Category Archives: Development Update

The Not-So-Big Sleep

Alas it’s been a while dear readers. I’m afraid… Of the dark. I thought I’ll just put that out there.

So, like the acidic fire water the Alchemists deemed special, The Dangerous Kitchen are back—not sure how that relates, but whatever.

First of all, it’s taken a long time, but by what seems like sheer unobtainable and bizarre luck, Valve decided to accept us in their somewhat steamy company and so… we’ve been Greenlit! We almost forgot about it and then bam, it’s happened. Thanks to all those who voted and shared and generally existed in a manner that allowed the universe to Greenlight us.

Domo Arigato Mr. De Mambo

After the glory of the Tokyo Games Show last year, we realised we crave more! More! MORE! And so, The Dangerous Kitchen are heading back to the land of the rising sun, to exhibit De Mambo at TGS 2016. We really have to thank our publisher, the great Chorus Worldwide for again giving us this immense opportunity. We can’t wait to go back to Akihabara—I mean TGS.

Oh and I suppose we should mention that after a lot of back and forth, pizza-eating and general trials of power that tested our mental, physical and spiritual worth, Chorus have decided that we are worthy of being published in Asia! De Mambo will be seen loitering in Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan at some point down the line so look out!

Pizza

Since we’ve had a few complaints about how our updates are too pizza focused and there’s not enough game content, well, luckily for you, we don’t listen and so here is a poem dedicated to pizza.

Pizza, I love you and I always will your bewitching base, is the earth we stand on and your sensual sauce, the fire Prometheus gave to us, your captivating cheese is the very sun shining down on us. I love you pizza, and I always will.

For L.R.G My Star, My Perfect Silence.

New Stuff in De Mambo

So De Mambo… The one game that will rule them all. We have some new content to show you guys, so without further ado, another poem! Just kidding…

We’ve changed up single player mode into something a lot more flawless, and victorious… Instead of the ol’ ‘Zelda II meets Wario Ware’ pitch of yore, the new single player—whilst still retaining the Wario Ware—is a lot more combatant, especially for mortals. The original design for single player is something we want to keep for Super De Mambo, as it will require a lot more planning and thought to get perfect.

De Mambo’s ‘Solo Mode’ is a thrilling Science Fiction action adventure that instead of taking you across the galaxy and to fascinating alien worlds, you’ll climb some sort of impending tower of doom and experience various challenges—oh and lest we forget, there is an egg-cellent surprise at the end of this egg-citing journey!

‘Solo Mode’ will be inhabited by a heap of odd non-playable characters such as the endlessly useful and all-purpose ‘Traffic Cone Turtle’, a true marvel of games design. Hit the ‘Traffic Cone Turtle and watch it squirm!

And introducing, this character who has no name! Such a brutish brute, this fellow will rush at you full force until it brutally bashes you away!

We’ve finally reached the end of this behemoth update, so for those of you who made it all the way to the end, congratulations on wasting your life.

Farewell…

Through the Looking-Back Glass.

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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.

Out of the Fire and into the Frying Plan

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Welcome to the latest edition of myself rambling on about some kind of Dangerous Kitchen and that crazy dance game called De Mambo. A lot has happened since we last met, but at the same time… absolutely nothing has happened.

The End is Nigh

Anyway, I hate to say it, but the end is near. It’s the end of the beginning of the final stretch… of the final stretch, to be more precise, so we still have a long time before we unleash De Mambo upon the world.

Since the end of Kickstarter, we’ve been really busy planning on how to create a 51-carat solid-gold pizza, that is indeed edible for those of us with animal teeth—oh and planning the final game, obviously.

Currently at 14-carats and inedible.

Planning the final game is hard. No longer can we haphazardly run amok with our decisions. Everything needs to be efficient and outlined before we even start to build the final game.

Currently, we’re working on our un-patented ‘Blockpendium’ trying to come up with as many new blocks that we can. Some of us like to shout out random words and watch the others squirm as they try to come up with justifiable gameplay function; as who doesn’t love the idea of a concrete-squirrel-octopus block and need it in the game!?

GameCity De Mambo

[su_video url=”http://thedangerouskitchen.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/IMG_6635.mp4″ align=”center” width=”100%” max width=”90%” poster=”http://thedangerouskitchen.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-12-08-at-15.01.57.png”]

A GameCity exclusive – Broken TV Mode!

On Halloween we ended up exhibiting De Mambo at Gamecity and met some amazing people, like Peter Harries from Butcherlab working on Theo and Lizzy, Nick Holder from Badger Hammer working on Idioctopus and Geraldo Nascimento working on GunKatana.

We also had the pleasure of being interviewed by the great Keith Stuart from The Guardian, which you can listen to here!

Farewell—oh wait, one more thing! We’re heading back to EGX Rezzed in April 2016! I can only imagine the improvements we’ll have to show you then, so until next time… stay fresh.

Take a look at EGX’s announcement of our existence here!

Things we love this month…

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Xenoblade Chronicles X
One Punch Man
Costa’s Festive Drinks
Splatoon
The Bridge III
La Forchetta’s Pizza
Fallout 4

Nippon De Mambo!

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So it’s been a very long couple of weeks for us! The long radio silence was sadly a combination of spotty Japanese Internet—we couldn’t use 3G/4G either—and then extreme exhaustion from exhibiting and jet lag etc., but regardless, we must apologise.

We travelled to Japan on the 14th of September for the Tokyo Games Show, thanks to the wonderful people at Chorus Worldwide, to exhibit De Mambo in the Indie section. Let’s just say that our Japan experience was immense. As lame as it may sound, we really felt that Japan was our spiritual home.

As game designers—especially designers interested in Japanese games design—Japan was almost like a video game in itself. One example was the traffic lights, which had health bars that decreased to show how much of the green light was left. This most probably existed before games did, but it was fascinating to see such design embedded into Japanese culture. It really helped us feel welcome in such a foreign place.

At TGS, some of us were slightly worried at how the Japanese public would react to De Mambo, but thankfully, they loved it. We’ve never seen anyone pick up the controls so quickly before and reach such a good level of skill so quickly. It was honestly a pleasure to play De Mambo with everyone at TGS, as we had some intense matches!

Thanks to the amazing Ryuji at Chorus, we received a lot of attention from the Japanese gaming press, including Famitsu and 4Gamer:

http://www.gamespark.jp/article/2015/09/23/60409.html

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20150921_722209.html

http://www.inside-games.jp/article/2015/09/20/91430.html

http://www.4gamer.net/games/318/G031879/20150920024/

http://www.gpara.com/infos/view/27490

http://www.famitsu.com/news/201509/18088927.html

Finally, we’d like to thank all of our backers so much for supporting us! We’re now in the final stretch, so please share and spread the good word!

You can find our Kickstarter page at the link below:

kickstarter.demambo-game.com

Bit Trip Reminiscence

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So after a long week of meeting new people, having some rather glorious meetings and one delicious, mouth-watering pizza that I’m still thinking about… with the extra creamy buffalo mozzarella and the crispy thin crust and the fresh basil leaves—oh god! I’m sorry. It was a darn good pizza…

Anyhow, after a long week, I decided to peruse the 3DS eShop and see if there was anything my paltry £5 credit could buy. I was pleasantly surprised to see Rising Star Games had a sale and took the plunge on Bit Trip Saga on 3DS.

Runner will always hold a special place in my heart, but as I was playing it again, I became slightly emotional. You see, The Dangerous Kitchen was birthed around the time of Runner’s release, when we were plucky university students living in a dank student house, with tiny-humble dreams of world domination.

Notably, Runner was the first indie game we fell in love with, so we placed it on a towering, inspirational pedestal to gaze upon and aspire to. It was a great game made by three people, which at that time was fairly radical. Gaijin Games (now Choice Provisions) are definitely one of the reasons we started The Dangerous Kitchen all those years ago…

It was a really good point in our lives that was amplified by the religious playing of Runner for weeks after its release. You could go to the toilet and hear the sound of Anamanaguchi’s Blackout City trickling in from someone playing Runner elsewhere in the house. We enjoyed it as a group, just hanging out after University playing Runner, watching newcomers fail at timing the jumps on the stairs and everyone being utterly enthralled at Commander Video’s simple rainbow trail.

The reason I became emotional was that if we recall Commander Video’s story, Runner is where he takes his first steps, where he feels the pleasure of exploring life for the first time; he runs toward an unknown future, full of joy. This kind of parallels with where we were at that time: taking our first baby steps regarding The Dangerous Kitchen, sewing the seeds that would eventually sprout into De Mambo.

Playing Runner again just brought back all the memories and was especially poignant since we sort of managed to level up as a company this week. It’s funny how good things can make you look back to where you came from… but a good pizza can unstick you from the boundaries of space-time and show you the infinite possibilities of pure, conscious reality.

Yes, I really enjoyed that pizza.

Farewell.

From Premier Inn to Somerset House

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It was the night before EGX Rezzed 2015 and the frigid, cold air was strangely inside rather than hanging outside in its natural habitat. We couldn’t get our TV to work, felt intimidated by everyone else being more prepared and of course we were dead tired (yes, this is a Commando reference) from a general lack of well-being.

Our EGX build had some crazy graphical errors such as strange artefacts appearing, some translucent textures and washed-out colours, yet we didn’t care! The game played fine and that was something we were proud of.

The response at EGX was simply remarkable for us. No, we’re not bragging—well, not that much—but in all honesty, it’s remarkable considering our circumstances. As you may already know, De Mambo was built in a public place (Premier Inn) and yet the EGX attendees responded through smiling, immense laughter and the odd profane grunt. It felt good because it was a huge validation for a years worth of hard work and—more importantly—for a life playing videogames.

We spent a week recovering after EGX (as it was our first exhibition) only to be offered three months at Playhubs, a London workspace for game development located in Somerset House, London!

To go from working in a public place where you have to hide your food from the staff in fear of being kicked out and where shady, multi-level marketing folk bustle like cockroaches to working in the prestigious Somerset House is highly peculiar to say the least.

Currently, we are in Playhubs, absorbing all the free coffee we can, meeting new people and trying not to quit game development and become professional whiteboard artists.

See you on the other side.

Good news everyone!

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And yet, it’s come to this. After some hard and not-so-hard work, amazing people believing in us, and a bucket-load of blackmail attempts, The Dangerous Kitchen is going to EGX Rezzed!

Our smashing first game, De Mambo, is currently being worked on all hours of the day (mostly subconsciously as we sleep). We’re putting in our all, since this will be the first public showing, something that scares us more than a cheese-less pizza.

So please come down to EGX on 12-14th March and support us! We need you! And remember to give us a violent pat on the back if you happen to enjoy the game…

Yours terribly,

The Dangerous Kitchen

Good things are coming.

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It’s been a long while hasn’t it? Oh really, that long? It seemed like only a hot minute ago that we last spoke.

We’ve been busy I suppose. The product’s coming along just fine thanks, slowly but surely. The obscene lengths to which the ‘coder’ has gone to is something I daren’t even mention on these… public channels. All is well.

Good things are coming, I can assure you. Heck, I’m going to go on a limb here and just tell you. We are waiting for them to get back to us. The organisation that we mentioned in the last communication—the make or break guys—we’re waiting on their answer. No not ACN.

The thought of them allowing us to showcase our product is driving us profusely. I think this is really it. It’s about time! Next time we speak, the product may have broken into the public zeitgeist, god help them. You may even see it console you at some point in the future, if you get what I’m saying.

We’ve smuggled a little extract for you, which you can access below, anyhow, keep communication flowing and remember to watch your back. Godbless.

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://youtu.be/czskqr29-t4″]

De Mambo First Look Gameplay Trailer from The Dangerous Kitchen on Youtube.

De Mambo!!!!!

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Super Smash Bros for 3DS was our goal.

[su_quote]“Lets make a game before Smash—we so won’t be able to concentrate on making games once it’s out!”[/su_quote]

Yooksin, currently on hold, seemed like it would not be allowed to exist before October 3^rd. No matter how hard we tried to get it made, something always appeared to hinder its progress. It was too soon and so to fulfil our desire to have a game out by the release of Smash, De Mambo was born.

Although merely a demo, with a full release hopefully down the line, De Mambo was a phenomenal experience that increased our understanding of game development ten fold.

Fuelled by what scientists call ‘Pre-Smash Brothers Hypeitis’ we desperately laboured like the hardworking dogs we naturally are, to birth De Mambo.

Screened-shot of in-game De Mambo

We took the legendary teachings of Masahiro Sakurai himself and used them to deconstruct and rebuild to what we consider the essence of Smash Bros is. Like modern day video-game alchemists clad in un-ironed clothes and who take food prepared from home to places where they clearly sell food, we embarked on this outlandish journey.

Smash Brothers is something we dearly love. To see the people who make you happy, the friends you’ve worked hard to keep, the family who love you deeply, beaten to pulp and sent flying off the stage like the economic girly men they truly are, is heavenly.

Nothing compares to Smash Bros and the love Masahiro Sakurai uses to glue the game together. De Mambo is a homage to Super Smash Bros, to Masahiro Sakurai and to the love of video-games.

Please enjoy playing it… and try not to forget this game after Smash Bros for 3DS releases, unlike us who will be playing it constantly for the foreseeable future!

You can play the game online via our website and Unity Web Player HERE!

Please also enjoy some animated gifs of two of our team members Mambo-ing the hell out of each other.

More stages playable in-game!

Farewell…

The Smashpocalypse Cometh

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Image courtesy of the almighty Google and its omniscient reach.

Today, as a bearer of bad news, sadness fills my mouth with a phantom taste that resembles something… not so nice.

Yooksin is on hold dear readers. Repent! Repent your sins I tell you! The end is nigh!

Instead, we are hanging up the usual game development routine for a new life south of the border—and no, this has nothing to do with that armed robbery we may or may not have been involved in…

A short hiatus if you will, to brush up on certain code-like game development duties, gather funds and to rest (well, some of us) the brained, jellylike forms we’ve recently become.

In this short, mind development hiatal period and as a result of the oncoming Smashpocalypse, it has been prophesised that we must mark this occasion with our own Smash Bros like game. It seems this game has a mind of its own like some kind of spoiled brat that carelessly dreams of being all the Power Rangers at once. Not just picking one, like us normal folk.

Currently, it has no name and unlike the no-name archetypal character in Hollywood cinema, it is not purposeful—we just haven’t had that marvellous gut-punch of inspiration as of yet.

Yooksin will return; the tides of fate are too strong to disallow it not to.

Farewell dear reader and bless you (if you miraculously managed to sneeze as you read this).

//Disclaimer

Yooksin will never return and the creatively bankrupt Dangerous Kitchen are dead forever.