Everybody wishes for a new puppy during the holiday season, but now you can truly get your wish.  Just go to http://apps.facebook.com/puppyworldgame and choose a free virtual puppy to start playing and caring for.  Everybody needs a little puppy love!

What you can’t appreciate from the picture is just how big these cakes are.  Size wise, each of them are about 12″ tall and about 20″ wide.  HUGE!!!!  I don’t even want to know how many pounds of butter goes into the icing that’s needed to cover one.  Oh, I’m hitting myself for forgetting to take a picture of the one that is shaped like a yorkshire terrier.  It’s alright, another excuse to go back in the future.  Gee, I use that excuse a lot, don’t I? ;)

If you are the fickle type that can’t seem to choose which cake to try, you are sooooo in trouble when you see this lineup of individual cakes.

Linny

Room Candy – always yummy!

www.roomcandygames.com

www.room-candy.com

Aren’t they great?  I might be biased, but I think they actually look like a real band.  Of course, it helps that they are all wearing the same StripPRS tank top!  For you folks bulging your eyes at the last line, StripPRS (short for Strip Paper-Rock-Scissors) is a new game coming out on Facebook, MySpace and iPhone.  You can read more about the game and see more pics of the girls at stripprsgame.com

Linny

Room Candy

Always yummy!

We had a ton of fun giving out undies screenprinted with the StripPRS logos, and had even more fun making people show us their undies in return.  I was actually surprised how most people were gung ho about doing so in public! :)

You can view more pics on stripprsgame.com – I haven’t posted them all up yet as we took about 2000 pictures during the two days, but you’ll see the crazy antics we’ve had over the last couple of days alone.

If you’d like us to feature you on the blog, feel free to e-mail me at blog@roomcandygames.com – just remember to pose with your Paper-Rock-Scissors hands!

Linny

Room Candy

Always yummy!

I’m so stoked to announce that the first game out of my new game division (Room Candy Games) called Pimple Popper is now available for the iPhone and iPhone Touch! Pimple Popper plays exactly as you would expect – lots of morbid sound effects, graphics, and realistic squeezing motions on your iPhone when you “squeeze” the pimples. And of course, like in real life, there’s plenty of icky splatting! :)

I’ve always enjoyed writing about the behind-the-scenes work involved in developing Room Candy products (whether it is cake dog toys or a pimple game), but more importantly, you’ll be surprised just how much work and analysis were put into this silly, gaggy game!

GAME MECHANICS

Check out the video of me demonstrating to the developers the mechanics of the pimple game.

LOOK OF THE GAME

I wanted the game to look cartoony but still have the different types of pimples somewhat recognizable.  The original concept was to just have one face and have the number of pimples increase with each level.

1st artwork

Hmm, this one is way too cartoony.  I wanted the game to have a mini hidden object element built in where you zoom in on one part of the face and then scroll throughout the face for a pimple to pop, so the face will have to be more realistic.

Much cuter!  If you notice, the alternate art on the right side is for when you finish the level, where the girl breaks out into a smile.  I have a compulsive habit of naming things even though they are inanimate, so she’s fondly known as Vivi because she looks a little bit like my older sister.  Which of course is extremely ironic because the real Vivi has the most perfect skin ever!  There are a total of five different faces in the game (3 girls, 2 guys), one different face for each level.

SOUND EFFECTS

Now that the faces are set, time for the sound effects (my favorite part!). For each character, I needed sounds to convey that the player has squeezed the pimples successfully, and ones to indicate that the player is squeezing too hard.  Rather than post the final cuts of what is used in the game, I thought you’ll get a bigger kick of listening to the ones that were NOT chosen.  These two clips are actually a guy impersonating as a girl – what can I say, there are not many women in the game development community available for voiceover work!

//Folks, the way WordPress embeds sound files is really funky.  Click on one of the sound links below, which will bring you to another page.  Click on the second “Pimple Popper Fake Girl #x” line that you see on the page to hear the audio clip.

Pimple Popper Fake Girl #1

Pimple Popper Fake Girl #2

//If you still can’t hear the files, here are the direct URLs to the sound clips

http://roomcandy.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/pimple-popper-fake-girl1.mp3

http://roomcandy.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/pimple-popper-fake-girl-2.mp3

CHOOSING AN ICON

The developers were nice enough to whip up 3 choices.

This one was a no brainer – I chose the first one because it basically summarizes the game in a nutshell.

That pimple looks ripe ‘n ready to pop!

SUBMISSION TO APPLE – ATTEMPT #1

After debugging and compressing the app multiple times (the original file size was 24 mbs – oy!) with the developer over the course of a couple of weeks, I finally hit “submit app” in the Apple’s developer center at 5:32 am in the morning.  “I hope they are okay with the groaning sounds in the game,” I jokingly said to the developer.  “It would suck if we had to take the sounds out because it’s what makes the game funny.”

….cut to 5 days later.  I got an e-mail from Apple with the following text:

Dear Linny,

Thank you for submitting your application to Apple’s App Store. Unfortunately, your application, Pimple Popper 1.0, cannot be added to the App Store because it uses standard iPhone screen images in a non-standard way, potentially resulting in user confusion. Changing the behavior of standard iPhone graphics, actions, and images, or simulating failures of those graphics, actions, or images is a violation of the iPhone Developer Program agreement which requires applications to abide by the Human Interface Guidelines.

In Pimple Popper 1.0, there is an image of a cracked screen when the user fails to pop a pimple successfully. See attached screen shot.

Seriously??? To think that I first wanted to change the “cracked effect” to something that looked even more realistic because it looked somewhat cheesy to me.  Oh well, what doesn’t “break” you makes you stronger (play sad trombone sound effect here).  Here’s the revised version of the “splat” when you squeeze a pimple unsuccessfully.

New sound effect: Pimple Popper Splat Sound

Resubmitted the revised build, waited a few more days, and voila!  I am officially an iPhone publisher. :)

Look, Ma, I got a game out on the iPhone (lower right corner).  And I desperately need to check my e-mail inbox!

You can get Pimple Popper at the iTunes store for a pimply $0.99.  You can also easily download the game directly from your iPhone  if you’re connected to the internet via wifi (Go to “Settings”, and turn your Wi-Fi settings to “On” when you’re in a wifi hot zone).

EXTRA YUMMY:

The feature that required the most edits for Pimple Popper was actually the background music.  The very first background music had too much synthesizers which I found to be grating.  Background Music Version #2 came back to be too “zen”.

pimple-popper-bgm-version2

This is sounding to be like the goldilocks & 3 bears story….music is too irritating; music is too relaxing…good thing my developers were good sports about it.  I actually ended up using a royalty free music loop that is used for the main game, although we still needed an intro music that would be similar to the background music.

pimple-popper-intro-music-version3

Okay, this one is sounding much more snazzy.  I’m starting to like it….

pimple-popper-final-intro-music

This was meant to be in the intro clip where you see the Room Candy Games logo and the Pimple Popper logo, but alas, due to the original game file size being too big (24 mbs), the developers hacked and slashed and compressed the file down to 17 mbs, and ended up leaving the intro music out.

Linny

Room Candy Games

www.roomcandygames.com – site is now live!

www.room-candy.com

Room Candy – always yummy

============= versus ===============

Between the perfect Baroo pose and the pink nose, methinks Isis wins by a landslide.  And for those of you who are not yet versed in the art of the Baroo pose, here’s a little tutorial from youtube:

And while Isis’ good looks could be attributed to her good genes, I have a sneaky suspicion that there could be an extraterrestrial explanation…

Check out those green eyes….I knew it!  Isis is an alien sent from Planet Cutencuddly to dominate over us earthlings.  Look at her – she’s already got this girl’s legs pinned down with her powerful (and yet snuggly soft) head! :)

Thanks for the uber adorable photo, Ann!

Linny

www.roomcandygames.com – coming soon

www.room-candy.com

Room Candy – always yummy!

Up to my eyeballs working on a new division and a few really cool projects. I can’t elaborate quite yet, but expect some big announcements next weekish!

Linny

www.roomcandygames.com – coming soon!

www.room-candy.com

Room Candy – always yummy

To celebrate the one year anniversary of her site, Liz Kerrison is giving away a set of 3 Room Candy toys plus your choice of either a mug/clock/bag to a lucky winner.  I’ll have Liz’s dogs show you a couple of the toys up for grabs.

This is Corduroy, a Malshi (gesundheit!) with our chocolate sprinkle-licious donut toy.

And not to be left out, here’s Paddington (Morkie), getting a well deserved white ice cream cone “snack” after burning all those calories doing the down dog pose.

But wait, there’s more!  The Ottawa Dog Blog is not your typical dog blog – it’s really a comprehensive resource for all your doggie needs (e.g. Parks, stores, services) for folks living in the area.  I just wish that Liz could clone herself and do a similar site in Los Angeles.  :)

Thanks for including our toys in your giveaway, Liz!  Happy anniversary, and I’m looking forward to many more!

Linny

www.room-candy.com

Room Candy – always yummy!

Aww…they do like each other!  I just hope that Tiki doesn’t fart in Wally’s face. :)

Linny

Room Candy – always yummy!

www.room-candy.com

Wait a minute – isn’t that….

By golly gee, it’s our Lulu The Lamb toy!  I’m such a dork, I started cheering at the screen when I watched the video.  And not to be left out, there’s our Joey The Monkey toy as well!

When I designed these big head toys, I wanted to make the head ball-like in shape so that they will roll around on the floor.  Looks like mission accomplished!

Cue the obvious pun: I just realized a second ago that the video is about Chewie chewing on plush chew toys. :)  And what a perfect name for this boisterous boy because Chewie is so cute I can just eat him up!

Linny

Room Candy – always yummy!

www.room-candy.com