Thanks to our presence on WiiWare, we’ve met quite a few smaller developers around Europe, developing WiiWare games. So we’re friends with all the developers who made Toki Tori, NyxQuest, Heron Steam Machine, Diatomic, Bonsai Barber and Zombie Panic in Wonderland among other games.

Same goes for the guys who made Max and the Magic Marker. They’re a Danish developer called Press Play. We’ve first met them in Madrid, and we’ve been drinking beers with them ever since. When we first saw Max and the Magic Marker, we’ve been very excited to see what the end result would look like. And it does look good! A fun and charming platforming puzzler in which you solve puzzles by drawing. The lines you draw get solid and then react realistically to the ingame physics. So you can really let your creative juices flow. Actually, there’s even a imagination mode, where the whole world transforms into an awesome scribbly version of itself.

If you want to give it a try, they’ve put a demo of the game online right here. Highly recommended. But of course, that’s just a demo. The full game is now finally available for WiiWare. So if you like the demo, go get it!

If you haven’t connected your Wii to the internet yet, or know someone who hasn’t, you’re in luck! There’s a way to get Nintendo points for that, which can be spent on great WiiWare games. If you help someone get connected you both can get 500 points each. There are also other bonusses, if you connect 10 people you get all Nintendo made games for the NES, and if you connect 20 people you get all games for the NES, SNES and N64 systems! So check out the guide here, and get connecting!

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A new year, new chances, new games! But last year had some pretty good games as well. These are some of the favorites at Ronimo base, in random order:

Best renaissance simulator: Assassins Creed 2
With mercenaries and prostitutes at every street corner, weirdos running across rooftops and stabbing random people, the renaissance was apparently a rough time.
Best lack-of-Diablo 3 soother: Torchlight
It was a lot of fun while it lasted, but now the hunger for Diablo 3 returns stronger than ever. Playing an early version in Cologne didn’t help either.
Best exploding character: ‘Splosion man
One of the most frustrating game experiences ever created, but you just can’t resist the enthousiasm of the ridiculous ‘Splosion man.
Best use of a stretchable robot: Machinarium
If you’re stuck: stretch. Or squeeze. And marvel at the cool art, that always helps.
Hardest game to stop playing: League of Legends
You can hear it’s sounds of epicness blended with loud yells of victory and frustration coming out of our office nearly every evening. Promises of quitting are heard almost as often, but I have a feeling we’ll be playing quite a bit longer.
Best game by Ronimo: Swords & Soldiers
Ok ok, it’s also the only game we released, but we still reckon it’s pretty good.

Actually, according to Gamerankings, our game was:
-2nd all time Wii strategy game
(Behind Little King’s Story, beating Pikmin 2)
-10th 2009 strategy game across all platforms
(Behind games like Plants vs. Zombies & Warhammer 40k, beating great games like Fire Emblem & Anno 1701)
-3th WiiWare game
(Behind Lostwinds 2 & Monkey Island chapter 3, beating awesome games like NyxQuest & Bit.Trip Void)
-30th all time Wii game
-14th 2009 Wii game
-121 all 2009 game
-1274th all time game
-115th all time strategy game

So, there you have it!  Time to start 2010 proper with some new releases. Hopefully we’ll be able to tell you more about those soon.

Best wishes, 2010, it’s here… This will be the decade we’ll all be able to afford hovercars. We’ll have holiday resorts on Mars and robo-people to do our work for us (until they form robo-unions demanding no more robo-slavery)… Those 80s sci-fi movies can’t all be wrong right?

Anyway… This week the Swords & Soldiers postmortem came out on gamasutra. Go check it out!

As the design and coding team here at the office have let the freezing cold get the better of  ’em, the brightest and bravest of the art team are bravely soldiering on on our next game… But it won’t be long before we too turn off the lights, lock the door and feed the sharks (hammerheads offcourse, with frikkin’ lazers attached to their heads) for the last time in 2009, only to come back bigger and better than ever in 2010. 2009 was the year that saw Ronimo’s first commercial release, the first time we hoisted our mainsail, and set out for bright shores. We’ll be adding more sails to our ship along the way. Hopefully we’ll catch some good winds in 2010… Ok, that’s enough metaphore abuse for a day.

IGN is looking back on 2009 and compiling a list of Best Of 2009 Games. Swords & Soldiers scored runner-up for best WiiWare (gratz LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias!) in IGN’s editors’ awards. But IGN is also hosting voted awards! Cast your vote here (click “cast your vote now”). S&S is nominated for “Best Downloadable” in the Overall category, and “Best WiiWare” in the Wii category!

K, this is probably the last you’ll see from us on this blog this year, see you in 2010!

So, time to show you something I’ve made then It’s become some sort of tradition at Ronimo to let the art-intern make the Christmas-card. So the intern being me, I ended up making this years card. It took me way longer than planned, I had a bit of a hard time getting it right actually. But after some help Gijs gave me, I finally came up with the final result. I must say I’m glad how it turned out.

(Just don’t blow them fingers off with fireworks, because you don’t want to miss our next game )

Hi there, I was asked to write a blog-post this week. So… I’ll do that then! My name is Tim, and I’m the art-intern at Ronimo Games. I bet you’re expecting me to write something about being an art-intern at Ronimo, well then I’ve got news for you… I will!

Before I got here, I did some game-projects at school, and learned a lot there. I thought I knew what it was like to work on a full-fledged game-production… but boy was I wrong. There’s so much more than meets the eye when it comes to creating art for a videogame: aspect ratios, color values, contrasts, blurry details, whiney designers, know-it-all programmers… the list goes on and on. The concept-art phase is all without worries; just scribble down what you want and try to come up with a cool design for character X or vehicle Y. But once you have to prepare the in-game graphics for the design you made… Well let me tell you:

I was not prepared.

But at times like that I’m glad I got an internship at Ronimo, the other artists are always willing to help out with guidance, advice or tips. And thanks to that, I’ve learned so much in these last 4 months here. When I look back it really amazes me how much it really is. At the moment they’re still looking for new art-interns. So if you’re an art-student, want a chance to greatly improve your skills and get to know this bunch of raving lunatics; this is your chance! (No seriously… go for it!)

So, time to show you something I’ve made then It’s become some sort of tradition at Ronimo to let the art-intern make the Christmas-card. So the intern being me, I ended up making this years card. It took me way longer than planned, I had a bit of a hard time getting it right actually. But after some help Gijs gave me, I finally came up with the final result. I must say I’m glad how it turned out.

So on behalf of the entire Ronimo team:

(Just don’t blow them fingers off with fireworks, because you don’t want to miss our next game )

Last friday we headed out with a small gathering of industry monkeys (and friends) to the largest indoor ski resort in Europe to hit the slopes.

After gearing up it was time to slice the white powder.

Whilest everyone was taking it easy and trying not too hard to fall, one of us (JP) was hammering the slopes like a madman. When the rest of us strapped ourselves in at the top he would already be sitting in the Skilift heading up for his second run.
Being the good guy that he is, the veteran also gave us some nice tips on snowboarding and helped some of the beginners out.

We had SO much fun that we’ve already booked a snowboard trip and decided to make this a regular event with MANY more people.
Bottrop and Landgraaf are going to be our main targets for these events.
So if you are in the industry and want to join the fun just email Winterfun , dont worry about being a beginner (it is possible to hire a group instructor fairly cheap).

See you on the slopes soon!!!

As you might know, right now we’re working on our next game. It’s not anywhere near a state where it can be released to the outside world, but we do want to share with you a little bit what you’re in for. Now I could show you some work in progress screenshots or maybe a written explanation of the game’s mechanics, but none would explain as good what the game will be about as this video: