We haven’t updated the blog with some fresh news for some time, but don’t worry, we are still alive and working on something 
First of all we are proud to announce, if you haven’t noticed already, that Larva Mortus is available on Steam now. You can visit the game’s page here. The free demo is almost identical to the demo from our site, but the full Steam version contains support for several achievements. They aren’t anything extraordinary, but this was our first game for steam and we are happy we have been able to implement at least something for the release.
Being the first of our games for Steam, we are eager to see how big market is the Steam for independent developers like us. I would mention that few year ago we tried to offer Jets’n'Guns to Steam, but we were rejected. Maybe the Steam was not so indie-friendly that time. But the success (or failure) of Larva Martus will show, whether we will be trying to get more of our games on Steam.
When talking about reaching multiple platforms, I would like to say few words about our experience with PDA and Pocket platforms. Undercroft was developed only for Windows Mobile, while Archibald’s Adventures was ported for both Windows Mobile and old Palm OS. The conclusion is simple: we won’t be developing for Windows Mobile or Palm OS anymore. The old Palm OS is dead for some time, so I wasn’t suprised here (porting Archibald to Palm OS was because of nostalgia than anything else). But Windows Mobile was disappointment for us. Undercroft was not so bad, but Archibald’s Adventures was a flop. It’s a little sad for us because many limititions and restrictions in the game was caused by the requirement that the game must run on Windows Mobile. I don’t think that the main problem is in the game itself, but getting a game to customers is really hard. The web sites which sell windows mobile software are really terrible. The forms for uploading games were not working, no reply when trying to contact support, terrible documentation for developers, even design of the webs are often ugly. Now I know why Apple’s iPhone and App Store is such a success and everybody is trying to create its copy.
So no more games for Windows Mobile from Rake in Grass. We will see if Microsoft’s App Store (ups, of course I meant to write Marketplace will change anything, but I doubt it will change anything for us. I don’t think we would like to bother again with supporting several resolutions and different devices when we have iPhone with its simple OpenGL, hardware accelerated graphics and nice resolution.
So what’s coming next? This year will be probably “iPhone” year for RiG. We still have plans for some bigger game for PC (and we will see how the Steam will go), but we want to make some dent into the iPhone market as long as it is still possible for independent developers, before the market gets occupied by big publishers.
RPG fans should not miss our port of Undercroft for iPhone and iPod touch. It will probably take some time before the port is completed, because Undercroft was designed for 320×240 resolution and that is really small compared to the iPhone resolution so entire user interface and inventory needs to be redesigned. It is also possible that the game will contain update with new content, which was never released on Windows Mobile, but we are still not sure if this will come with the first release.
But the game which will be released before Undercroft and which is almost finished is Westbang. Inspired by some great games from 8-bit and 16-bit era, this is remake of Westbang game created by two of Rake in Grass members before the Rake in Grass was formed.
The main purpose of the game is test and finish our new small engine we are preparing for our next games. That’s the reason we have choosed not-so-complex game, but we hope the game will be funny anyway. The main gameplay is simple, but we concentrate on stylish atmosphere with gorgeous graphics and nice western music. The game will also include online top scores.
That’s all for now, have a great day!
Boovie…
