Through the Looking-Back Glass.
Welcome. Sorry for the silent silence that has clouded its way in-between the last time we contacted you and now, but we’ve been busy… busy fighting a PHP-based battle with the website and thought an extended break from us would do you no harm.
We’ve been mainly working on refining a lot of the core details of the game and designing lots of new stuff—there’s been some pretty bizarre things that have been proposed—and generally looking at bettering what we have. Take a look at some concept art, which is indeed conceptual.
Before we move forward, we’d like to have a look back, as last year was monumental for us.
2014 was our awakening, the growth of cosmic seeds that burst forth into our mundane existence, while in 2015 the seeds sprouted; De Mambo took us from our place in the soil and propelled us towards the great sun. We met an invaluable colleague and friend in Daniel New, who had the unholy pleasure of interviewing us around this time last year. That was a special moment for us, as Daniel truly believed in us and what we were doing which really fired us up and prepared us for what was coming next… Our first public exhibition was in March with EGX Rezzed and then we won our place at Playhubs—this was where we met so many fantastic people who’ve helped us immensely; like Nisha Valand, Vincent Scheurer and Shin Kanaoya (more on him later…), and got into such events as Manchester Day Games Room, Radius Festival, Develop Interface and Brighton Develop—where we met our bright-eyed intern, Keir Sweeney. Hanging out with the public, meeting loads of cool developers and (especially) beating people at our own game was truly amazing.
We next took to Kickstarter and then to our collective personal highlight: Japan and TGS. We are all still in awe that we were able to not only go to Japan (a childhood dream for all of us), but have our little game exhibited at the Tokyo Games Show. It’s all thanks to the aforementioned Shintaro Kanaoya, his awesome partner Ryuji Ooyanagi and their amazing company Chorus Worldwide—you guys are awesome and we cannot thank you enough. TGS was astonishing as the Japanese really enjoyed our game (thanks have to be given to Daichi Aono for his superb translation abilities) and the press, such as Famitsu, 4Gamer and Dengeki, gave us the enormous pleasure of interviewing us. That was a super personal highlight for me, as I was the one being interviewed—but then again there was so much more. We got to meet the marvellous Yoshiro Kimura and have some humorously fun De Mambo matches with him, Ryuji introduced us to Suda51’s manager (I’m a huge Suda fanboy), Kazuyuki Kumagai who said that we can visit Grasshopper Manufacture the next time we are in Japan, we saw Koji Igarashi of Castlevania fame in the flesh and finally shook hands with Shuhei Yoshida, the President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios.
After we landed back in London we had to drive up to Birmingham the next day to setup for EGX, which honestly… nearly killed us. (Four people and a 32” TV should not be able to fit into a Fiat 500…) but we survived and finally went on to see the successful end of our Kickstarter Campaign!
Thanks again to everyone who helped us out, shared the campaign and especially those of you that donated your hard-earned cash to our cobweb-ridden wallet!
It’s safe to say that a lot happened last year, which runs in contrary with the fact that we are three nobodies making a game in a Premier Inn lobby. We’re currently working on loads of new content for De Mambo, so make sure you join us at our next exhibition: EGX Rezzed, the place that started it all. Anyway, as a wise man once said… Enough talk! No more looking back. On to the future where, De Mambo will be released and the world will cower in its almighty presence… well hopefully. Farewell.
Through the Looking-Back Glass. was originally published on The Dangerous Kitchen
