Happy Birthday Rolando! (and a new Rolando 2 iPhone Wallpaper)

Our first game, Rolando, launched on the App Store exactly a year ago today. Its been an incredible year for us – the reception to Rolando (and Rolando 2) has been really overwhelming! From being featured in the Apple TV adverts and getting a “9″ in Edge magazine, to the many messages and fun Rolando drawings/ collages/ cakes/ toys that players have sent through – it really has been a dream come true. We’d love to say a huge thankyou to everyone that bought the game and supported us! You guys rock, and we hope that in 2010 we can serve up several helpings of fun with our new game, Okabu, and with new adventures in the Kingdom of Rolando.

As a small token of appreciation, we have a new Rolando 2 iPhone wallpaper for you to download. We hope you all have a great festive period and a very happy new year.

Rolandoween! Get your Rolando Pumpkin Carving Patterns here

Halloween is coming up and to celebrate, we’ve created some Rolando pumpkin carving patterns! Click the pattern you like below to download the PDF, print it out, and get creating!

Rolando 2 is out!

Rolando 2 is now available in the App Store! A huge thankyou to Mikko Walamies, Matt Roberts, Chris Plummer, Joe Allen, Andrew Hynek, Micah Wright, Mr Scruff, Matt Bell and everyone else that worked so hard to bring the Isle of Fontanis to life.

Rolando 2 has been picking up some great reviews and awards, from the 9/10 (and Editors choice award) from IGN to the App of the Year and Best Adventure Game from the AppAdvice App Awards.

If thats not enough, we were also nominated for Best New Studio at the Develop Awards!

Stay tuned for more exciting news from the Kingdom of Rolando, and news on new titles from HandCircus. Its going to be a fun 2009!

Rolando 2 Wallpaper

To celebrate the impending release of Rolando 2, we’re pleased to release the first in a series of iPhone wallpapers! Click the thumbnail, then on Mobile Safari, press and hold the image and choose “Save Image”. Then you can select it from the “Photos” App. Enjoy!

Rolando 2 Trailer now live

We are proud to present the first trailer for Rolando 2 – The Quest for the Golden Orchid. Coming this Summer for iPhone and iPod touch!

Rolando 2 Website now live

Check out the Rolando 2 : Quest for the Golden Orchid website at rolando2.ngmoco.com, and come back every Monday as we reveal all of the new characters, environments and gameplay for the sequel, coming to iPhone and iPod touch this summer!

Announcing Rolando 2

Spring is in the air

Apologies for the lack of updates here on the HandCircus blog, for more frequent news (interspersed with such fascinating twit-topics such as my lunch routine and my weekend recreational activities) I would highly recommend checking out the HandCircus Twitter Feed.

There are currently many fronts of activity on the Rolando front. Our Rolandos have been spotted far and wide over the last few weeks, from a variety of London Papers, to the Telegraph and the BBC.

A variety of other updates…

• Rolando 1.1 (the first Rolando update) is out! This one includes 5 brand new “secret” levels for you to explore and sink your teeth into, and I can confirm that there are more free levels snapping at the heels of the 1.1 update…. stay tuned
• A talk that I gave at This Happened waaaay back in March last year is now online here. If you are curious about how Rolando came to be, this may well be of interest
• I’m giving a talk tomorrow (20th March) at the V&A, as part of the “Big Create does…. digital” for 11-19 year olds, talking about Rolando and creating games for the iPhone
• Rolando 2 is coming along very nicely, and I’m really excited about how its turning out. There are SO many new things, I can’t wait to share them with you.

Thats all for now!

iPhone port of Box2D Testbed now available

Box2D (the great physics engine that looks after all those seesaws, pinwheels, catapults, and bombs that the Rolandos encounter ) is perfect for all those out there working on 2D games. When I started working on Rolando there were a few things that took me a little while to integrate, as the normal testbed would not compile on the iPhone, and the renderer was incompatible.

I’ve just added a port of the Box2D testbed to the project, which should hopefully help anyone that is planning on using it on their iPhone projects – you should be able to just build and go. Its got an OpenGLES renderer, and allows you to use the touchscreen and accelerometer to interact with the environment. Here’s some instructions on how to interact with it:

• On the first screen, choose the test project that you would like to run.
• Drag an object around the environment using your finger, or just drag on an empty part of the screen to pan around.
• Tilt the iPhone to affect gravity.
• Double tap to return to the projects list

I hope this of use to any budding iPhone developers out there!

You can download the Box2D engine (including the iPhone testBed) from here.

(note) For some reason the embedded video sometimes plays back at enormous speeds :/

Rolando – what were your Highs and Lows?

It’s always great to get feedback, so if there are any Rolando players out there that have really strong feelings about any of the game, any elements or mechanics that you loved or hated, anything you LOVED doing or found frustrating, and above all any levels or worlds that really stood out as being super-fun or frustrating, do let us know! Did you prefer the puzzle-solving or the platforming? Did you like the bonus levels or guiding the prince?

If you could leave a comment on this post with any thoughts you had, HandCircus will love you forever.