ClickShake's Dev Blog » reemus

Ballads of Reemus 2 Kickstarter, WtBB Indie Prize Winner

Steve Castro — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 18:55:30 +0000

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!

Reemus 4 Beastly Blackhole Reviews, Ballads Progress Report and New Visitor Game Coming!

Steve Castro — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:47:05 +0000

Hundreds have pre-ordered Ballads of Reemus and experienced the early release of Several Journeys of Reemus Chapter 4. Their reviews are in and people are loving the new chapter! Check out what they’re saying:

Thoughts on Chapter 4 from around the web:
http://ahkong.net/the-several-journeys-of-reemus-chapter-4/
http://tasselfoot.com/2010/09/22/hype-machine-reemus-chp4/

We did our best to learn from what worked and what didn’t in past Reemus games, and Jay really put his all into making this the best Several Journeys game yet. It looks like the hard work is paying off!

In case you didn’t know, Chapter 4 is finished but is waiting to be released until Ballads of Reemus goes live. However, if you pre-order Ballads of Reemus today you can play Chapter 4 right now instantly. It’s our way of thanking you for showing your support for the upcoming game. Ballads is our first full-length premium game and the first Reemus game to feature voice acted dialogue and several hours of gameplay. It means so much to our small indie development team when you guys pre-order our game and helps us afford the extra time and effort we’re putting in this massive Reemus project!

Speaking of Ballads, these past few weeks Jay has been hitting the art super hard and has gotten an impressive chunk of the backgrounds and character design/animation done. There are so many characters in this game and they’re all so interesting (like animals pretending to be humans, what?!). We’re going to be releasing a new site for Ballads of Reemus soon, so expect to start seeing some sweet, sweet screenshots coming around the corner.

Finally, if you haven’t heard, The Visitor is making a comeback in a brand new action adventure horror game coming very soon! The game is finished and pending sponsorship via FlashGameLicense.com. Haven’t seen the trailer yet? OMG wat R u waten 4?! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjXl8u5DcT4&feature=player_embedded

Reemus Chapter 4 Early Release Now Live! Ballads Giveaways! Site Updates!

Steve Castro — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:28:57 +0000

After months of hard work, Reemus 4 early release is now live to Ballads pre-orderers, including 5 new achievement Rewards you can earn. If you haven’t pre-ordered Ballads yet, it’s not too late. You can still pre-order and get your chance to play Reemus 4 today.

Today we are giving away a handful of free Ballads of Reemus pre-orders! We already sent out some Reemus trivia to subscribers of our newsletter and will be randomly picking 3 winners from everyone who answers correctly today. For this next one, we’re giving away a pre-order to the first person who responds to this blog post with the answer to this trivia: Name two processed foods/drinks that grow naturally in the forests of Fredricus. The winner will be announced later today in this post’s comments. Good luck!

We’ve also updated our site with a new logo and header layout. Plus we made a new Equip Reward feature to show off your new achievements. Just go into your account settings to pick which item you want to equip. Soon we’ll make the equip process even more intuitive but it’s a fun little feature in the meantime.

Finally, thank you so much to everyone that has pre-ordered Ballads and supported our indie team. It’s really encouraging to know so many fans believe in our dream and gives us even more drive to make our games that much better.

New Rewards, Chapter 4 almost done, Ballads Pre-order Deadline Extended

Steve Castro — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 01:13:35 +0000

Our heads have been buried in finishing up Chapter 4 and plugging away at Ballads of Reemus. Chapter 4 is just about finished. For now, we’ve got new Rewards for you! Zeebarf’s first Small Favor game now has 4 new ClickShake Rewards you can earn. Go get ‘em!

In other news, we are extending the deadline for Ballads pre-orders since it’s going to be a bit longer before it comes out (new deadline to be determined). To commemorate the extension, we are giving away a free Ballads of Reemus pre-order! Just like all pre-orderer-erer-ers, the winner will be entitled to play Journeys of Reemus Chapter 4 as soon as it’s done (rather than waiting with the rest of the world to play it when it officially comes out during the Ballads launch). To win the pre-order, be the first person to respond to this post with the exactly correct answer to this question: Where do the Salt n’ Pepper flowers normally grow? (Must not already have a pre-order.) Good luck!

Social media site Newgrounds creates opportunity for indie game developer ClickShake Games

Steve Castro — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:25:00 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Newgrounds.com Power of Three event created the opportunity independent game developers Jay Ziebarth and Steve Castro needed to form the new company ClickShakeGames.com. They are now working on a 2 game simultaneous release: a new Several Journeys of Reemus chapter, plus The Ballads of Reemus: When the Bed Bites.

Columbus, OH, March 31, 2010 – Last summer, Newgrounds.com launched the Power of Three event, encouraging independent programmers, artists and musicians to team up and use their combined talents to create an original online game using Adobe Flash. The goal was to support the Child’s Play charity and to form teams of skilled developers who might stay together even after the event and continue contributing higher quality games to the Flash gaming community. As of January 2010, their goal was met when one of the resulting teams launched their own website ClickShakeGames.com and released several more games since then.

Newgrounds.com is an online community website featuring user-created movies and games long before “Web 2.0” was a buzzword. Its creator Tom Fulp himself participated in a collaboration with artist Dan Paladin through the site and this partnership turned into The Behemoth, a successful console game studio responsible for the hit Xbox 360 title Castle Crashers. Fulp’s announcement of the event included enticements to try to match this level of success, which generated a good amount of interest from the community.

The Power of Three event yielded several games, including IGN’s Best Free-To-Play PC Game of 2009, Time Fcuk. Among the entries was Paradox Embrace, a puzzle platformer game made by Steve Castro and Jay Ziebarth with music by Caulder Bradford. After the game’s release, Castro and Ziebarth went on to form ClickShake Games and develop 2 new games for Comedy Central, including an adventure game for their new animated series Ugly Americans.

Ziebarth, better known as Zeebarf, had independently created popular online game series The Several Journeys of Reemus, A Small Favor and The Visitor. His primary experience is in animation, but working independently meant he had to work with various programmers or even program the games himself. Ziebarth says having a partnership with programmer Steve Castro “frees you up to concentrate on your area of expertise instead of being a jack of all trades. It takes the pressure off in a lot of ways and strengthens the project all around.” This sentiment was echoed by Castro, who himself had been an independent game developer working with various artists, sometimes animating games himself such as with Shape Switcher.

Currently ClickShake is developing a two part simultaneous adventure game release for The Several Journeys of Reemus characters. Chapter 4 of the Several Journeys continues the story line and will be launched first to the registered members of their website and then later to sites like Newgrounds and Kongregate.com. The second game will be called The Ballads of Reemus: When the Bed Bites, the first premium game in the series featuring voice acting for the adventuring duo. Ballads will be a stand-alone adventure prior to the events of the earlier Several Journeys chapters. This ambitious dual game release might not have been possible if not for the collaboration catalyzed by Newgrounds’ Power of Three event.

Social sites with user-created content such as Newgrounds are an important online resource for independent developers like ClickShake, providing opportunities to learn, practice and get feedback on their work. Tom Fulp runs multiple annual collaboration events throughout the year that developers from around the world are encouraged to participate in.

For more information, contact Steve Castro at contact (at) clickshakegames.com

About ClickShakeGames.com:
ClickShake is a professional game development company focused on hand-drawn adventure, puzzle and platform games with colorful characters and imaginative story lines. It is run by Jay Ziebarth from Ontario and Steve Castro from Ohio. Both have developed Flash games and movies since around 2000. Play their games online at http://www.clickshakegames.com.

References:
http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1060106
http://bestof.ign.com/2009/free-to-play/best-free-to-play-pc-game.html
http://www.clickshakegames.com/blog/2010/04/09/2-new-reemus-games-coming-this-summer/

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2 new Reemus games coming this Summer!

Steve Castro — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 04:01:18 +0000

ClickShake Games is planning to release 2 brand new point and click adventure games starring Reemus and Liam, including the first premium game in the series: Ballads of Reemus: When the Bed Bites!

Read on to get details on Ballads and Several Journeys Chapter 4.

Several Journeys of Reemus: Chapter 4 – This chapter continues the story of the Death Slug enslaved Gygax army and your favorite exterminator’s quest to become recognized as the hero who is able to stop them. This free game will be released to ClickShakeGames.com members 2 weeks before being released to non-members or other websites. Free member registration is now available.

Ballads of Reemus: When the Bed Bites – Ballads is a new line of premium Reemus games, and will feature full voice acting, a first in the series! When the Bed Bites is a stand-alone story line for the adventuring duo, that takes place prior to the Death Slug invasion. You’ll also be able to save your progress online so that you can resume progress from any computer, which you’ll want to use because actions you take in Ballads will unlock special features in Chapter 4 and other games. You can now preorder your copy of Ballads.

Both games are planned to be released in Summer 2010. Read the official press release. Also, did you notice that the forums are live?! We just hit 100 CSG members too!