Widget Monkey Games makes and sells simple, delightful, exciting Mac and PC games that can be enjoyed by all gamers and are fun to play. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com en-us david@widgetmonkeygames.com http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/images/icon_rss.gif Widget United is finally in the hands of beta testers. There are stil things to fix but the feedback's been good so far and we're working on getting beta 2 out the door ASAP. There's lots of other Unity-related news this month including a bunch of new free titles online for play including Tennis Stars Cup and Off Road Velociraptor, new games in development, Eric Haine's upcoming stunning fractal terrain generator, and the fact that there are a number of Unity-developed entries in this years IGF list of finalists. Lots more details are available on the Widget Monkey Games News page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml Our first shipping game title, Widget United, will finally be entering beta this week. We've got the music and sound effects in place, and are handing the game out to a wide range of beta testers to get their feedback about final improvements we can make and guage how well the game runs on a variety of OSX and Windows systems. Our temporary high score database has been set up and during the beta testing we are also internally tweaking a variety of in-game variables to provide the best balance between fun gameplay and difficulty. We are planning to release a demo version as well, details can be found on the Widget United game page. Unless something dramatically bad goes wrong during the next few weeks we should be releasing the game the first week in February. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/game_widgetunited.shtml Widget United, our first game, is now code-complete and we're adding the last of the graphics and music before showing it off to our beta-testers and doing some tweaks to gameplay. Unity developer Jon Frisby, aka Mr Joy, has published Hordes of Orcs via NYC game publisher Freeverse, and we've got a few more tidbits of Unity-related news online. Full details are available on the Widget Monkey Games News page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml Widget Monkey Games have added some extensive updates to the website in recent days including a large number of news items, links to upcoming games and free Unity games online, news about the development of Widget United, and lots more. Full details are available on the Widget Monkey Games News page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml While the development of our first game title, Widget United, is moving slower than we'd anticipated, we're now 95% code and function complete and will begin internally tweaking gameplay and the game's variables by the end of December. This means that sometime in the next month we should be offering the game to out beta testers for final fixes and a release date should follow shortly afterwards. More details are available on the Widget Monkey Games dveelopers blog page. http://widgetmonkeygames.com/dev_blog.shtml When Orcs Attack is the ultimate "tower defense" experience developed by Mr. Joy (Jon Frisby). Deadly hordes of Orcs are invading and you must stop them. Build your defense towers to keep them at bay and foil their nefarious plans! With 5 fast-paced ways to play, five types of devastating towers, four powerful spells at your disposal, and four challenging game modes with a huge variety of gameplay you have all you need to save humanity. Can you do it? Find out now! The free online version is featured on shockwave.com as Epic Tower Defense. Full details are available on the Widget Monkey Games Unity-made Games page or the Free Stuff page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/unitymade_games.shtml Steve Allison-Bunnell and the guys over at eduweb have finally released a standalone demo of their upcoming educational game, Wolfquest, for Macs and PCs. The first full version of the game will be released in December of 2007. WolfQuest is an innovative new project that brings the immersive, compelling drama and action of video games to informal science learning while creating a model for nationwide distribution. Designed for players age nine to adult, WolfQuest will teach wolf behavior and ecology through its exciting gameplay and intense social interactions. Full details are available on the Widget Monkey Games News page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml Back from a highly successful Unity game engine conference in San Francisco, we have loads of people to thank and some observations about how great the Unity game engine really is. Widget Monkey games has also extensively updated our Partners and Links section, and also have added four new free web-based Unity games to the Free Stuff page. A great update to the site with full details are available on the Widget Monkey Games News page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml Over the past week(s) we've been redesigning the Widget Monkey Games website with a new business purpose in mind. Since we have been embarrasingly unsuccessful at selling other developers games, but hugely successful at generating buzz for our own upcoming titles, showcasing fellow Unity-based game studios and developers, and widely promoting the Unity game engine in general, we figure that that's the way to go with the site. Our three goals for the new site are: 1. Creating and selling our own games, 2. Showcasing the very best examples of Unity-made games created by other indie game studios and developers, and 3. Promoting the Unity game engine. Full details are available on the Widget Monkey Games News page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml The top five finalists in Unity's Top DOG competition have now been announced from a great field of candidates. Full details are available, including both the list of finalists and the complete list of entries (with cool screen shots), on the Widget Monkey Games News page http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml Sector3 have released a new version of Turret Wars (1.6) with lots of new features and updates including store rotation now also stores and resets your velocity, HUD enemy turret info during projectile flight, projectile target view in bottom left camera during projectile flight, and more. A new demo version is also avaialble. Full details are available on the Widget Monkey Games News page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml Mondo Robot, a Denver, Colorado-based creative and game development studio headed by Unity forum guru Charles Goran, have finally released their wildly fun mini golf game, Tiki Magic Mini Golf through New York game publisher Freeverse. Lots more info on the Widget Monkey Games News page. Tiki Magic Mini Golf is mini golf like you’ve never seen it! It’s a fantastic 3D adventure! State of the art graphics, compelling game play, 3D sound effects and an original score combine to create a fun and fully immersive Tiki experience! http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml If game developers thought the current version of Unity was great, OTEE have simply blown the doors off everything with the announcement that Unity 2.0 will be available this August! And the feature list and power available in the coming version are beyond even what I had hoped for as a long-time Unity supporter and user. OTEE have been working on version 2.0 for more than two years and their extraordinary efforts show. This is simply the greatest affordable game development tool available anywhere. Unity 2.0 will provide developers more than 50 new features including terrain egnine and editor, real-time shadows, built in scalable multiplayer networking, new system for rapid GUI development, and many more. Lots more info, links and screen shots on the Widget Monkey Games News page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml Shooter in the Abstract, an unusual (in a very good way!) simple little shooter arena game created by Warren over at Wanton Hubris, is a oddly cool, addictive game whose goal is basically just try to stay alive. You can play it online on the Widget Monkey Games Showcase page, or download standalone Mac or PC versions. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/showcase.shtml Sector3 have released a major new version of Turret Wars (1.5) with lots of new features and updates including full scoring stats. Some of the updated features include shield bunkers that enable turret shields, the ability to collect mega blast power-up bunkers and use when desired, and a new extra difficulty level - "Bring it on". Full details are available on the Widget Monkey Games News page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml Chocolate Castle, the latest award-winning game from New Zealand developer Lexaloffle (Jospeh White), is now available for sale on Widget Monkey Games. Full details are available on the Chocolate Castle game page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/game_chocolate.shtml Sheeplings by Swedish developer Karjasoft is now available for purchase our online store. Sheeplings sells for US$19.99 and full details are available on the Widget Monkey Games online store page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/online_store.shtml Sector3 are pleased to announce that they have released their first maintenance release of Turret Wars. The main update in version 1.2.1 is that the environment maps have been increased in size to reduce texture stretching. There are also a handful of other minor bug fixes in this update. Full details are available on the Widget Monkey Games News page. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml Sales of Sector3's Turret Wars version 1.2 have started today, May 18. Turret Wars 1.2 is priced at either AUD$19.95 or $9.95 depending on the license. This version brings numerous updates to the original version and I'm thrilled to be able to partner with Sector3 to distribute Turret Wars. Go buy a copy today! I've also launched a RSS news feed that summarizes the items on the News page as they're posted. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/online_store.shtml Unity Invaders, a delightful recreation of the 1980s aracde classic, has been posted on the Showcase page. It's a simple and maddingly addictive version of the classic game, compete with scoring, retro sound effects, and immersive gameplay. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/showcase.shtml Forest Johnson has been kind enough to allow me to host his award-winning game Megapixel on the Showcase page. Megapixel is a wildly fun, techno-beat abstract first person shooter that features exciting and challenging gameplay, crazy-awesome abstract graphics made out of particles, and 8 bit type sound effects. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/showcase.shtml Are you ready for the fluffiest game ever? Sheeplings by Karjasoft will be coming to the Widget Monkey Games store soon. In the game you assume the role of Windsor the sheepdog as you encounter logic puzzles, stubborn sheep that need to be moved, hidden powerups, hungry eagles, bothersome bandits, and much much more in this non-linear adventure. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/news.shtml Sector3 Games has announced that they are working on an update to Turret Wars. Features planned for version 1.2 include armour power-ups, megablast power-ups, bonus point targets, two extra levels, varying special features for each turret type's projectiles, and a special bomber flyover dropping bombs on the play field at random intervals that you are able to shoot. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com/unitymade_games.shtml#turret Widget Monkey Games has launched! I hope to make this a premiere website that a develops, publishes, and distributes casual, creative, fun-to-play family-friendly games for Mac and PC. http://www.widgetmonkeygames.com