ClickShake's Dev Blog

Announcing New Mystery Game

9/13/17 - We’re pleased to announce a new game in development, a cooperative mystery game for mobile devices and computers. Grab some friends, find the evidence, hear the witness statements and work together to figure out who committed the crime.


You’re a detective at the scene of a crime. Each player has their own witnesses and evidence, and you must trade information and items, and discuss your theories to solve the mystery.

This will be ClickShake’s first multiplayer game, taking inspiration from truly social mobile games like SpaceTeam and electronic board games like Clue FX. The goal is to play with friends in the same room, but you can also play over the internet or in single player mode.

It’s also our first independent title not developed in Flash. We love and miss working in Flash, but Adobe will no longer support the plugin after 2020 and many browsers already block it. Although we’ve completed games for clients in other tools like Marmalade, OpenFL/Haxe and Unity, it’s a big step for our indie game company to put out a new original game with mobile devices and modern tech in mind. In addition to the downloadable version for phone, tablet, PC and Mac, we’re also planning to release a version you can play in your browsers using HTML5 because we’ve just always liked being able to load up a game instantly and start playing it! Hopefully we can get the game to perform well enough in HTML5 to release with browser play.

It’s a new direction for ClickShake, but we’re staying true to our core of casual games with colorful characters and engaging puzzles. Please visit our mini-site to learn more. We look forward to your feedback!

The game will also be exhibited at GDEX gaming convention in Columbus Ohio on the weekend of 9/29/17.

Ballads of Reemus on Steam in April 2015!

4/18/15 -

Thanks for all the yes votes from our fans, we got the Greenlight to release Ballads of Reemus on Steam, and our release date is set for April 24th, 2015! This is a dream come true for us to be on such a prominent platform!

If you haven’t used Steam before, it’s a great way to keep track of many of your game purchases across multiple operating systems and discover some really cool games at good prices.

During the launch on Steam, we will not be selling the game on clickshakegames.com for a period of time, so we encourage you to get the game on Steam at the new discounted price once it goes live. Also, please help spread the word about Ballads coming to Steam!

2013 Wrap-Up: Android, Expo, Kickstarter

2/2/14 - Hi everyone, Steve here. Jay and I have been working on a lot of things in the last several months, and it’s time for some updates. Here’s what we’ve been working on:

Fans of GooglePlay and Amazon Play Store games for Android and Kindle Fire can rejoice, because both Escape the Titanic and FreshGames’ picture puzzler UPicTwo are available on these devices, both free to play! Also, FreshGames’ 3D match-3 game Cubis Creatures is now available in Flash. I’m working on some other cool games with FreshGames, so keep an eye out for updates here and at freshgames.com.

Ballads of Reemus 2 was successfully kickstarted! Reaching 115% of his goal, Jay now has the cash needed to move forward full steam on its development. Follow his progress on the project at zeebarf.com.

Jay and I also worked together on the art and programming of Sushi Warrior, a fish slicing game designed by Dylan Zellmer of Acesse.com, available for Flash and soon for iOS and Android as well. Read more here and here. We’ll post up the links once it’s all officially live.


December 7th was a big day, as the Ohio Game Developer Expo held its first annual event in Columbus Ohio on the OSU campus. I came up with the idea for it in 2012, and with a lot of work and huge help from Chris Volpe, Jim Pickett and Wes Adams, our sponsors and volunteers, the event was a success with an awesome turnout from at least 8 different states! We brought in a lot of great game developer speakers for ticket holders, and also had a big showcase room which was free and open to the public and had tons of great regionally developed games on display. I’m proud to have been a part of the event and look forward to seeing it grow in the future to include more developers and expand the local game dev industry.

Finally, every adventure game fan should make sure to check out the recently released independent game Lilly Looking Through. The game is truly beautiful and a lot of fun, and made by a great guy and friend of ClickShake’s Steve Hoogendyk of Geeta Games. The game is also available on Steam, Mac store, GOG and more, which you can find by following the link.

Ballads of Reemus 2 Kickstarter, WtBB Indie Prize Winner

9/28/13 - Jay has announced that Ballads of Reemus 2 is under development and currently being crowdfunded. Get your advance copy and support the game here!



Also, the first Ballads of Reemus (When the Bed Bites) recently won the 2013 Indie Prize for Best Story at Casual Connect in San Francisco!

Our first iPhone game, a year in the making, is now live and free to play!

7/18/13 - We can now announce the iOS game we worked on for the last year alongside FreshGames: Escape the Titanic, now available to download for free on the App Store! Featuring 50 unique puzzle levels and hours of game play. It’s a Universal app, so you can play it on iPhone, iPad and iPod.

The game was designed and produced by FreshGames, and we did the programming and puzzle art.

Try it out now and tell us what you think of the game!

Next steps after Kickstarter

5/19/13 - Thanks a lot to everyone who pledged to our A Small Favor Kickstarter, getting us to $13,510! We came up short of the goal at 30 days, so we don’t get any of the funding, but we’re still very encouraged to see as much interest as there was. We’re now reviewing all our options and considering each one carefully, including a refocused Kickstarter relaunch for A Small Favor, as many have requested. We’ll be sure to post what we decide in the near future.

10% of $30k Kickstarter goal is just 2 days!

4/17/13 - A Small Favor is getting some great responses so far, reaching 10% of our goal is under 2 days! We’re blown away by the support and are so thankful for everyone who’s pledging and spreading the word. Read the rest of this entry »

A Small Favor Kickstarter Now Live

4/15/13 - We’re making a new A Small Favor game, a 2D side-scrolling, sci-fi adventure game, and we’re turning to our fans for support to help make it happen. Here’s our Kickstarter link.


The alien assassin finds a crashed spaceship with a high level security badge that can help him get ahead in life, but not without facing the ever watchful security eyebots and officers who have come to investigate the crash.

Kickstarter is a way for us to raise money early so we can focus exclusively on this game without taking on side projects along the way. We raised some funds with Ballads of Reemus which was very helpful, but with Kickstarter we’ll raise enough to fund the whole development time needed. If we hit our funding goal, we promise we’ll deliver this game, just like we have on Ballads of Reemus and over 30 other games Jay and I have released separately and together over the years.

You can pre-order the game or make a pledge to support development of this game here: http://kck.st/ZlhUxj

A Small Favor is based on Zeebarf’s point-and-click adventure series, but this new one will have a brand new storyline building on the existing world, and will also allow free movement of the character so you can explore by climbing ladders, entering buildings, delving into tunnels, etc. allowing for more secret hunting, side quests and additional items than the original games. This one will have hours of content too.

We also have a mini-site setup for the game here: ASmallFavorGame.com
And you can vote for the game on our Steam Greenlight Concepts page.

2012 Aggie Nomination for Best Writing – Comedy

2/12/13 - We’ve been nominated for 2012 Best Writing – Comedy by AdventureGamers.com for Ballads of Reemus. Winners will be announced between February 20 and 22. It’s also listed in their Top Adventure Games – Independent; what an honor! Update: they’ve also put up a 2012 Aggie Awards – Readers’ Choice poll where you can vote for any game in any category. You’ll need to be logged in to see the categories and voting ends February 18th.

As for current development, we are just a week or two away from finishing up on our first iPhone game, which is our second game to have hours of game play. It’s something completely new, and we’re looking forward to sharing the details about it once we have the thumbs-up to do so.

JayIsGames nominates Reemus 4 & Wentworth for Best Adventure of 2012

1/14/13 - JayIsGames.com has nominated 2 of our games, Reemus 4 and Wentworth, for their Best of Casual Gameplay 2012 awards in the category of Browser Point-and-Click Adventure. They are currently accepting user votes until January 23rd, and you can vote once per day. Plus, our games can also be voted as Game of the Year by checking the box at the top of the page.

Click here to vote on what you think is best point and click adventure of 2012: http://jayisgames.com/best-of/2012/point-and-click-adventure/