We’re very proud to announce that Tiny Invaders recently won an award for ‘Best Use of Gaming at the Big Chip Awards in the UK.

If you follow the link at the bottom of the article it has a photo of me grinning like a maniac collecting the award on the night and what the judges said about the game!

It also some how seems fitting then that Tiny Invaders is currently FREE! This is as part of the Edge Magazine iPad promotion (http://www.edge-online.com/news/edge-ipad-edition-now-available)

Special thanks from all of us at hogrocket to: Neil Johnston, Ben Wright, Will Milton, Mathias Grunwaldt, Eamon Urtone, Chay Hawes and everyone else that helped us create and test Tiny Invaders, we couldn’t have done it without you:

http://www.bigchipawards.com/page.asp?id=3641

We received the great news today that we’ve been shortlisted for a Big Chip award for ‘Best Use of Gaming’ with Tiny Invaders! We’re absolutely honoured to have been nominated and wish the other nominees the best of luck.

Happy Hogrocketeers today!

This is the fantastic 2012 showreel for Ben&Will Animation. These chaps are the fantastic artistic duo that worked with us on Tiny Invaders. They were an absolute pleasure to work with and brought so much character and identity to the game. Please head on over to their new website to see more from them:

http://benandwillanimation.co.uk

benjamesward:

Thanks again for joining me for part four of this exploration into the life of Hogrocket; from inception of the company right through to the release of our first game: Tiny Invaders. If you haven’t read the first three parts of this series you can do so… Read More »

benjamesward:

Word to your mother. This post is part 3 of my write-up of a presentation I gave at the Develop conference in November. The presentation gives some of the background to our indie games company, Hogrocket, and also provides some advice to developers who might be thinking of doing the same… Read more »

Hey all,

We have two big announcements to make today regarding Tiny Invaders, so I’ll get straight to telling you exactly what they are!

1. New Level-pack Update

This new level-pack features a brand new character to infect! We last left the Tiny Invaders having finally infected the President. A momentous achievement you may say, but there remained a survivor, a legend no less. A person more powerful even than the President himself, someone that any self-respecting alien invasion force would have to overcome to truly claim overlord status. But, I won’t be giving away any further details here, you’ll have to get the update and see for yourself! http://itunes.com/apps/tinyinvaders

In addition, the final level in this pack is very special because it is the winning entry from our Level Design competition that we ran at the Gamecity Festival back in October. You can read my feature article on the event here. The winners were Kat Wojna and Adam Butler, they named the level ‘Tiny Teleportz’ and had this to say about winning the competition:

“As aspiring game developers we are extremely happy that our efforts have been implemented into a game, it almost feels like our first step into the games industry. We are looking forward to people being able to play and enjoy the game level we made :)”

2. Tiny Invaders Free/Lite

We’re also incredibly proud to announce a brand new version of Tiny Invaders, available for free! We hope this additional version of the game will attract even more fans. It comes with 15 free-to-play levels and more available as an upgrade. http://itunes.apple.com/app/tiny-invaders-free/id482612095?mt=8

As you might expect we’re very excited about these announcements. They come on the back of a very strong Christmas period for Tiny Invaders where it was featured in the Benchmark Games/Intuitive Controls and Game Starter Kit features in App Stores worldwide. We were extremely proud to see Tiny Invaders given these accolades and hope that the new content we’ve announced today demonstrates our thanks to fans for their support.

We welcome any feedback as always and we wish you all a happy and productive 2012.

benjamesward:

Good day to you! This is part 2 of my write-up of a presentation I gave at the Develop conference in November. The idea is to share some of the experiences we’ve had in creating Hogrocket, and (hopefully) give you some pointers if you’re thinking about doing the same thing. If you haven’t read… Read More »

In the latest in our series of articles for Edge Online, we talk about the activities and approaches we took leading up to the launch and eventual release of Tiny Invaders. If you’d like to read more head on over to Edge-Online »

Introduction:

Compulsion loop is a very fancy term isn’t it? It’s a recently coined term, perhaps a couple of years old, I’m unsure of its exact origin. However, there is no official definition of it, so as a result it’s often bandied around with slight nervousness lest someone asks you what it actually is. This of course is the point at which you run away screaming, mumbling crazily something about Zynga and the horrors of manipulation, death and pestilence or whatever.

My definition of a compulsion loop is that it is a construct designed to keep someone engaged by marrying their action/s with an appropriate level of reward. But in essence it has been around forever, we just didn’t have a name for it. The greatest creators of entertainment have had an innate understanding of it since we all sat around the fire scratching our heads as Neanderthals. It’s nothing new. Different mediums achieve it in their own way, but all essentially reward for attention and effort and when this equilibrium falters the loop dissipates.

Read more »>

Happy Christmas folks, here is to an awesome 2012!