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2020 has certainly been a year for the books – earlier this year, we decided to move our team to home working. This is the best option to keep everyone as safe as possible, and we’re extremely fortunate that our business can be run from home – as long as we have a computer and the internet, we can make games and support our customers from anywhere! So we left our Peter Andre cut out (don’t ask…) to take care of the office and gathered up our computers and supplies!

There was a lot to get used to at first – not seeing each other in person was strange, so we’ve been catching up over instant messages on Slack instead. We’ve had to adjust to making sure we keep each other well informed via Slack too, since we can no longer use nerf darts to attract each others’ attention! And we’ve all had to set up our own mini office spaces at home – we had to improvise in places, and some of us had to quickly pop back to the office to fetch some things we’d forgotten!

One of the big positives of working from home, aside from keeping safe, is that many of us have new furry companions to keep us company – sometimes they even try to help us with our work!

Although it’s been a big change, we have all settled into working from home now, and found that using the right tools helps us communicate with each other really well!

After a break last year, we decided to head back to Center Parcs for our annual festive outing this January.

We were excited to try out one of the new escape games they’ve recently added called ‘Escape the Forest’. The story starts when you discover some secret information in your late grandfather’s journals and if you do well you might escape with some treasure!! Following the storyline and challenges made us reminisce about some of our earliest puzzle adventure games.

We split into two groups to compete against each other, with Graeme and Greg heading up the teams, and Graeme’s team narrowly clenched the win; both teams were quick, but Graeme’s completed the challenges just a couple of minutes quicker!

Over the weekend, we also enjoyed walks in the forest, trips to the pool and spa (including lots of rides on the rapids!), a couple of lovely meals at Las Iguanas and Rajinda Pradesh, and an archery session with Lauren winning a 2nd place certificate ?

Before Christmas we also had our annual Secret Santa gift swap, as well as a Christmas dinner at The Old Fire Engine House in Ely, which after two visits is now becoming a new tradition! The food was delicious, and the company was great too!

This summer we decided to try something slightly different as a group social and visit a theme park!

We chose the nearby Thorpe Park for a visit, which features plenty of thrill rides to keep us occupied all day!! We got to enjoy lots of roller coasters and other rides throughout the day, and there wasn’t even too much queuing!

The park features the fastest roller coaster in the UK, Stealth, and it was definitely a fun experience! It goes from 0-80 mph in 1.9 seconds.

We also really enjoyed SAW – The Ride, a coaster with lots of twists and turns, Rush which was like a very, very big swing and Detonator which lets you drop from a great height!

Photography taken at Thorpe Park by Daniel Lewis.

Photography taken at Thorpe Park by Daniel Lewis.

It was a really fun and different thing to try as a social, and we were certainly ready for a rest by the end of the day! We may have given ourselves a taste for adrenaline, so perhaps you’ll see us at another theme park next year!

With more and more gamers using multiple devices to play casual games, we’ve recently taken our first steps into the world of Facebook Instant Games.

Facebook Instant Games is a platform that allows players to play games across their devices, be they computers, phones or tablets, with a cohesive experience across the devices. With Facebook Instant Games, there’s no need to install a separate app for each game you want to play – they can all be played within the browser on a computer from the comfort of your News Feed, or from within Facebook Messenger on mobile. You can also embrace the social side of games by sharing what you’re playing with friends and family.

So far, we’ve brought two of our games to the Instant Games platform – SUDOKU plus is a completely free game, with a plethora of puzzle types and difficulty levels. It’s super simple to jump into and play, with intuitive controls and tools to help you play in the way you like best, so why not give it a go today? Play here, or search for SUDOKU plus on Messenger.

We’ve also created a new Instant Games version of our newest release, Pixel Tap. If you’ve been wanting to try out Pixel Tap but haven’t got round to installing the app, this is the perfect opportunity to give it a go! Play here, or search for Pixel Tap Colour by Number on Messenger.

For our now traditional post-Christmas Christmas do, we took a trip to London this month!

First off we took on The Crystal Maze Live Experience. Based on the TV game show which many of us remember fondly from our childhoods, our team had to travel through different themed zones (the Aztec zone was our favourite!) and complete physical, mental, skill based and mystery challenges to earn crystals.

We don’t like to toot our own horn too much, but it’s fair to say we smashed it, collecting ELEVEN crystals – our host said eight was a good result, so he was very impressed with us! Our team name was “The Cat Stretchers”, named after Graeme’s love for gently stretching his pets*.

Unfortunately, we didn’t triumph in the Crystal Dome, where we were pegged to the post by another team who had some questionable help from their host, but we won’t bring that up, since we’re not sore losers…

We had a brilliant time in the Crystal Maze, and we all got involved in trying out the different tasks and helping each other with advice shouted through the little windows. We also only had one lock in (a word of advice – try not to send the clumsiest person on your team in for a challenge which involves lots of balancing)!

After a quick freshen up we were ready for some food, so we headed to All Star Lanes on Brick Lane. We enjoyed a delicious meal including amazing maple wings and probably the best mac ‘n’ cheese to have ever existed. We also got to try some delicious cocktails with fancy toppings and pun filled names.

After the meal, we enjoyed a game of bowling (of which Greg was the deserving winner) and then a session in a private karaoke booth! If you’ve followed us for a while you’ll know that Rock Band is always a hit at the office; singer is always the most sought after role, so you can imagine how much we enjoyed this part of the night! We covered lots of the karaoke classics like the Grease Megamix and Total Eclipse of the Heart, alongside some of our personal favourites (did you know that Backstreet’s back?).

It was a very fun day, and a great way to relax after a busy year with several new games released. Here’s to a brilliant 2019 and many more days of fun!

*No animals are harmed in the pet stretching process.

As well as Catastronauts, 2018 saw us launch two new puzzle games!

In September we launched Just Jigsaws, and it was followed in December by Pixel Tap.

Just Jigsaws is a new jigsaw puzzle game; it can be played across desktop and mobile devices. The game has thousands of beautiful puzzle images and lots of new features – you can choose the number and style of pieces to play each puzzle in, create your own puzzles and use the ‘piece heap’ feature to sort pieces as you go along, and you can also play offline on mobile, making the game perfect for long trips!

Pixel Tap is a colour-by-number game with lots of different styles of artwork to suit every taste! From simple and cute pixel style patterns, to detailed larger patterns with thousands of blocks, you can choose your favourite packs to add to your collection. The relaxing gameplay has you fill in the squares by number with different colours – you can also choose the style of the blocks, and just like with Just Jigsaws you can play across desktop and mobile, and make your own patterns!

You can try out Just Jigsaws and Pixel Tap from the links on our homepage.

We’re super excited to announce that Catastronauts will be blasting off on Nintendo Switch on 24th December (EUR/ANZ) and 3rd January (NOA)! To get ready for this much awaited release you can check out the trailer below to remind you of the interstellar chaos, testing challenges and frantic fun which you’ll enjoy in Catastronauts!

We know lots of Switch fans have been very eagerly awaiting the game’s release, so we’re really happy to be able to deliver this for you! Now, you’ll be able to take on attacking invaders wherever you are! We’ve also enjoyed the excuse to play lots more Catastronauts as part of our Switch testing.

Will you and your friends save the galaxy? Enlist in the Nintendo Switch eShop on 24th December and 3rd January! Or you can already pick up the game on Playstation 4, Xbox One and Steam for PC!

Follow Catastronauts on your favourite social media to stay up-to-date with all the latest news and developments.

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This year we decided to kick off our Christmas festivities and get into the Christmas mood with a proper Christmas dinner!

We headed to a local restaurant, The Old Fire Engine House, which is inside a lovely, homely Georgian building that used to house a horse-drawn fire engine at the turn of the century. We enjoyed a lovely three course meal, with nuts and oranges to finish. We shared some very, very bad but good cracker jokes, and Richard was the victor in the unspoken ‘who can keep their paper crown on the longest’ competition!

After the meal, we headed back to the office to exchange our Secret Santa gifts!! They included some Harry Potter Lego, some cute animal socks, a Halo and Fallout themed t-shirt. We were all very happy with our lovely presents. We followed up the exchange with our much anticipated ‘Cola Taste Test’ – we stocked up on as many varieties of cola as we could get our hands on and undertook a blind taste test. It’s fair to say the confidence with which some players entered the contest was somewhat unwarranted… it’s hard to tell the difference between Cola when you’ve tried five types very quickly in a row! However, there were some impressive deductions, with Greg correctly identifying which two were the full sugar branded colas! Graeme managed a score of zero, which in itself is impressive, and everyone had started to pay great attention to the subtle differences in the sound of pouring cola by the end of the challenge.

We ended the afternoon of fun with a traditional quiz, with rounds including Christmas movie clips, Christmas dingbats, identifying books from short extracts and general trivia. We also had a visit from some Catastronaut friends – Sarge and our cold-blooded recruit came along to enjoy the quiz with us!

It was a fun afternoon, and we’re going to be carrying on the Christmas fun in January, with a trip to take part in The Crystal Maze Live Experience in London – stay tuned to find out how we get on!

EGX is the UK’s biggest games event; this year it was held in Birmingham from 20th – 23rd September and we were lucky enough to get the chance to show off Catastronauts there!!

Needless to say we were very excited, especially with the event falling so close to our release date (28th September; that’s tomorrow!!!). We assembled our space crew, gathered our equipment and headed off to the NEC!

The event was huge and we managed to get a prime spot, near to the entrance with lots of space for our newest recruits to gather as they try out the game. And it certainly lived up to our expectations! The stall was very busy throughout the event; we started off well, with with lots of people popping by to check out the game based on Eurogamer’s recommendation in their video which was playing in the lobby. Thanks to the team for their shout out!

We saw lots of great teamwork and strategising throughout the event, along with a few minor arguments concerning who decided to shut the safe room door and leave their friend to burn to a crisp in the heat of a solar flare – but most groups managed to make it up before the end of the demo 🙂

As always, we like to give a little shoutout to some of the other awesome games which we spotted while at the event. Here are some of our favourites:
+ Double Pug Switch, a challenging platformer where you play a pug in parallel dimensions
+ Heaven’s Vault, an adventure game where you get to decipher an entire ancient language
+ Obsol33t, a game where you take on the role of a hacker who uses a wheelchair in a futuristic but inaccessible city
+ The Bradwell Conspiracy, an immersive narrative-driven puzzler where you uncover secrets as you work to escape the complex of a company who may not be all they seem (plus they were handing out awesome Stonehenge hats!!)
+ Super Mario Party – we’re all huge Mario fans and, of course, we love party games, so this game was pretty much our ideal title!

We finished the event tired but very happy; we were thrilled with the awesome reception the game received! A huge thank you to everyone who stopped by to have a look or take a play, and if you didn’t get a chance to, never fear – you can try the full game yourself tomorrow on PC, PS4 and Xbox One!!

We’re delighted to announce that Catastronauts will be launching on September 28th on PlayStation 4, Steam and Xbox One! To celebrate this announcement, we’ve made a brand new trailer to give you a glimpse of the interstellar chaos, testing challenges and frantic fun!

Gather your friends and arm the torpedoes!

Catastronauts is a fast-paced 1-4 multiplayer action game in which players become a crew of intergalactic spacefarers who must work together to destroy an attacking enemy fleet, whilst frantically struggling to keep their own ship intact. Co-ordination, co-operation and decisiveness are essential to victory, as multiple tasks need to be taken care of across the vessel.

In addition to the regular occupational hazards, each level offers unique challenges and dangers to deal with including solar flares and malfunctioning extraction doors. Meanwhile a whole host of unique mechanics will keep even the most experienced crew members on their toes.

Will you and your friends save the galaxy?

Enlist now on Steam

Don’t miss out on a second! If you plan to save the galaxy on your PC, you can add Catastronauts to your wishlist right now by clicking here.

Coming soon to Nintendo Switch

Switch fans will not miss out on the mayhem! Catastronauts will be released on the Nintendo eShop in the near future so that you and your friends can take on attacking invaders wherever you are! Follow Catastronauts on your favourite social media to stay up-to-date with all the latest news and developments.

Follow Catastronauts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram