MADSOFT Status Board

Hey everyone!

I don’t think we’ve ever mentioned this, but inside the company, we use Applicom’s Apollo to manage all our projects.

Recently, they released an API and we decided to do something simple with it so you can all keep track of what we’re working on! That way, everything isn’t a constant mystery :)

Of course, there are a couple things we have to keep private, but at least you’ll get a general idea of where we’re at project-wise!

Go check out the brand new Status Board and tell us what you think!

2011: A year in review

This past year has been insane… Insane in all the great ways that accompany seeing your creations come to life and witnessing the beginnings of a truely awesome community. And insane in all the knuckle-whitening ways that comes along with deadlines, paperwork and living up to expectations.

At the start of 2011, we were just beginning to work on Project: Velyria, our very first venture into mmorpgs. There have been several hiccups along the development path, but we have pushed past these issues and emerged in 2012 victorious and almost ready to release the beta version of the game. We’ll update you soon with the new features and some new class and weapon artwork.

This year has also been awesome for Aikonia, our fantasy webcomic written by Timothy Hely and illustrated by the ever-talented Katie Tiedrich. We finished the first chapter of the story, we held several contests, printed posters, and saw our readership numbers soar. In addition, with the help of our great readers, we successfully raised an astonishing $10,000 to print physical copies of the comic through our Kickstarter campaign. We saw fans exchange theories, send in fabulous fan art and just generally create an inviting and entertaining environment. Things have been hectic getting everything arranged for shipping and printing the rewards from the Kickstarter campaign, but rest assured we are moving our butts to get you your rewards. You can expect the extra milestone page to be posted the first week of Aikonia’s third chapter this January.

2011 also marked the initial release of MADSOFT Connect, our community website meant to allow for fans to discuss our works in more detail. While not all the features have been made available as of yet (customizable avatars, trophies, and more are coming soon, promise!), we certainly encourage you to go sign-up for an account if you have not already.

We also managed to make it to our first convention as a team this year! Otakuthon 2011 in Montreal was a ton of fun and we loved meeting some of our readers and other webcomic authors & artists. We are making plans to attend more out of town conventions this year so keep an ear to the ground and an eye to the sky.

In-house projects were not our only focus this year however. Canned Meat Studios (the developers of Me and My Dinosaur 2) and Tile Isle (the developers of Space Chase) were taken under wing. You can look forward to the release of their flash games in the new year. We are very happy to be working with such talented and inspired individuals and we can’t wait to show you the games over which they’ve been slaving.

Of course, our most recent exciting and time-consuming change was  moving our company from the USA to Canada. Needless to say, igloo offices are far more cost effective and our local moose population hasn’t caused us too much trouble.

2011, like this blog post, has had its ups and downs. We hope that 2012 will be just as awesome and you, our fans and readers, will continue to be as supportive and wonderful as you have shown yourselves to be in the past. We hope you had a great holiday season and we’ll see you in 2012!