Göteborg

I live here now.

Digital Poetry?

Hi! I’ve been messing around with something called Processing for quite a while now and I like it so much that I felt the urge to write about it here. In case you haven’t heard about it, Processing is meant to be an easy but powerful programming environment for creating images, animation, and interactions. It’s open source and used by a lot of artists, teachers, designers, etc to make interesting and beautiful stuff. One of the best things with the whole thing is that you can upload the programs you make to a website called Open Processing. That site works as a gallery for programs and it’s really fun to see what people are able to come up with when they are liberated from most of the hardships of coding and just can focus on the fun parts (getting things to move and interact on the screen).

I have actually uploaded eight small things that I’ve made myself to my profile on Open Processing, go check it out if you want to! They aren’t games or anything, just doodles made out of code or whatever. Maybe you will like them.

Finally I want to apologize for not releasing a patch for Blueberry Garden yet. It’s on it’s way, I’m just slow (for a lot of reasons). I hope to get it out soon though so that I can start working on my new ideas!

Best wishes,

Erik

Talking at Assembly

Hi,

Last Friday I went to Assembly in Helsinki to give a seminar. The title of my talk was “Creating Blueberry Garden – how to get away with bad design choices (sort of)”. It went pretty ok and some nice people in the audience even wanted to get me as a speaker at their uni

Apart from giving the talk I mainly spent my time with Petri Purho and Cactus (who both were giving their own lectures) in some of the nice parks in Helsinki — great times!

Take care,

Erik

Indie Games Sale!

Great tip for everyone interested in indie games (and everyone else). This weekend Steam is having a huge  bundled sale and Blueberry Garden is included. Read more about it here! 75% off!!!

UPDATE: The sale has ended, big thanks to everyone who bought the bundle!

Exquisite Corpses

(click image for bigger view)

On Blueberry Garden’s Music, by Daduk

My Yamaha P80

Hello !

What an amazing destiny for these couple of piano tracks I published on the Internet a couple of years ago ! I was miles away from imagining that one day, they would be selected as the soundtrack of such a beautiful video game.

I hope you will enjoy listening to the music as much as I liked to compose it, and that it will add a little something to your journey through the garden.

I am sincerely grateful to Erik for bringing me into the Blueberry Garden adventure, from the release of the trailer to the San Francisco prize ceremony and now, for giving me this opportunity to blog about Blueberry Garden’s soundtrack, “Et Apres”.

Finally, I read many nice comments you left about the music: thank you so much for this ! I might one day publish the scores, but I am unfortunately not really good at writing them… I hope to tell a bit more about the stories behind the tracks in a future post.

You can find the album here http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/daduk.

Daduk

Regarding the Demo

Hi folks, just wanted to clarify something about the demo version of Blueberry Garden.

The main purpose of the demo is for you to make sure you can run the game and to see if you like the mood etc. There is no goal or ending to demo so if you like what you see, please buy the full version. You’ll only ruin the experience if you play the demo too much I think.

Also — HUGE thanks to everyone who has bought the game and especially those who have commented on it here on my site afterwards! It’s awesome to know what you think and that so many people seem to get something out of playing it.

Best wishes,

Erik

“Bloodline Champions” wins Swedish Game Awards

I’m at the annual Swedish Game Awards in Stockholm right now and (as I was hoping) the very cool game Bloodline Champions won the Grand Prize!

The game was made by a group of students from my university and I know things will go very well for the in the future because they are awesome. Good luck guys!

Game is out!

Ok, finally Blueberry Garden is up on Steam!!! =) =) =)

What a great and exciting journey it has been, thanks everybody for all the support and patience!

The only thing left now is for you to play the game — Get it here

Also, here is the new Official Blueberry Garden information page.

Take care,

Erik

Sooooooorrry

Seems like there are some problems with the Steam release stuff, will probably take a little while to sort it out. I hope you have some patience with this, it’s the first time I’m doing this kind of thing you know. I’m terribly sorry and I will do all I can to get the game out as soon as possible!

Erik

Party

Ok, so the game is supposed to be released very soon and to celebrate I decided to have a little party, chilling out in my apartment with some friends. I’ll update this post with pics of what’s happening as the evening progresses.

Blueberry pies!

Blueberry Garden Release Date

On Steam!

How soon is now?

Really soon.

But not today.

I’m sorry and I hope you won’t hate me.

Official press release will be reliable though.

Oh, and I’m so happy people want to play the game, I really hope you will like it…

Take care,

Erik

Ilinx

Nordic Game Conference + 2009 Official Swedish Indie Mystery Tour roundup

Suda talking about his games.

Highlights of the week:

- Petri Purho and Kyle Gabler’s lecture, which was easily the best of those I heard (and everyone else thought so too I believe). Great job!

- Staying at Martin’s (Prototyprally) and Jens’ (Oxeye Games) places — thanks a lot dudes!!!

- Going by car with Martin, Petri and Kyle to Gothenburg  visiting Cactus… too bad I was super sleepy the whole trip

- All the rest of the nice people I met at the conference and during the parties!

Nordic Game Conference

Just wanted to say that I’m going to be at the Nordic Game Conference this week. Hope to meet some of you there!

Erik

Interviews!

Hey!

A lot of people have interviewed me lately and I thought maybe you want to read some of it:

“Of Blueberries and Gardening” by The Escapist

“Flying high in Blueberry Garden” by Tuna Snax

“Greenfingers: An Interview with Erik Svedäng” by The Reticule

“Ten Questions with Erik Svedäng” by Game and Player

“Interview: Erik Svedäng” by Act of Rage!

(I left out the ones in foreign languages and also forgot where to find some texts, please tell me if you have written something and want it linked.)

Thanks to all the interviewers!

Erik

I won

Seumas McNally Grand Prize 2009

It’s kind of crazy, thanks to everyone!

For those who wonder — the game is not out yet but I will release it for PC pretty soon, hopefully.

Take care,

Erik

San Francisco!

Fjord

A view from my parents’ house.

Spelgalan 2009

Spelgalan 2009 is a party and a price ceremony for the Swedish games industry. Big congrats to Frictional Games for winning the indie category!

The last picture is dedicated to Boel.

Potatisochpurjolökssoppa

Nordic Game Jam

I went to the Nordic Game Jam in Copenhagen last weekend. Obviously it was really great, especially meeting all awesome game creating friends and also making some new ones. Me, Bernhard Schulenburg and Kian Bashiri made a game together about friendship and flocking behaviour. It was pretty cute but not very finished, maybe we’ll upload it to the web in the future. Here are some of the photos I took during the trip:

My travel companion Joel.

Game creators all over the place.

Kian and Bernie, crunching.

The IT University of Copenhagen.

The architecture was really cool.

An exploding game.

Petri giving a presentation of his art game!

Flipside wins a competition

The Swedish site gameplayer.se arranged a game developing competition together with Paradox Interactive and now they have choosen Flipside of the Divine as the winner. Here’s the motivation:

Flipside of the Divine demonstrates that innovation alone is not enough, but innovation, mixed with rock-solid development is the killer formula for a high-quality compelling game. Plus the pace of Flipside constantly keeps you on your toes.
However good game mechanics is not enough you also require a high standard of technical quality to support this. Flipside is not just the best game in this competition – it is a great game, period.

Great news, try the game if you haven’t already.

By the way — tomorrow I’m off to the Nordic Game Jam in Copenhagen. Exciting!

Take care,

Erik

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m in shock.

Games made by friends

While I am putting the last pixels in place on Blueberry my hard working friends here in Skövde are releasing a lot of games. I thought it would be a good idea to tell you something about them!

Puzzlegeddon

(Windows XP & Vista)

A puzzle and action game at the same time. Earn resources through the puzzle to launch attacks on the other players!

Made by Pieces Interactive.

Colosseum

(Xbox 360 Community Games)

A very stylish arena fighting game for 2 – 4 players.

Made by Shortfuse Games.

Loot, Steal ‘n Destroy

(Xbox Community Games)

A party game for 2 – 4 players where your goal is to be the pirate with the most gold at the end.

Made by Ludosity Interactive.

All of the games really shines in multiplayer, try them out with your friends! (The Xbox games are only available in a few countries right now)

Erik

Blueberry Garden submitted to the Independent Games Festival!

I killed the bug!

Somewhat frequently asked questions

So, what are you doing?!

Right now I’m preparing Blueberry Garden for the Independent Games Festival. It’s going fine.

The initial release for Blueberry Garden was planned for “summer 2008″ so why can’t I play the game already?

A couple of reasons:

1. The game isn’t polished enough
2. I haven’t decided how to distribute the game

I’m sorry for keeping you waiting but I think it’s for the better…

When will you release the game then?

1. When it is polished enough
2. When I have decided how to distribute it

What should I do with my life?

Devote it to mastering the fabulous World of Goo, obviously!

Erik

No More Sweden in Super Play

The Swedish game magazine Super Play wrote about the little indie developer party I arranged this summer:

I really appreciate that they put the name of the games on the front page too, that’s awesome!

22

(Blueberry Garden concept art from the summer of 2007)

Today is my birthday and since I haven’t written very much here lately I thought I would give a little news roundup of the last couple of months:

• I have graduated from the University of Skövde with a degree in Computer Game Design
• Three weeks ago I started working at the University of Skövde as a teacher of Computer Game Design
• Since I work only half-time at the university I have had a lot of time to work on several small games to try out different ideas. Most of it has turned out to be junk but that’s part of the fun — trying crazy stuff and watch it fail…

Finally I want to thank everybody who is waiting for Blueberry Garden and say they like the look of the game, it’s really exciting! Unfortunately I don’t have any public news about it… I’ll leave that to your imagination a little bit longer.

Yours truly,

Erik

It’s a secret!

What does it mean?

No More Sweden (awesome indie party)

Top: Erik Svedäng, Emil Berner, mr anonymous, Petri Purho, Jens Bergensten, Andreas Jörgensen & Jonatan Söderström (Cactus). Bottom: Gøksel (Decipher), Nicklas Nygren (Nifflas), Joel Nyström, Kian Bashiri & Mårten Brüggemann (laying down). Missing: Erik Sjöstrand.

This weekend I arranged a meet-up for Nordic indie game developers. It was really fun hanging out and we created a lot of weird and cool games (and some music).

We had one big game making competition that lasted from 14.00 at Sunday to 18.00 at Monday. The results were truly good and entertaining. My personal favorite was Nifflas’ Avoid the Evil Space Eel that can be downloaded here. I will add more info about the other games later when they are posted on the internet.

On Monday evening Petri Purho held one of the best and most inspiring lectures on game design I have ever heard. The rest of the night felt a bit surreal and I realized that all these talented people actually were in the same room.

Then everybody went home, I miss them already…

The Birds in your Garden

Hi everybody, sorry for not posting anything in a long while. 

Here’s a couple of desktop images if someone is interested:

  

Take care,

Erik

Win

Swedish Game Awards: Best innovation 2008!

Blueberry Garden nominated for Swedish Game Awards

Blueberry Garden will compete in the category “Best Innovation”!

Super Play

I was interviewed for this month’s issue of the Swedish video game magazine Super Play.

Nordic Game

Yesterday I got back from the Nordic Game conference. It was two interesting and fun days even though most of the speeches and “debates” really wasn’t that inspiring. Here’s my top three of good things during the visit:

1. Meeting awesome game developers like Petri Purho, Martin “Grapefrukt” Jonasson and Oxeye Game Studio
2. Fumito Ueda showing his concept movies from Ico and Shadow of the Colossus
3. The keynote about making “Rock Band”, the speakers actually tried to share their thinking behind the design

I hope they will arrange the event next year but make it a little less about business and a little more about creativity…

Take care,
Erik

Crunch

Now Blueberry & Flipside are both handed in to the Swedish Game Awards competition. It’s been a hectic weekend with a lot of work and only a small taste of the lovely weather. Hopefully the following time will be more relaxed…

A big thanks to everyone who has play tested Blueberry Garden, it’s been great!

Deadlines are approaching

Göteborgs Naturhistoriska Museum

Today I visited the Natural History Museum in Gothenburg to check out how me and my friends’ game Det Goda Livet was doing as a part of the ongoing Science Festival. I watched people from two school classes playing the game and everybody seemed to have a blast! Some of the girls in the last group didn’t want to leave… Hopefully they learned something too, I think so.

More images after the jump!

Swedish Game Awards

Blueberry Garden is participating in the Swedish Game Awards this year. The organizers of the competition made a spotlight review with me, read it here.

Bird Flew By

#%&!?$X#§¤?!

The Ultimate Music Video

I’ve made a music video that fits all music. I think.

Crank it up and click on the image! (Music is not included.)

It’s probably too slow in Internet Explorer.

Have a wonderful day,

Erik

Into the unknown

It’s been one week since I made the trailer for Blueberry Garden and I just want to thank everyone for showing such great interest in the game. It’s very motivating but a bit scary too!

I’m currently looking for playtesters so if you live somewhere in the western part of Sweden and want to try the game, please contact me.

Take care,

Erik

Blueberry Garden – Sneak Peek Trailer

I made a trailer today, watch it here.

Update: Here’s a high resolution version of exactly the same trailer.

Kissing Couple

A Story from The Blueberry Garden

The birds and the party hats were living their peaceful lives at separate sides of the tower.

One day the birds decided to move to the other side of the tower where the party hats had their home. Since the birds could fly they ate all the blueberries before the party hats could reach them.

Now the party hats are dead.

Blueberry Garden page is official

Check out the new Blueberry Garden page here!