News
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.
Rolando iPhone Wallpapers
Freshly baked! We’ve got some great little wallpapers for your iPhone courtesy of Mikko – why not dress up your background with a taste of Rolandoland?
Get your iPhone wallpapers here. And don’t forget – they work great on an iPod touch too!
Rolando Reception
Wow, what a week! Personally, this has certainly been one of the most amazing weeks of my life. Its so awesome to see so many people out there enjoying Rolando. With over 400 reviews in the AppStore and an average rating of 4.81 stars, we really couldn’t have wished for a better reception.
One of the first reviews was Pocketgamer’s, which gave it a perfect 10/10, the first time they have awarded an iPhone game their Platinum award.
Soon after, IGN awarded Rolando a score of 9.5/10.
And to top it off I’ve had the huge honour of being given a place on Edge’s Industry Heroes List for 2008. Sitting on a list with so many personal heroes is just amazing.
So a huge thanks to everyone for your patience and support! Time for a little bit of rest over the holidays, but HandCircus will return in the new year.
Update: We’ve also been featured on Brandon Boyer’s awesome Offworld, the gaming-focussed sister site to Boing Boing. After the great write-up over the weekend, there’s a wonderful end-of-year article – focussing on 20 of 2008′s Best Indie and overlooked titles, and we’re thrilled to have Rolando sit at the table with such refined guests as Braid and World of Goo.
Rolando is OUT!
Whew! Well it may have taken a while longer than expected, but I’m overjoyed to be able to say that Rolando is now available! Huge thanks to Mikko Walamies for bringing Rolandoland to life with his wonderful, charming illustrations, to all the guys at ngmoco for all of their input and amazing support, and to awesome talents of Mr Scruff for sculpting Rolando’s musical landscape.
The video above is from the guys at TouchArcade, and shows a nice playthrough of one of the shorter levels in World 2.
Rolando launch TOMORROW!
I can hardly contain my own excitement, as there’s less than 24 hours before Rolando is released! The launch trailer above shows off a few new mechanics – check out the light beams.
As always, the latest info, screenshots and all the movies can be found on the ngmoco Rolando page.
Moving house….
As we build up to Rolando’s imminent, pre-xmas release, I’ve been doing a little spring cleaning with the HandCircus site. All of the old portfolio (pre-Rolando) has been moved over to my personal/contracting blog, so be sure to head over there if you are looking for something that is no longer here.
From now on this site will be 100% HandCircus! Expect news and updates on Rolando and all future games. I do apologise on the lack of updates over the past few weeks, but things have been so very busy getting Rolando as good as it possibly can be. We’ve had a chance to get Rolando into the hands of more people and feedback has been so positive – we really can’t wait to get it out there and its really not going to be long now!
As soon as I have any more definite details to share I will post them up on here ASAP.
The site has also undergone a little bit of prettifying to celebrate. Hope you like the new lick-of-paint 
Rolando trailer – Escape from Rolando central
I missed posting this while I was out in the US, but here’s the most recent trailer for Rolando, showing a longer play session and puzzle elements as well as the pop-up map!