You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into.... the Wraith Games blog.

Sorry, had to do it.

Hello everyone! This is going to be a fairly quick blog post. We're currently neck deep in crunch mode for Collapsus. Yup, that's right. Just a couple weeks and it will all be done. After that we're heading over to PAX East to show it off and meet with all you nice people. Now, this is actually the very last post I will be doing alone on the blog. Starting next week, our 3D Art Director Steve Dorgan will be taking the first week of the month over, 2D Art Director Lance T. Miller will grab the second, Programmer Natalie Wahl takes the third, I will stay on for the fourth, and the fifth will be a special guest spot (whether that's from inside the company or outside, that will depend on how we feel that month). This means that the blog will be returning to a weekly format (obviously) like we did in 2016 rather than monthly. To be honest, running the blog weekly by myself was just a bit too much, so I dropped it down to monthly.

Anyway, one of the big things that made this possible was a complete overhaul of our website. That's half of what this post is about (and you just thought it was one of my infamous typos, didn't ya?)

We're no stranger to website redesigns; we basically do it every few years. This version, however has more content than ever before!

This brand new version of the site has the blog, as well as space for the vlogs and podcast (both coming soon), a new merch store, new contact forms, more information about the business, space for studio info (like, the physical building) and team bios (both coming soon as well), gallery, events calendar, and even independent pages for our games (with playable versions, micro galleries, and FAQs)!

This is our most fully featured to date!

Speaking of the podcast (seamless transition, Jay, seamless), we have the other half of the blog title: "SOUND"!

While the first episode has yet to drop, I just wanted to take a bit of time to talk a little about the brand new podcast: "Two Devs and a Dude". We'll be recording every other Sunday and posting after that sometime (real specific, I know). For that, I'm going to be joined by Grant McClure of the "GameOver GameOn" podcast and Cajun Coding of the "IndieView" podcast! The first episode in the month will be the three of us and will be us discussing various gaming news and the second episode of the month has us (joined by a guest seat) having played a game earlier in the month and then we get together and talk about it. It's kind of like a book club, but for games! There will also be points where other Wraith team members will step instead of me, but at least for the first few episodes, it will be me all the way (especially with the rest of the team finishing things up on Collapsus).

Look for it very soon!

But yeah, like i said, it was a quick one this time. Well, it's back to Collapsus crunch for me! Now to not sleep for another couple weeks (uuug). Until next time!

First blog of 2018 and it's covering the first event of the year, too! We've just come back from Ohayocon! This was the first year of their Indie Game Showcase and all-in-all it was a HUGE success... so let's talk about it for a bit, shall we?

Believe it or not, Ohayocon was actually the first convention I ever went to back in 2007 (a couple year's after Wraith's founding). I mostly remember that trip being a bunch of people and then it was over (but also that I had a pretty great time). This year was no different. Well, I guess it was a bit.

Unlike the time I'd gone before, we were mostly in one room for the whole thing. The wonderful new "Indie Game Showcase" run by our good friend Griffin Voyls (who also runs Kabo, and who we met at UD Con... then later introduced us to the Galatune team at Matsuricon). Small world, huh? This was an idea they had been brewing up for a while, and the amazing execution shows!

A Galatune Mufen, with a Wraith Games neckerchief (made by Griffin)

Alongside us, we were joined by our friends from events past, Galatune (right next to us, for convenient cross-promotion), Flyover Games, Bowlcut Studios, Todd "cred" Barchok, Deckpoint Studio, and a new face: Dump Trump.

We also ran into our friend Katie aka Elentori (artist for Multivarious) and she gave us some lovely prints of her work. We were hoping to have seen her and the rest of her team as part of the showcase, but it seems there was a bit of a double-booking situation or something. Hopefully they will come in full force next year!

The turn-out was GREAT! Of course, what else would you expect from one of (if not *the*) largest anime conventions in the state? As per usual, people loved Collapsus as well as all the other great games the other teams showed off. Some of our team members even got to help out Galatune since we've become so familiar with the game's mechanics.

During all this, I was also able to step out and have a few meetings with some people. Vague, I know. Let's just say that these meeting were directly about collaborations as well as our very own event happening soon!

Anyway...

Like I said, this was a great event. Remarkable for a convention that hasn't done this before. I can only speculate how they'll up their game next year!

So yeah. Next time: A post about the new website and the podcast (the first episode of which should be finished recording by the time it comes out). Cheers!

Wow! 2017 was a HUGE year for us! Even wist the rest of the world outside these studio walls not doing so well, in here everything's coming up Milhouse! With this post, I wanted to take a trip back through the year and a brief look forward into next. It's been an eventful year, so I hope you're all comfy! ALL ABOARD!

Events: Everyone knows that we do a lot of events every year. This year was no exception! It saw us at: "UD Con" and "Municipal Brew Work's Saint Patrick's Day" in March, "Vector Conference" in April, "Future Awesome Camp" in June, "Indy PopCon" in July, Matsuricon in August, both "GDEX" and the "Kentucky Fried Pixels Launch Party" in September, "Pop-Up Con #2", "Kabo", and "Lexplay" in October, and "PopUp Con #3" in November! Holy cow!

On top of that, I also gave talks (a couple being Skype-based) at "Louisville Makes Games", the "Fairfield Rotary Club" and the "West Virginia Game Developer Expo" as well!

Now, I bet you're asking yourself, "which event was the best"? Well jokes on you: we don't do that around here! Ultimately, big or small, long or short, high budget or low budget, we love all these events equally! Events like these are an opportunity to show off our games, make new friends and fans, han out with firends and fans from events past, and give cool industry talks... you just can't beat that! As hokey as it may sound, no matter what event we're at, we'll be having the time of our lives because of all of you!

Press: This year was also a GREAT year for press! We got to be on NPR's WVXU twice, on Fox19 here in Cincinnati, over on Louisville's WHAS11, in the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Journal News (a few times, in fact), and a digital piece by Dayton Daily News! We were also interviewed for a few blogs, podcasts, and Collapsus was even streamed a few times!

All-in-all, I think that the message of Collapsus and Wraith was really spread this year! We can only hope it will be even more so next year!

Awards: This is pretty near and dear to our hearts. While we did secure "Best Overall Game of Indy PopCon 2017 - 2nd Place" from Slickster Magizine, the award that sticks out most was the AbleGamers' "Most Accessible Game of GDEX 2017". I know I already talked about how important this was to us when I blogged about it before, but I just have to say that this feels like one of the most important things we've ever earned and it will be our mission to make sure we keep living up to it (and even surpassing ourselves) year after year!

Studio: Oh, yes! The studio! 2017 saw us go from a ~300 sq/f box to ~1800 sq/f! While we're still not done with it, it's allowing us to all work there more often, do in-house recordings, have meetings, store our equipment, and all of that other wonderful "we have space"-stuff!

It may not look like much now, but 2017 planted the seed of something huge!

Collapsus: The very end of last year (December 27th, 2016) gave birth to the rise of the Collapsus "Weekly Builds". Now, AS of Dec 27, 2017, there are, in fact 27 builds (28 should be out when this gets posted). That's basically 1 build every 2 weeks. Sorry about that! Both mental and physical health of team members, events, other projects, and school could be to blame; but they're not. That's squarely on us.

However, these builds have done what they were intended to do. Now all the Challenge (formerly Special) modes and Plus modes are done (bar some tweaking here and there), over 200 (out of 300) puzzles are done, the Puzzle Maker has been added, many accessibility options have been integrated, almost all the soundtrack is in, so many graphical and bug fixes (as well as game-play tweaks) have been implemented! It's a MUCH bigger game than it was back in 2016.

Because of all this, it was Steam Greenlit (and the, of course, Greenlight died not too long after), we became Sony and Microsoft licensed developers, and even made the PC builds public for that sweet, sweet HD action!

Collapsus is wrapping down internally; our to-do list is getting small and smaller, to the point where soon nothing will be left to do but ports and translation. We're still aiming for a Q1 2018 release and judging by our to-do list, you'll see Collapsus out in the wild very soon! We still have a ton of new surprises before then, though, so stay tuned!

Other: 2017 was an awesome ride! In addition to all those "normal" things, we started work on the app for Galatune, an awesome card game (as well as started talks with other tabletop games people about making their apps/games a digital reality), we worked with a handful to both start and/or make their game development programs grow, we finally printed shirts (then sold out of them) and made a partnership with our friends at The Monetizr to handle our merch, and some more things I'm probably forgetting about! 2017 was a busy year, wouldn't you say?

So what does next year look like?

Well, we will be bringing this blog back to weekly (with the help of some other team members), bringing a podcast to life (with the help of Grant from "Game Over Game On" and Cajun from the "IndieView Podcast"), and vLogs, dev/art/gaming streams.

We'll be finishing up Collapsus, and working on Cave Worm, Burst Lancer, Jet Pack Hero, Radarkanoid 3000, Physix and more! We'll also be working on launching our very own event here in Hamilton!

The studio will be theoretically finished up, the new website (and online merch store) will be launched, and (of course) we'll be going to TONS of events as well! So... same old biz.

What was your 2017 like? What are you planning to do for 2018? Let us know on our Facebook or Twitter! Until then, see you all in 2018 time travelers!

Hey everyone! Tragically, I'd already written up this blog post and then the gods of hubris swooped down and wiped it... so here we go again! Anyway, We've had a lot going on this past month, but none of it would be enough to make a full blog post about, so we're going to a bit of house keeping in this one! Buckle in!

For starters, in Collapsus news, this month saw the release of the long-awaited Puzzle Mode update. For those of you who don't know, Puzzle Mode is a mode that contains 300 single-screen puzzles that you must clear with a limited number of breaks. Puzzle modes have been a staple of great puzzle games almost as long as there have been puzzle games at all. My personal favorite is from Tetris Attack, aka Panel de Pon, aka Puzzle League (MAN that series has WAY too many names)!

All of our puzzles are hand-made by our very own Kristy Iwema. She started doing a few of them way back in the early days of Collapsus on paper, then eventually moved on to a notepad doc, and until recently, used MS Paint to design puzzles. With our decision to include an online Puzzle Maker, she decided to switch over to the same tools our players would be using!

The only problem is that with all this new content, some of it was bound to break. Luckily Mark was able to patch all the bugs and Kristy was finally able to release the first 80 of her puzzles a few days ago (with only a couple week delay on the update)! With each weekly build that will be coming out now, we will also have several new puzzles for you to sink your teeth into!

Other than that, we have a few things that need to be done before we can ship Collapsus out the door:

- Saving
- 2 Challenge/Plus Modes
- More puzzles, Daily Puzzles, Puzzle Sharing (+ Puzzle Mode additions)
- Leaderboards & Medals
- Tutorial
- More accessibility options
- Languages
- Porting
- Bug fixes & other minor tweaks

Considering what we've already done it's not a whole lot left to do. We're trying to get Collapsus finished up as quickly as we can without sacrificing quality, but you can bet we'll have more news pertaining to release very soon!

Other than that, one of the other thing's we've been working on is the studio expansion/remodel/renovation. not much to say on it other than it's going well... but you can bet we'll have a TON of new on it after the first of the year!

Now, in addition to our physical renovation, we're also making HUGE updates to our site! The new version of our site will feature more company info, team bios, playable embeds of some of our games, a home for our new podcast, vlogs, & streams, as well as our brand new merch store and more!

With the studio remodel, the new website, and finishing up Collapsus, it feels like when we started the rebrand in 2014! It's really exciting!

Now, you read that right: our podcast, vlogs, and art/design/dev streams are nearly ready to launch! The podcast is aiming to be started early next year. We'll be playing games & talking about them, talking about events & Wraith updates, and just palling around! It's planned to feature one of our team members (usually me), and 2 of our friends from a couple other podcasts (official announcement as to who, soon) with a rotating 4th featuring a new special guest each month (devs, press, streamers, and the like).

Likewise, the vlogs will be launching around the same time, but those will be more like video extensions of our pre-existing blog. It'll feature events, remodeling, and just us talking while at the studio. Mostly news and "life at the studio" stuff!

Speaking of the blog, here very soon, the blog will be back to being weekly (probably after the first of the year as well)! Since we're pretty close to getting all the team in the studio full-time in 2018, the plan is to split writing duty, I'll be taking one week and 3 other team members take the other weeks. We'll give an official announcement as to who soon!

2018 looks like it will be a big year for us! With Collapsus finishing up, we're going to try and get Cave Worm and Burst Lancer out next. We have plenty of other surprises up our sleeves as well. We're just glad you've stuck with us while we grow!

Well... until next time!