It’s taken us years to solve this particular anagram, but we did it!

After four long years from its initial inception, Quarrel is finally released! This should qualify us for the Duke Nukem Forever Delay Award (at least in the downloadable game sub-category), but we believe Quarrel has been well worth the wait.

So unless you’ve already stopped reading this to rush off to the App Store to buy the game, here’s why you might want to rush there after you’ve done reading this.

If you’re completely new to Quarrel, it’s a game that mixes Scrabble with Risk and adds a dash of Countdown as wells as a heapful of lovely Denki spices and flavours for that little extra zing!

You’d be well within your rights to think that this is just another word game app, but Quarrel is really a digital board game (we even made a board game version of it!). What I love about board games are all the plastic and cardboard bits and pieces that come together to form something fun to play with. That’s what Quarrel feels like. It’s not clinical and clean but full of fun details that fill it with character. It looks simple at the outset but it’s got a world of nuance and strategic depth for those who really get to know it. And when it comes to graphics and sounds, it must surely be the richest word game app out there, right?

We’ll also provide you with plenty to play! It’s got 12 interesting island levels that challenge you with different strategies; nine outstanding opponents who all have their distinct play styles and human personas; 8 select sets of little troops that fight for you; four pleasing play modes that will make sure there’s something to suit your whim whether you’re looking for a 5-minute game or a 2-hour marathon; and over 40 admirable achievements and a dozen lively leaderboards to challenge your friends on.

And all this fun is refereed over impartially by Collins Official Scrabble Dictionary, so you can be sure every word in the game is, in fact, real.  That means no one’s cheating, even when they’re using words you’ve never heard of before.  And all the definitions are in there too, so who knows, you might learn some new words too!

All of this is hours and hours of play (not to forget the ever-fresh Daily Challenge that provides everyone with a new scenario to challenge themselves with every single day), so there’s plenty for the price of 2.99£ / 4.99$ / 3.99€.

To me the absolutely best feature is being able to tweet the results of the quarrels, so you end up with tweets like “I beat Dwayne’s HAT with my BAT to win a quarrel by 1 point!”.

SEXY beats TAXES every time

Even if PEN isn’t mightier than SWORD in this game, you’ll get a lot of fun by crushing a DAM with your HAMMER or defeating HATERS with THANKS or a YACHT or even with HAMSTERS! Look for the hashtag #quarrel on Twitter to see what weird, funny or poignant combinations people are coming up with.

Or if you’re more into Facebook when it comes to social interactions, you can post and boast about your achievements and islands conquests or challenge your friends to beat your Daily Challenge result.

I’ve loved every minute of helping to make Quarrel. I’m going to buy it and get all those achievements and vie for the top leaderboard spots, even though I’ve already done it several times over while playtesting. There’s something in Quarrel that makes me smile, and I know it will do the same for many of you too.

And if that still doesn’t convince you or you’re bit more cautious with your wallet, why not try the free version?

See you on the leaderboards! Or, if you’re going to PAX this weekend, check out booth #3833 (between Sega and Square Enix) and play Quarrel live!

P.S. We also got a nifty FAQ ready to answer all your Quarrel-related questions!

Eevi

There’s a buzz of excitement at Denki Towers as we prepare for a big date. The long-long-long-long-long-long-loooooooong promised funky news is finally here:

Quarrel makes its public debut on 25th of August!

That’s when it will actually, honest-to-goodness, honestly, REALLY be available to buy in the Apple App Store.*

So by this Thursday you could be playing Quarrel! The years of anticipation don’t make it any easier to wait for a few more measly days, but stay patient and good things will come.

And because good things come in pairs, so does Quarrel! So when you tap or click away into the AppStore, please don’t get confused when you see Quarrel and Quarrel Deluxe – they are merely two sides of the same coin.

Quarrel caters to those who are new to our lovely word game or otherwise want to try it before buying it. If the trial pleases you and your budding interest turns into a real love for it, you can upgrade to the full Quarrel extravaganza within the app with one easy In-App Purchase.

Quarrel Deluxe, on the other hand is suited to those who already know that this is the one true soulmate for their iOS device. These app twins have absolutely the same content, plus both are universal and support iPad native graphics.

So, ready your iOS devices for Thursday and get ready to Quarrel!

Eevi

* FACT, fact fans!

Denki Blocks! continues to infiltrate the downloadable markets. This time our much-loved puzzle blocks slide towards the Android, specifically, the new Sony Ericsson Xperia Play device.

So worry no more, PocketGamer, your pleas have been heard!

Imagine: you can enjoy Denki Blocks! on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, PSP, PS3 and now Android – that’s a lot of devices! It’s a real pleasure to see the game on so many platforms (and still there are cries for more!). The joy of sliding block puzzles belongs to everyone!

So if your loved ones or neighbours have been fuming with jealousy while you’ve been playing Denki Blocks!, please let them know that the Android version is here. Over 100 mind-tingling puzzles of guaranteed Denki quality are within their reach for the price of £3.99!

The game is currently available for the brand spanking new Xperia PLAY but will be rolling out across more Android devices in the coming weeks. Enjoy!

Eevi

P.S. The so-long promised funky news? See update here.

I hope you’ve all recovered from your St. Paddy’s celebrations, because Denki has more reasons for you to put your party hats on and rock, pop or twist and shout your way through the weekend!

Cricket fans have a reason to smile today (even at strangers). This goes for not only fans of team England but fans worldwide as Big Cup Cricket multiplayer update has hit the App Store!

But here at Denki we’re never satisfied just fulfilling people’s expectations; we need to exceed them. So included in this long-awaited multiplayer malarkey is a team editor, so you can customise your favourite team or just give them all funny names (at least, that’s what I did). And as a luscious cherry on top of this dream ice cream, you can get the game at measly 59p until midnight! So go and get it while it’s hot! Though in the case of ice cream, it should probably be cold.

Another reason why many have been looking forward to this Friday (I’m not gonna even link to that video) is that Denki will hit its tween years this Sunday! This 11-year-old has made so many great games, and I think the best are still to come. Here’s the compulsory picture of our birthday cake, courtesy of our very own kitchen magician and games boffin, Gary Penn. It just looks too good to eat. We might just have to frame it and put it up on the wall.

And that’s not even all the reasons why Denkians are celebrating! It’s like good news on top of good news on top of good news… and we can still to go deeper! But we can’t reveal it quite yet. I know how you feel; it’s just like watching this video. For a long time nothing seems to happen, but you know something is going to happen soon and the anticipation is about to make you crack. Only then will it hit you – and it will hit you like a truckload of boxing gloves.

So this is my convoluted way of saying that the funkiest of the funky news promised by Sean will still have to wait just a liiiiiittle bit longer. Good things come to those who wait, so just hang on – we’ll let you know as soon as we can! Because once you hear the news, it’s going to make you go like this.

Eevi

Another good end to the week - Juggle!, Denki’s new arcade game, launches on the App Store today, exactly one month after launching our first game, Denki Blocks!

If you haven’t heard about the game yet, Juggle! is Denki’s heartfelt tribute to the classic arcade games we grew up with. It’s a trip back in time to the origins of arcade games that captures the 1970’s vibe, but we’ve enriched the experience with some contemporary twists like friends leaderboards and achievements. Personally, I find the resulting blend absolutely intoxicating – the good kind of intoxicating – and at only £0.59/$0.99 it’s much cheaper than a bottle of beer!

Here it is in action:

As Gary explained earlier in his “Getting Juggly With It” article we wanted to design a game that could have existed from the earliest days of video gaming, with the intention of evolving it through the decades later if it proved popular with players. The idea of iterating the game design and aesthetic “live” (so to speak) by delivering Super Juggle!, Jugglinoid! and finally Juggle! Evolved is exactly the sort of thing Gary and I have been excited about trying even before we started Denki. The infrastructure to deliver that in any sort of commercially appropriate way simply hasn’t existed until very recently, but now it’s here we can’t wait to see how people react to the approach.

I’ve always liked Bat and Ball based video games since I first played a clone of Pong on my family TV back in the late 70’s (I’m not *quite* old enough to have played it in the arcade!). We had one of those TV entertainment systems with four variations of Pong, called Tennis, Football, Hockey and Squash. However, my favourite was always the rather overlooked “5th Mode” – Practice. It was always a hassle trying to find someone to play with, so instead I spent most of my time inventing fun new games I could play on my own with the Practice mode. Of course, all that practice eventually made it even harder to find someone to play with!

When my brother bought a ZX Spectrum there was a Bat and Ball game called Thro’ The Wall included on the Horizons demo tape that came with it.  Needless to say it quickly became my favourite.  Thereafter I started tracking down Bat and Ball games wherever I could find them.  Arkanoid was a revelation for sure – the addition of power-ups made for an interesting twist, although I could have lived without the story to be honest…

I played many versions of Arkanoid and its sequels over the years, from the Spectrum in the 80’s through to the Commodore Amiga version in the early 90’s, but that was pretty much it.  No one else seemed to be doing much that connected with me after that.  From then on games became obsessed with 3D and anyone who’s tried to play a Bat and Ball game in 3D will know that’s one D too many. My fellow Denkians kept suggesting new Bat and Ball games for me whenever they found them, but none of them ever met my expectations.

It wasn’t until Reflexive released their amazing Ricochet game for PC during the early Casual Games revolution back in 2004 that I rediscovered a Bat and Ball game that met my requirements.  The elegant and subtle controls coupled with contemporary 2D styling and tastefully appropriate audio reinforcement was exactly what I was after.  I’ve lost count of the number of hours I’ve spent playing Ricochet and its sequels since then.  It’s right up there with the Diablo series for me.

So I think it’s fair to say I’ve become something of a Bat and Ball game connoisseur over the years.  Which makes Juggle! all the more exiting for me, because as well as being Denki’s first arcade game for the App Store, it also happens to be my perfect Bat and Ball game for iPhone – double win!

What do I like about it in particular?  Here’s a few things:

The Bat: So often it’s the bat that lets these types of games down, and it’s usually because the designer has tried to be too clever about how the ball bounces off it.  Anything too precise feels weird or unpredictable and that makes it unsatisfying to control – I need to be able to direct the ball reliably.  Pretty fundamental stuff, but all too common I find.  With touch interfaces, designers tend to implement a 1:1 ratio between finger movement and bat position.  That sucks.  The upside is that it feels immediately intuitive for new players, but it quickly becomes tiresome having to drag your finger from one side of the screen to the other all the time.  Juggle! amplifies finger movement so you can play for extended periods without finger ache.  It’s a little trickier for the first time player, but the trade off is a much better experience for long term players who are challenging for high scores – just like a classic arcade game.

No bricks: As much as I enjoy Breakout-style games I’m not particularly interested in removing bricks.  My primary enjoyment is simply keeping the ball in the air, but that gets boring quite quickly.  So when Gary came up with the idea of continually introducing balls in to play and reducing their size with each hit, that sounded like a great Twist.  A Bat and Ball game that didn’t need bricks to keep me challenged and interested?  I’m in!

The Time Limit: Although we have an endurance game that allows players to play as long as they like (assuming they can keep up with the increasing ball speed) it was the three and five minute time limited games that really appealed to me.  I often find myself with a few minutes to kill while waiting on a bus or standing in a line, and the thought of having a Denki Bat and Ball game that would fit neatly in to those odd moments really appealed.

The Scoring: The way Gary’s weighted the scoring (you basically score more for juggling more fast small balls for longer) means that there’s enormous scope for players to compete within very short time scales.  Even after weeks of internal testing we’re still beating each others scores in the 3-minute game, and at no point has someone sent me a score that I’ve thought I had no chance of beating.  Most importantly though it feels good – when you’re having a good game, juggling lots of small balls simultaneously, your score racks up really fast.  It always feels like it’s my fault when I get a crap score, but conversely when I get a great score I feel like it was entirely my l33t 5k1ll5 that delivered it.

The Way I Can Influence The Pace: As much as I enjoy playing short games for high-scores, I sometimes enjoy playing with the toy without worrying about the points I’m racking up in the game.  Endurance mode allows me to do just that.  It keeps spitting new balls at me every four hits or so, but I don’t *have* to hit them.  So long as I keep one ball in play the game continues.  If I want a relaxing game with a single ball I can have that, but when I get bored and fancy more pressure I simply start trying to juggle more balls.  And when it gets too much, I get rid of them and go back to hitting my single ball around the screen.  I can make the game match my mood.

Leaderboards and Challenges: Racking up a big score in Juggle! feels great, but dropping that score right on the front page of your friend’s iPhone by issuing a Challenge feels even better.

So, as you can see, there’s lots of things I like about Juggle!, and hopefully some of them might appeal to other players too.  To finish on though, I thought it might be worth pointing out what I don’t like – just to bring a little balance to proceedings:

Paddle: Despite what Gary, the rest of the team and Wikipedia tell me, it’s a bat.

No Options:  Gary’s a big fan of having no options in games.  I’m not.  I’d like to be able to switch the clock in the timed modes to the other side of the screen so I can see it better (I mostly play left thumbed).  I’d like to be able to adjust the sensitivity of the bat so I have to move my thumb even less to cross the screen with the bat.  I’d like to be able to turn off “Levelling Up” and “Ball Size Decreasing” so the game stayed easy for as long as I want if I’m not after a challenge.  And I’d like to have the option to use Bbmaj7(add9) as the chord the balls build into instead of G major, because I think it creates a more harmonious windchime effect.  But as Gary says, we could add all that, but it would take us more time – better to release it now and see whether anyone thinks it’s worth adding those options.  If it proves popular enough we can easily add them in a future update.

Hmmm… he has a point.  <grudgingly> I suppose </grudgingly>.  So if there’s anything else you’d like to see added or amended in future updates be sure to let us know and we’ll add it to the to-do list.  Right after mine, obviously

In the meantime I hope everyone has as much fun playing Juggle! as I have.  I’ll see you all on the leaderboards!

Colin.

—

Denki’s in-house games boffin, design guru, official games legend and colourful trouser aficionado, Gary Penn has been interviewed by games trade journal, Develop.

As part of the magazines on-going FAQ series, Gary answers questions on the way of Denki and his thoughts on city-based sandbox games – alongside many other info-dense nuggets of game wisdom.

The whole interview contains Gary’s thoughts on games, other developers, favourite TV and film – and a little song – because that’s our Gary.

We’re very proud!

Gary Penn’s description on Wikipedia is “official games legend”. It’s satisfying to see the words sit there next to his name, untouched, unquestioned by the site’s moderators who are more than happy to fight bitter ‘edit wars’ with Scientologists, Star Wars fans and Tories.

Penn is a legend. He’s one of the founding fathers of game journalism (in fact, the very first GMA Legend award winner).

Now go and read the rest of the piece and leave lovely comments.

-Brian (@flackboy)

It’s true – not content with collecting a whole lot of really useful feedback on Quarrel from people at the recent ProtoPlay event, this weekend we’re taking our roadshow to the national tournament of Scrabble players to let them have a play too.

The tournament is the main event in the Association of British Scrabble Players’ calendar: not only will it find the country’s best Scrabble player, but it will put forward the UK’s wildcard entrant into the World Championships later in the year (in Malaysia, no less). We’re sponsoring the tournament, and hopefully collecting yet more really useful feedback!

The tournament itself isn’t open to the public, but you’ll be able to watch here.

We’ll let you know how it goes!

-David

10 PRINT “Hello World!”

Yes – you’re quite right.  It’s taken a lot longer than we hoped to launch our new website but, as you might have heard, we’ve been hard at work making our latest Denki Games all the more awesomer. We’ll be revealing more about Quarrel and our soon-to-be-announced Wii game over the coming weeks and months, but suffice to say they are both turning out fantastically well so far.  Although…  as Denki’s #1 Fan I suppose you’d hardly expect me to say anything else, would you?  But it’s all true!

Rather than keep the holding page up indefinitely, we decided to launch this Beta version of our new website and live with it for a bit. We’ll be adding to it from time-to-time as we work towards making it a truly Denki experience.  So if you notice any “undocumented features” during your visit, do please let us know.  Don’t assume someone else will do it – please get in touch! ‘Tis the Denki Way!

Anyway, welcome one and all!  We’ll be posting regularly about the games and what we’re up to, as well as other things that take our fancy.

-David