YoYo Games, the UK-based developer of game creation tools and leading mobile games publisher, is pleased to announce that it will be attending this year’s Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, which takes place between the 5th and 9th of March 2012. YoYo Games will be taking a stand at the conference’s expo centre and will be showcasing the latest version of its game development platform, GameMaker: Studio, with live demonstrations from YoYo Games staff.

GameMaker: Studio takes the ultra-accessible and extensible GameMaker environment to the forefront of modern smartphone and web-based game development with one-button publishing to export a single code and asset base to a wide variety of output formats. GameMaker studio will output native apps to iOS for iPhone and iPad, OSX, Android, web HTML5, Windows and many others, with Smart TV support also in development.

Sandy Duncan, CEO of YoYo Games, comments: “The San Francisco GDC is the most important game development event in the world, so we’re hugely excited to be attending as an exhibitor to demonstrate the power and versatility of GameMaker: Studio.” He continues, “We’re keen to show the entire game development community precisely what GameMaker: Studio is capable of and the immense savings in time and resource it brings.”

Mike Dailly, head of development, YoYo Games said: “Showcasing GameMaker: Studio at GDC will allow us to really highlight the benefits of the development platform we’ve been continually refining and improving over the last few years.” He adds, “We estimate that for cross-platform development, there’s an 80% reduction in development time when using GameMaker over native languages. We’re also proving the strength and versatility of our development environment with our publishing arm, which uses GameMaker to produce demonstrably successful games with lightning-quick development times. Reflexions was developed in-house, by a two-man coder and artist team, in just three weeks at our Dundee studio and it topped the Android charts on release.”

GameMaker: Studio builds on the ultra-accessible UI and drag-and-drop functionality of previous versions of GameMaker, including its internal image, level and code editing tools and includes an advanced scripting language for experienced developers.  GameMaker: Studio also introduces a one-click compiling feature that outputs any given project to a variety of modern destination platforms, including iOS, Android, HTML5, Symbian and many others.

Game Maker: Studio will launch, initially in beta form, in March 2012.

YoYo Games will be exhibiting at stand 2332.

For more information, or to make a booking at GDC, please contact:

MEDIA
Tony Coles, Peppermint P
Tel: 0207 240 2645
Email: tony.coles@peppermintp.com

Get immersed in this uniquely styled version of Solitaire. 

YoYo Games is pleased to announce that Simply Solitaire, our chart topping Solitaire title, is now available in a paid-for form without any in-game advertising as Simply Solitaire Deluxe.

Simply Solitaire Deluxe is a uniquely styled version of Solitaire offering players a natural card layout, feature rich content and polished visual style, making Simply Solitaire Deluxe the only Solitaire game players should have on their iOS or Android device.

Simply Solitaire Deluxe features:

• Universal Application: Optimised for your iOS and Android phones and tablets
• Portrait and Landscape mode
• Two game modes: 1 card draw and 3 card draw
• Customisable card backs, background and deck positions
• iTunes playback support
• In game stats and game centre support

Simply Solitaire Deluxe is available to download via iTunes and The Android Market from today and will be priced at £1.99 (UK), €2.39 (EURO) and $2.99 (USD) according to region.

YoYo Games are delighted to announce that five lucky people will be given early access to the Closed Beta of GameMaker: Studio this March. On the 1^st of March 2012, all those that have liked the YoYo Games Facebook page (www.facebook.com/yoyogames) will be entered into a prize draw to win entry into the Closed Beta of GameMaker: Studio.

Five closed beta invites are up for grabs and the winners will be picked at random and notified on the 2^nd of March. To qualify for the lucky draw, visit the YoYo Games Facebook page at www.facebook.com/yoyogames and click on like.

We are pleased to announce that Reflexions, our casual puzzle game is now available to download free-of-charge from the GetJar website.

Reflexions is a brilliant and beautiful neon puzzler that involves players rotating mirrors to navigate a ball of light around each level, whilst avoiding obstacles and collecting diamonds to proceed to the next stage. The game features 40 levels set across four worlds and 20 unique achievements to unlock.

 Reflexions on GetJar

Reflexions is also currently available on the Android Market and Apple App Store, priced at £0.69 (GBP), €0.79 (EUR) and $0.99 (USD).

Please welcome Nocturne aka Mark Alexander to the YoYo Games Team this week! Mark (previously a moderator on the GMC) has now joined us to 'head up' the documentation of all things GameMaker such as helpfiles, tutorials, demos and wiki.

Mark is a 39 year old computer geek from Scotland whose love affair with computers started a long time ago with the dear old zx81, Mark has had many jobs such as musician, croupier, photographer, bouncer... but programming has always been a passion throughout his life. Mark has been a strong advocate in using GameMaker now for a long time (even managing to actually make a game or two!) and an active and valuable member of the GMC for a couple of years. So much so that we didn't want to lose him entirely on the forum so we made him an Admin :)

Please give him a warm, official, community welcome!