Hermitworks Entertainment Blogs

Every year during the summer months, a great horn can be heard sounding in the Northwest of America. Out of all mankind, only a few heed the call of this bleating noise and begin the long cross-country (And in some cases, continent hopping) journey towards its source - the Penny Arcade Expo. I went on behalf of HermitWorks to promote Space Trader. These are my expeditionary notes.

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The fated day has arrived! Space Trader is now available on our website, just waiting for you to try the demo or buy it! Are you a bad enough to play Space Trader? I wouldn’t doubt it!

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HermitWorks has been pretty silent on this blog lately - but we have a good excuse! We’ve been work hard at work finishing up Space Trader and getting it prepped for sale. Soon you’ll be able to purchase it online on select websites and online stores! In addition to that, we have some super secret Space Trader related deals brewing. So between the launch of our upgraded website and right now, what has happened?

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We’re very proud to announce the launch of our brand new (And still in beta) Space Trader website! As you can see it’s quite a departure from the previous website, and it has a ton of awesome new features and content for you to enjoy. Mark this day on your calendars, as PlaySpaceTrader.com will knock your socks off… and I guess you would want to know exactly what day your socks were knocked off. Before I extol the virtues of the new site, I would just like to point out that an exclusive Space Trader comic book has been produced by the HermitWorks Entertainment team, for your reading pleasure. I’m not going to mince words here - it’s the rudest.

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The fateful day has arrived, the one that mankind has feared for centuries. Nations would rise and fall, empires would rule and become humbled, but all in the shadow of this coming hour. Around the globe, when bell toll was heard, birds would fly in all manner of directions - their internal navigation insticts confused. Dogs barked, whined, and clawed at the ground. Grown men would burst into tears without knowing why.

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In a manner similar to how mighty Athena sprung forth from the forehead of her father, today we have released a new challenge for Space Trader! The first version of Free Trade has been released to the public. Althought it’s still in testing phases and a lot hasn’t been worked in yet, we feel it’s ready to show off to you fine people that are in dire need of more Space Trading. It features more of what everyone wants: More money, more combat, more levels, and higher scores. If you’re in the beta, you can head on over to try it out. In fact, even if you aren’t in the beta test you can head over to try it out!

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Ah, finally the last update in the iron man week. And it will be shorter than the update from yesterday, because I have things to do. Sometimes I think that I should continue updating this blog every day from now on, but I realize that’s an impossability. I have too much to do, too little time, and I can never think of anything game-related to write. What a pity!

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Short update today. Continuing work on the new Space Trader challenge. Office still empty. Loneliness setting in. I have begun to map out the most efficient route from my desk to the water cooler. As it turns out, pole vaulting over Matthew Regan’s desk is the best route.

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Wednesday has come, and with it more work on the latest Space Trader challenge. In addition, Matthew has been in the office working on LOD levels for our character models to make people on older machines happy. We’re a caring bunch, y’know.

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At the risk of tooting my own horn, and by association the horn of everyone working on Space Trader, I feel that the upcoming content that we’ll be sharing with players is shaping up nicely. Today I had the in-house testers run through the latest revision of Free Trade, and the response was favorable. We’ve taken a lot of the feedback we got from the Space Trader beta regarding what people like and don’t like and have implemented them in the Free Trade challenge. Expect more things that you enjoy, and fewer things that annoy.

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This week, more specifically Tuesday, over half of the HermitWorks Entertainment team left the vile clutches of Northern Alberta to head down to San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference. Everyone else is either taking the week off, or working from home.

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Well, we heard (through our crack-squad of underground rumor checkers) that the Great Games Experiment is opening up a few days early. Anyone reading this can avoid the rush and sneak in as of 12:01 Thursday. Space Trader is the featured game for the opening of the beta to the public, so we are thankful for the traffic (and testers) that the event will no doubt bring in.

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Space Trader is in closed beta now, and I’m ridiculously excited about that. If you haven’t yet signed up for a shot at it, head over to playSpaceTrader and get yourself set up. Don’t worry, we won’t shackle you or anything - that will happen plenty once we launch the game and grip thousands of people with addiction.

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We’re going to be entering closed beta very soon.

This excites and tickles me in new and exciting ways. Space Trader is my first actual title since beginning work in the games industry, and the experience so far has been exhilarating. Before working on Space Trader I’d lent my hand to open source projects like Freecraft, and later Stratagus, but working full time on a game project is a totally different experience.

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Most browser games suck.

That’s a generalization. There are some really amazing browser games out there that go above and beyond what people expect from a Shockwave of Flash based application. If you’re reading this and my opening sentence offends you, pretend what I just said applied to you.

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