Autumn

Hello again,

It’s been great, relaxing summer but now it’s definitely time to get back to work. I have some exciting ideas for new projects but also plans for the older stuff – primarily Else Heart.Break(), Clairvoyance and Slice & Dice. Still some loose ends to tie up…

The new projects are too early to talk about, suffice to say that I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about past creations, what I’ve learned, and what direction I want to go in the future. I hope there will be some pleasant surprises for both you and me.

Here’s a list of what I’m all about right now: Tennis, growing vegetables, turning 30, starting a game design study circle (email me if you’re interested and live near Gothenburg).

Thanks for reading and take care,
Erik

Advertisement

Else Heart.Break() Steam Halloween Sale

This weekend Else Heart.Break() is 30% off over at Steam!

Else Heart.Break() has launched!

Finally, after many years it is released! Quite a surreal feeling over here in my apartment where our team has gathered.

Buy it on www.elseheartbreak.com or one of the following places:

Steam

Humble Store

GOG

Please tell your friends!

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

SPORTSFRIENDS

Hello! I just want to make sure that no one who could be interested in this kickstarter campaign has missed it. Johann Sebastian Joust by Douglas Wilson is hands down the best game for Playstation Move and it’s kinda ridiculous (and sad) that it’s not already out so that people can play it. Hokra is also a very cool and minimalistic game that I had the pleasure to play against its creator last year – fun times! You can check out all the four games on the Kickstarter page. There are only a few days left to help them so if you’re interested – make haste!

Update: They made it, yay! And I promised to do a little thing for them too, I’ll write more about that when it’s done…

And now for the non-news of today

After successfully quitting and staying off Facebook for three years, independent game developer Erik Svedäng has decided to join again. No one is very surprised. A friend, who wants to be anonymous, says the following:

– He was always so difficult about that whole thing, going on about how he disliked the site and how it was bad for him to be on there. I always knew that he’d come back though, I mean that’s just how the world works nowadays. He’ll get used to it.

We have tried to reach Erik for a comment but his agent says that he’s busy doing laundry.

Anemone nemorosa

I.R.I.S.

Hi!

I’m in Stockholm this weekend since a project I did some work on is being presented here now. It’s a facade projection where a building (the Stockholm City Museum) is transformed in different cool ways. My contribution was an interactive thing that let the people that are watching the projections text in messages with their phones. Those messages then appears in speech bubbles on the wall. The whole event started yesterday and people seemed to like it a lot. If you are in Stockholm and want to see it, just go to Slussen between 18.30 and 23.00 today (Saturday) or tomorrow!

More info can be found here: http://www.solarisfilm.se/iris/

Årets svenska talang!

Just got the news that I won the prize for “Swedish talent of the year”, given out by the Swedish games industry organization Dataspelsbranschen. Thank you guys!

Bob Came in Pieces

Some very good friends are releasing their latest creation on Steam today! It’s a really fun little game where you fly around with a space ship and solve physics-based puzzles. You also find spare parts that you must use to modify your ship so that it can handle different situations. Get it here now!

2009 is over

Water color painting by Niklas Åkerblad (more about him in a bit).

Hi! I just wanna thanks everyone who has made this year so awesome. So many fantastic friends (new and old), so many great experiences — I feel extremely lucky.

Next year will be no less exciting, I have a lot of projects coming up.

Happy New Decade!!!

Erik

Göteborg

I live here now.

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!

Fjord

A view from my parents’ house.

Potatisochpurjolökssoppa

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

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

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

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…

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!

Restart

This is my new attempt of creating a personal website. It will contain special pages about some of my projects and a blog with the latest news. I hope you will enjoy it!

Sincerely yours,
Erik