We’d like to say a big thank you to the people at EA that helped us along the way: James Wright, James Dillon, Ed Rumley, Cristian Radulescu, Catalin Pica, Adrian Mocanu, Daniel Smaranda, Cristian Sadean, Surendar Modugu and George Ivanel.

We’d also like to thank John Steels for enduring the art asset production!

Most of all, we’d like to thank Andy Kerridge at Kadikoy Media for being _stupendously_ brilliant, caring so much about making the iOS port the definitive version.

Welcome to our sexy new ident courtesy of John Ray via Wired Sussex and the Sussex Internship Programme

John worked for a couple of weeks investigating visual styles as an appropriate ident for our games. We think he’s done a great job, and is now working on something a bit longer for us…

Thanks John!

We’re approaching a point in the development of our Space Shooter game where the rest of the music needs to be written!

Since I’m going to be writing and producing the music for the game, I thought I would let anyone interested know about an EP I produced anonymously that was published around this time last year by Pure Substance Records.

The EP is called Otherspace, and features a sci-fi cinematic set of sounds.

It was also reviewed quite highly by Coke Machine Glow, which was nice

If you like what FuturLab is doing, check out the EP, and let us know what you think of the music, as there will most likely be a similar flavour to the soundtrack in our game!

Hope you like it

“There are young kids out there that have been doing this since they were 10, and I couldn’t compete with that”.

When I was 24, I set myself some goals; things that if I didn’t achieve by the time I was 30, I’d do the decent thing, and end the misery.

There are many people that feel like this. Perhaps openly, but most probably secretly. I’ll call us types the Crippled-By-Ambition-Folks (CBAF).

CBAF have very high expectations of themselves, and are quite possibly considered more than a little talented by their friends and family.

Of course, CBAF are highly critical, not least of themselves, and if CBAF don’t feel like they’ve accomplished something by a certain age, they might as well not bother trying, “cos there are young kids out there that have been doing this since they were 10, and I couldn’t compete with that”.

Obviously many CBAF never get started doing what they want to do, because they are overcome by an abundance of self critique at every step.

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Orbital, Flashback, Back To The Future, Thunderbirds 2086, Predator, Aliens and Turrican 2.

These have all in some way influenced the design of our new game, and to explain how, here’s a breakdown:

Thunderbirds 2086

This was easily my favourite cartoon on TV when I was a kid. I can’t remember a single plot line now, but I couldn’t get enough of the futuristic intro sequence with the animated vehicle schematics. When we got our artist drawing up the pilot, ship and schematics for the teaser puzzle, this intro video was the main point of reference.

Name Our Game

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This post is for the people out there who desperately want to have a breakthrough of some kind, whether it be for games, music, writing, sport, business, whatever.

For many years I spent most of my time focusing on what I wasn’t good at. I started FuturLab in 2003 and spent at least 3 years chasing my tail trying to improve our portfolio so that people would take us seriously.

When I’d finally plucked up the courage to reach for what I wanted in 2007, and we did our notorious pitch to Sony, they weren’t interested in the 30 or so projects in our portfolio – they were interested in what we were showing them – raw.

Of course we didn’t actually get the project, but it did open a door for us. I then spent another two years fretting about having the ‘right’ first game. I was heartbroken when our music game was cancelled, because I was sure it would be our breakthrough.

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