Steve, Skye, Kaelyn and I are now fully recovered from our week at GDC. We're back working at the office, which Robyn did a fine job of ensuring that it didn't burn down while we were gone.

Super Motherload looked fantastic on the GDC Play show floor. We were so excited to have such a steady stream of people come by to play the game. We met so many people over the 3 days we were at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. What was really encouraging was seeing students from all across the country devoted to spending their spring break networking and gleaning information and inspiration from industry veterans. It's just nice to see that ambition and it's a great reminder of the feeling I had right out of college: excited and anxious to get started working on things I'm passionate about.

The game ran really smoothly with few, if any, noticeable bugs. It survived even the most ruthless and thorough tester who admitted he was "trying to break" our game. People usually stuck around for quite a long session when they picked up a controller, and play sessions lasted anywhere from about 10 minutes to a half hour. I'm pretty sure there was even a group of 4 that ended up sticking around for over an hour digging the crap out of Mars and getting into a groove with the gameplay: managing their team's upgrades, questing, and smelting alloys.

Our connected controllers would have a mind of their own sometimes and decide to take a break for a while and de-sync from the system that we were running the game on. Steve played tech support though and had us up and running at a moment's notice. Aside from that-everything ran quite smoothly!

GDC 2013 was really constructive for the XGen team. It was a week full of meetings, networking events, amazing food and good friends. We hope to do it all over again soon!

- Scott

And, as always, our Steam Greenlight page is located here:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetail s/?id=110294430

We're currently holding #52 spot on the Greenlight charts! Your votes and comments are much appreciated! Thanks for the support!

From Eric:

Hi again, I'm happy to be back sharing another song with all of you. It's been great getting such awesome response to the other two tracks. I can't wait for you to hear the entire soundtrack when you play through Super Motherload. Feel free to download this one along with the other two that have been posted at our SoundCloud page:

https://soundcloud.com/supermotherload

As the title of this track suggests (spoiler!), this will be the first piece of music you hear when you start digging into the surface of Mars, so I really wanted to help establish a sense of being in a sci-fi adventure. Please forgive me for trying to cram so many of my favourite things into a single song. A grandiose outer space orchestra theme, a Michael Jackson drum beat, an X-Files flute arpeggio... You know, the rudiments of Super Motherload music, right?

And, as always, our Steam Greenlight page is located here:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetail s/?id=110294430

We're currently holding #56 spot on the Greenlight charts! Your votes and comments are much appreciated! Thanks for the support!

We had a group of four young dudes test out Super Motherload on Monday night at the office. They seemed pumped to put the game through its paces and were absolutely absorbed in the game for a whole 3 hours. We received some great feedback which included an expression of their distaste for the extremely expensive "Bouncy Hull" special upgrade - sounds like there was some major buyer's remorse after that purchase! Cooperative play seemed to be the star of the show with this group. They enjoyed the puzzles, alloys, and the new combo system. There didn't even seem to be any glaring issues with the balancing or pacing which we've been tweaking ourselves in our office wide play tests we hold every friday afternoon.

It's coming along! We can't wait to show this thing off at GDC!

And, as always, our Steam Greenlight page is located here:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetail s/?id=110294430

We're currently holding #62 spot on the Greenlight charts! Your votes and comments are much appreciated! Thanks for the support!

Find us in GDC Play from March 26 - 28th in the South Hall, Gateway Ballroom, Moscone Convention Center.

This is a fantastic opportunity for us to show just how far we've come in a year. We were at GDC Play for the first time last year and the response we got was really encouraging and the play testing by attendees was extremely valuable in helping us focus in on polishing a few aspects of our game play which we think improved the overall design.

When we exhibited in 2012 Super Motherload was running in standard definition intended for the Wii, and WOW have things changed!

We have since revamped all of the graphics to run in full 1080p and changed our target platform from the Wii to PS3, Mac and PC. The game is no longer a simple demonstration build; the story has been revamped and all of the voice overs are complete. There's new music, new game modes an UI. Essentially every aspect of this game has been looked over since GDC 2012. It's amazing to think what we've accomplished in one year, and we're excited to present a near-finished version of Super Motherload this year!

The photo of Skye and I is from the photo booth at the Three Rings party last year during GDC. They have the coolest office! It's pirate themed! The entire office is dressed up to look like a pirate ship - port holes and all, and there's even a nice lounge area with giant plush octopus tentacles.

If you see a couple of dudes running around the show floor that look something like the image below (give or take the Groucho Marx glasses) say hi!

And, as always, our Steam Greenlight page is located here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetail s/?id=110294430

Your votes and comments are much appreciated! Thanks for the support!

Thanks to some loyal supporters of Super Motherload on Steam Greenlight you've unlocked Hardcore Mode!

Game play in hardcore mode is more inline with the original Motherload, once you die... you die. Just like life, Sonny Jim. This game mode isn't going to hold your hand all the way through so you best keep a close watch on your fuel consumption because, as we all know, engines blow up when you run out.

Thanks again for your continued support on Steam Greenlight.

Remember to vote! And while your at it throw us a comment or two!

Super Motherload on Steam Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetail s/?id=110294430

For some nostalgia... the original Motherload: http://www.xgenstudios.com/play/motherload

Original Sound Track: https://soundcloud.com/supermotherload

Whoa!

Thanks so much for the votes everyone! We feel extremely lucky to have such great fans, and the comments we've been receiving have been our motivation over the last several weeks! We rapidly climbed the Greenlight charts and have made it to the top 100 thanks to you folks! The top 100 is just the first step - to get Valve's attention on Steam Greenlight we are going to need as many votes as we can get, so keep spreading the word to your friends and your social networks and we'll keep pushing forward on finishing up the last few bits of this game!

We have a few exciting features to showcase in the coming weeks - so check back soon!

[Super Motherload on Steam Greenlight]

On Monday we got in contact with the folks at Rock Paper Shotgun and today we were pleasantly surprised to see a feature article on Super Motherload. Thanks to Craig Pearson for checking out our ever-changing demo of Super Motherload; we were excited to read Craig's impressions of the game as well as his helpful feedback on game play. We've taken these additional notes and incorporated them into our ongoing development and tuning.

I particularly like the way he describes bombs and puzzles as "dopamine-inducing" -

"Bombs aren't handy for general digging, but as you dig you'll unearth configurations of rocks that can only be unplugged with a directed explosion. There are shaft-bombs that let you blast upwards, and t-shaped bombs that can scoop out mid-shaft blocks ... the rewards are dopamine-inducing."
- Rock Paper Shotgun

Head on over to Rock Paper Shotgun to read the full article:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01/17/impre ssions-super-motherload/

Starting today, we'll be releasing a few free tracks from the upcoming Super Motherload soundtrack.

Between touring with Grimes' backing band Born Gold last year, and Born Gold's own European tour this year, Eric Cheng has been investing his scant time in creating a moody and atmospheric soundscape for Super Motherload with a tone befitting John Carpenter's horror sci-fi classics. Sporting instrumentation reminiscent of everything good about the 80's, coated in a slick modern patina, let's just say that Escape from LA has some fresh competition. Move over Russel Crowe; there's a new kid in town.

Click here to download the first track from Super Motherload's upcoming soundtrack.

Greetings Employee 1001,

We've launched a Greenlight Campaign for Super Motherload; you can head over to the Super Motherload Page on Greenlight to cast your vote and help us bring the game to the service.

We're over 50% of the way there, but we've got a lot of ground left to cover yet. If you want to see Super Motherload on Greenlight, you can help us out by Favouriting the game as well and by spreading the word.

We're running a KickStarter campaign for Super Motherload to help us cross the finish line.

You may be one of the many who remember playing the original Motherload on Newgrounds, Miniclip, or XGen Studios. We first released that game in 2004 and since then it has been played countless millions of times, and is still adored by fans around the globe.

Super Motherload is the 1 to 4-player couch co-op console sequel.

A considerable amount of work has gone into the development and production of Super Motherload to date. In fact, we have already spent two years developing Super Motherload. If you liked the original, help us to take a great game and make it incredible.

And, if you missed the news a few weeks back, you may be interested to know that Super Motherload is being upgraded to HD (Full 1080p) and is no longer destined for WiiWare. Fear not; Super Motherload will still be arriving on console, as well as PC & Mac, in the form of a digitally distributed title.