAN natov BEN britten CLINTON shepherd LAURA van dyk SHU SHU zheng DREW taylor ROB caporetto GISELLE rosman ANDI spark ERIC hemal akmeemana ROBERT gallo DAVID woodman MICHELLE van dyk CHRISTOPHER hawkins ELROY el BEN mckenzie SARAH jansen MICHAEL davies NEIL fillingham ANDREA fillingham DOROTHY duturbure MATT curtis BRENDAN bottomley HELEN stuckey JOSHUA mapleston AARON dunton ALEX hutchinson JAMES filippone STEVE fillingham GERALD poon AMANDA kool JEFF brasket TIM rogers STEVE spangaro BRAD giblin DEREK elliot GOATi outsourcing BROOKE hodgman JEREMY kool JEREMY geddes STEVE duda FRED milgrom NICK grodzicki RUSSELL dilley CHEN-PO sun

To join the awesome, you can pledge here: Pozible Tasty Tasty Grandpa!

Putting the 'fun' in 'funding'

There was a total dev diary meltdown. A single keystroke wiped everything, autosaved a cold void over it all, salted the HTML earth, and it was gone. For months. But, like a bionic dude in a velour ‘70s tracksuit, it was rebuilt! Let that digital dog keep eating my digitial homework, the Tasty Tasty Grandpa Dev Diary is back, now on its own domain page! 

First, some facts. Fact #1: We need an additional programmer to sit down for a bunch of dedicated hours to help us finish our game. Fact #2: The only way to reasonably ask someone for these dedicated hours is to pay them for their time and expertise. Fact #3: Like, WHO HAS THE MONEY to pay such good people? The solution: crowdfunding!

We made a video that includes both ukuleles and tantrums, and we used it to set up a Pozible crowdfunding campaign to raise funds, so we can pay a programmer to finish our game. And it goes well! Thanks to some amazingly generous people, we are already around 80% pledged in our first week, and if we clear 100%, it all becomes real!

YOU PEOPLE ARE AWESOME AND WE ALL THANK YOU! 

If you would like to pledge, we would love you for it. LOVE! Anything that gets us to 100% of the target makes the game happen, anything above 100% we raise makes the game more polished, more awesome, and adds more love! LOVE! You can pledge at the Pozible Tasty Tasty Grandpa page, and there are REWARDS for doing so! REWARDS! LOVE! HUZZAH!

Until next week, thank you! Here are some handy links, for ease of everything.

Some handy links:

Pozible campaign: www.pozible.com/tastytastygrandpa

YouTube video: http://bit.ly/MS3oaL

Reddit thread: http://bit.ly/P8LRri (please upvote!)

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/grapplegungames (Like, if you like!)

Strange Dreams and Cold Beer

The last thing you guys want to hear is how there’s nothing concrete to show this week, and how our tasks are moving along, but are moving along a bit slowly. So let’s talk about something else! Dreams! 

When I’m not laying awake and worrying about this game and turning into a full-time insomniac (not the wonderful games company), I’m dreaming that we're stuck in a blizzard (not the wonderful games company), with snow whipping through cold air, lashing our faces, trying to get through to safety, but not knowing where it is. Or I dream of the team being in a house, and we’re not getting a lot of work done, as there are bugs all over the walls and we have to deal with those. As you can tell, my subconscious mind is not hard to work out. Developing this game is often great, but sometimes does not make me feel fine, let alone double fine productions incorporated south of market district san francisco (no relation).

I did get together with Stu this week, which was GREAT, and we worked over some of the issues I was having with my prototype tweaks. This is us, in a pub, working (not pictured: 500 nearby bulldog-type people wearing rugby shirts, who had flown to Melbourne for a rugby game between Brisbane and Sydney and were desperately trying to get hammered before heading off to the game. Why come here? We’ve got nothing to do with it!) 

Stu solves problems with a pint of 'problem-solving juice'

One thing DID happen this week, and that’s us deciding that there is too much coding to be done in too limited a time for Stu to handle on his own. So we’re going to call in another programmer to help out, oh yes! We need someone with time in their schedule, Unity in their head, and hope in their heart. We’ve sent our four fastest ships, one in each direction, to deliver our message. It’s a big ask, but we hope it’s all worth the asking. When the ships return, we’ll let you know what they bring. Until next week, maintain your noticeably high levels of tastiness! 

Of love and paying the rent

You often hear, “If you love your project, it will happen. Love will find a way.” This is great, positive thinking, but you can’t pay your landlord with ‘love’ (or can you? … no… no, no, no, we’re not stooping to that yet…) So the realities of a self-funded project mean having to spend sweet, sweet game-making time doing stuff that’s more to do with rent and bills and food rather than making the game.

Stu’s other programming job (until we start rolling in PILES AND PILES OF MONEY (and other various fantasies)) is taking a chunk of time, so Grandpa progress is moving at the pace of a grandpa, but a spritely grandpa. My own progress has slowed to the crawl of a baby this week as I look into ways to get money that don’t involve creepy people asking me to ‘just take this suitcase across the border, quick, QUICK!’ 

The task board grows, even as time shrinks

Matt has finished up his saxophonist season for the stage production of Annie (even SAYING the word ‘tomorrow’ to him makes his eye twitch) and can now focus more time on adding audio to each of Damian’s animations. Damian himself is doing well, but he’s definitely in that stage where the fun ‘drawing cool art’ gives way to ‘wrestling with tech to make it function in the game’. And Tracey? Well… having finished the background paintings and handballed the dev diary over to me, Tracey is now full time with her writing job at Polygon, until she’s reactivated like a Terminator when it comes time to spread the word to the far reaches of media.

So the lesson to be learned here, I guess, is that making games is as much about work as it is about fun, and as much about the realities of day-to-day living as it is about the dream. Stephen King started out doing laundry for a seafood restaurant for an income, while he lived in a caravan with his family, typing up his stories each night. Sometimes, you gotta gather warm, day-old prawn heads if you want your dream. We want the dream. 

Saucepans and mathematical shortcomings

When I was 16, I was pretty good at maths. When I was 17, I became obsessed with a girl in maths class and my grades dropped. These days I fail at maths (and as an aside, those days I also failed at ‘girl’). So anyway, I mention this only to explain why a simple maths equation could have solved my question of how big the Tasty Tasty Grandpa circular world needs to be to house all of Tracey’s canvas backgrounds. Instead, I had to go low tech with scissors and paper and saucepan lids WHICH IS MORE FUN THAN MATHS SO SUCK IT MATHEMATICIANS.

Level design equipment or 5 year old's art and craft?

What are those rectangles in that photo? They’re representations of Tracey Lien’s background canvases, which she finished painting in a mad rush to coincide with her trip to Melbourne. Hoorah! Then we went to Blue Print Photography and photo maestro Chris Bekos photographed them all to bring out the lush canvas and paint textures. What a sweet morning! Here’s Tracey at the studio: 

"Photograph my paintings like you photograph the paintings of your French girls," said Tracey.

What else has happened this week? PROTOTYPES, my friends! Stu McVicar came through with the goods and has provided the most wonderful playground where we can rustle up a ruckus. I can now play with scales of things, speeds of things, rates of things… in fact, all the things which will hopefully add up to FUN. When it’s all fun, Damian can tweak animation frames to fit the ideal speeds, and Matt can come out of his mattress-stapled soundproof booth and start hooking up sound effects to individual animation frames. THIS IS TOTALLY EXCITING!

So yes, progress is progressing. Things are falling into place. The game, by increments, is starting to feel REAL. Huzzah!

The Joy of Sax

Change can be unnerving. But also delightfully nerving! Is that a word? Let’s ignore it. The change I’m talking about here is the change from having made games for publishers and licence-holders over the years, and now just making a game for ourselves. The unnerving part is having all the responsibility on the team and not having someone else bankrolling us and occasionally giving us SpongeBob toys. But the joys are awesome -- we can do whatever we like! We can release art ahead of time, so you fine people can checkit (such as Tracey’s background experiments over at her tumblr) without going through a crazy chain of approvals and time zones. Our project will live or die on our own decisions. We’re yet to see if this is a good thing, but we’re really hopeful. :)

This week, stuff happened. The most exciting stuff was that Matt Christensen finished recording the 4-part saxophone soundtrack that he composed. It’s awesome! We’ll surprise you with this one on release, but just know that Matt somehow managed to record himself playing 4 different saxophones in a tiny room in his house. He may or may not have stapled a hundred mattresses to the wall. Audio people do strange things.

On the art front, Tracey finished painting the backgrounds! With PAINT! We’re going over to Blue Print Photography on Monday to photograph them nicely to bring out the sweet textures of canvas and chunky paint. And Damian is almost finished tweaking all the character animation, ready for Stu to work his code magic and get them in the game.

Phew!

And there were FLOWCHARTS!!! Okay, they’re not exciting, I tried to sneak that in there to make my design role seem as glamorous as the others. But hey, if you’re a programmer, you’ll know that a flowchart is as tasty as a chocolate covered bar of pure chocolate. This flowchart explained all the logic behind the non-player character behaviour. What do they do when they bump into other characters? Ignore them? Get annoyed by them? Or maybe just go ahead and completely eat them in a disgusting but adorable way? The flowchart tells all.

And that’s it for this week! I shall spend the upcoming week trying to find some more blog-worthy tasks for myself to do that sound better than flowcharting. Until then, thanks for reading, YES!

Welcome to 'The Grandpa Diaries'

Well, we've been busy. Our team, spread generously up and down Australia's east coast, has been hammering out wonderful content for our upcoming iOS game, Tasty Tasty Grandpa, and we're so keen to show you nice folks stuff. STUFF! Checkit, here's a hungry toddler:

For those who have just arrived, welcome! Tasty Tasty Grandpa is our game about growing up and also eating people. The wonderful award-winning Tracey Lien (artist and action journalist) has been writing a developer diary series over at Kotaku, so if you like, you can catch up with the project's beginnings over there: 

Tasty Tasty Grandpa developer diary (Kotaku series)

I'll keep this entry brief, so you can adjust to the idea of cannibalism as a recreational and fun activity you can do on a bus or waiting for a meeting to start. Tune in next week for more details on how the project is shaping up and for sneak peek content as soon before the paint's even dry.  

Thanks for dropping by! See you again soon!

Craig

(Lead Designer, Creative Director, Recreational Coffee Maker)