Hello again Backers and Friends!

We have several exciting announcements this week!

First off, your generous support and unwavering dedication to Axle has finally allowed us to set a release date for Android!

We are pleased to inform you that Axle will be available to download on your Android devices starting on August 17!

We will provide you with more information regarding how to redeem your free copy as we get closer to release. For those of you with iOS devices, don't worry, we will be releasing Axle on that platform shortly after.

Secondly, Axle has been nominated for Best Video Game by the Geekie Awards!Listed alongside us are Don't Starve, Octodad: The Dadliest Catch, The Banner Saga, and Outlast!

Tune in online on August 17 as our team walks down the red carpet at the Geekie Award Ceremony. We could not have gotten here without you!

We have also been invited to attend Gam3rCon in San Diego as both a panelist and an exhibitor. We will be at the convention from July 24 to July 27showing off Axle. Come say hi if you're able to drop by!

Thank you again for your support. We are excited to share our hard work with you so soon!

If you know of any festivals, conventions, or competitions you would like to see Axle at, please send us an email at [email protected]!

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please email us at [email protected] or visit us on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr.

Thanks again, everyone!

-The Axle Team

It's time again for another update!

Last week we were at GDC (San Francisco's Game Developers Conference). As always it was an amazing experience and a great opportunity to say hi to old friends and meet new ones.

It was truly inspiring to see so many innovative, fun, and beautiful indie games that are in production or have been recently released. Talking to other indie mobile developers was a fantastic experience and made it clear that there are many other people going through the same things we are. GDC was a welcomed break that left us refreshed and more passionate than ever to finish Axle and show it to the world.

The current alpha Axle build that we were showing around at GDC was extremely well received by everyone that played it. It was also good to get some more solid play testing at this stage in production. Some of our system iteration has finally paid off, and one or two designs are headed back to the drawing board- because we want to make Axle as good as it can possibly be.


What's New: As for progress on Axle, we just keep rolling content out!
Since you last heard from us we have:

• Put together a system to create parallaxing backgrounds so that we can give our worlds some depth. We're currently in the process of painting those and assembling them.

• Finished a first draft on some more levels! (You'll see this one a lot in updates, we've got quite a few levels each a part of a unique machine with different obstacles and hazards)

• Made revisions moving towards a final draft on our music.

• Started testing the build of our game on different mobile devices.

• Finished cutscene system implementation

• Finished the tutorial

• Added more particle effects. Because fire, electricity, and explosions make everything cooler, and easier to see on a small phone screen.

Here is what the vfx for a checkpoint will look like. When you reach a checkpoint, Axle will push until he can get the gears turning and power up the next part of the machine. (We will be doing another art pass on the checkpoint structure itself, and the gears will turn with you, but we wanted to show off the lightning!)

Production Schedule: Making a game, especially one unique and robust as Axle, takes quite a bit of time and dedication. Unfortunately we are a bit short on the former. Our small team has to be employed full time in order to pay the rent while we finish up Axle, committing everyone to a tight schedule of nights and weekends. We've accomplished an amazing amount in that time, but it does make production take longer than if we were able to devote our full time to only this game.

While production will not be finished in April, we will be working as hard as ever to get you rewards and finish Axle as soon as possible.

We've come up with a pretty exciting schedule of when you can expect to receive content and rewards from us:

• First, once we have received them from the various companies which we ordered them from, you will receive the first round of Rewards. These will include everything but the Soundtrack, Art book, Background Pack, and Beta Party.

• Second, once we finish polishing one of our levels that we want to see your response to, we will share with you a section of Axle, a small beta, for you to both sample and help us test.

• After that we will be moving towards the end of production on Axle. Once we have a complete soundtrack and all the art done, we will put together our background pack, soundtrack, and art book, and ship them to you.

• Finally, once we feel we have a well-tested project that will work on your phones, we will ship the Android version of Axle. Digital copies of the game, watts, etc. will be given out at that time.

• After the Android release we will be working on user support and moving towardsreleases for other systems like iPhones, Kindle Fire, Windows 8 phones, the Ouya, and so on. We don't have time estimates for these yet, but rest assured we will keep you updated!

We could not thank each and every one of you enough for your patience and support. All of you have been amazing so far and it has been incredibly motivating to make Axle as fun and amazing as it can be!

As we said earlier, we will continue to keep you updated with progress, rewards, and anything else we feel would be interesting or useful to you.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please email us at [email protected] or visit us on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr.

Thanks again!
-The Axle Team

Hello Folks!

This past month has been very busy for us! We're working hard to put together the reward packages, purchase software, and of course build levels and features for Axle!

We wanted to share with you that Fallstreak Studio is currently up for voting on the Big Reboot, a contest to equip small businesses with technology. The contest theme for this month is "Powering Good", and you can see our entry on how we plan to do just that here!

Currently, much of our funding from the Kickstarter campaign is going to software and hardware, though with your support and votes this contest could help us to get much needed supplies for our growing company!

Voting is super easy and requires no log in--just click the button!
It only takes a second to cast your vote! http://www.thebigreboot.biz/phases/6

The contest ends on Dec 25 so be sure to add in your voice before then!

Everyone on the Axle team would like to wish you a very happy holiday season!

Hello Friends!

This past month has been a crazy journey, and we are happy that you were a part of it! We raised $20,357 in 30 days, with the support of 303 backers! Not only did we meet our goal but we went above and beyond it--you guys are amazing! Thank you so much for your support, from your messages, to sharing Axle with your friends, to your donations. Every dollar means a lot, and we could not have gotten where we are without each one of you!

Even though we did not make our $22,000 goal to port Axle to iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, and Ouya, we still have plans to make Axle multi-platform. Though we cannot release Axle on these platforms at the same time as the Android release around April 2013, we plan on staggering our future releases as we are able to afford them. We did get very close to our $22k goal though, and that does help a lot. What this means is that we are that much closer to affording releases on other platforms, so again, a huge thank you for helping us with a significant step towards this goal!

Just because this Kickstarter campaign is over, does not mean we have forgotten you! We'll be sure to keep you updated on release date information, porting plans, the continuing development of the game, and whatever else we feel is cool enough to share!

We want to keep hearing from you too! Please, always feel free to contact us with your thoughts, concerns, or even just to chat!

In addition to messaging us on this site, you can also find us on:

Tumblr | Facebook | Twitter | [email protected]

Thank you again for your support and your generosity!

-The Axle Team

Hello backers and friends!

Join us from now until 6pm PST to celebrate the close of our Kickstarter campaign!

Click the link to the livestream here to ask questions and hang out with us as we celebrate the countdown!

Thank you everyone for your support so far! It's been great getting to know you over the last month!

See you on the livestream!

-The Axle Team

Hey everyone!

Today is our second of three livestreams for Axle!

We're livestreaming our Axle work jam until 2pm Pacific! Every Saturday we get together and meet about the production and design of Axle, check in on tasks, and get some work done. Today we're sharing that process with you! (Don't worry, we work on Axle every other day as well, Saturday is just our day for meetings!)


Click the link below to see us design levels, create art, and do all the other stuff we do for Axle!

Come visit, ask questions, hang out, and chat!

Hey everyone!

Short and sweet update tonight!

The Axle development team is currently hosting the first of our three livestreams for the weekend!

Our theme tonight: Video Games we love!

Ask us questions, request games for us to play and talk about, or just hang out!

Here's the livestream link! See you there!

Hello Backers!

Today, we are hosting an Ask Me Anything thread on Reddit with our development team!  We'll be taking questions about the game, behind-the-scenes, or anything else!  If you have any questions or want to chat, we'll be online until around 7pm PST!

DeltaAttack also wrote a great article about Axle, calling out some interesting points about our gameplay!

Thanks to your feedback, we have added a $35 Digital Only Reward Tier.  In it, you can get Desktop/Phone Backgrounds, Ad-Free Copy of Axle Game, $15 Worth of Watts, a Virtual Thank You Card, Downloadable Soundtrack and the Digital Behind-the-Scenes Art Book.

Thank you everyone for your continuing support as we enter our final week of fundraising!  Thanks to you, we have been making progress towards our stretch goal.  With your help, we can reach $22,000, and make Axle multi-platform for everyone!

Thank you,

-The Axle Team

One of our backers included Axle in his video series about kickstarter projects!  Axle is featured at 3:14!  Thanks Ian!

Axle also has articles in The Indie Game Magazine and on Polygon!  Check it out, and remember to contribute to our Kickstarter Project!

Hello!

First of all, I just want to thank all of you for supporting us this far! Your feedback and questions have been fantastic.  There are going to be some upcoming times for you to ask us questions and for us to get to know you coming up, so mark your calenders!  We will provide the links the day-of.

Reddit AMA on Sunday, November 11th 11am-6pm PST.  Ask us anything!

Livestream on Friday, November 16th 8pm-10pm PST.  We're going to be playing some platformers like Donkey Kong Country Returns, so let us know if you have suggestions!  We would love to give your favorite games a try!

Livestream on Saturday, November 17th 11am-2pm PST.  We're going to be working on the game.  See the magic happen!

Livestream on Sunday, November 18th 3pm-6pm PST.  The final countdown!  Tune and and cheer Axle on as the kickstarter finishes up!

Media & Blogs

Ian, one of our awesome backers included us in his video series!  (Axle is at 3:14)

Jan Norman at the OC Register featured us in Friday's paper!  We were on the very front page of the business section, and were interviewed about how we got started and how we are bootstrapping our business with the Chapman eVillage.  The story also spread toMSNBC, Businessweek, and the Dodge College Blog.

The Indie Game Magazine and Polygon wrote up some great articles on what sets Axle apart from other games right now!

The F***Yeah Electroswing blog wrote up a great (and funny) post about Axle, Kickstarter, and modern publishing.  (Not Safe for Work - Language)

As a side note, if you like electro-swing check outhttp://turntable.fm/boomswing_cabaret tonight at 6pm PST/9pm EST. @...And Sushi will be showcasing their 20-track mashup album “We Can Dance”, each featuring Caravan Palace in some way or another. I highly recommend dropping in - your ears will thank you.

Level Editing!

Since I spent a good portion of last week having a blast creating levels for Axle, I’m going to take some time to talk a bit about the level editor.

Currently, we use Unity to build our levels. It helps us with the drag & drop system, previewing and other functionality we would have to build ourselves. We export a level file from Unity, which remembers where we placed all of our objects, and what they do. The game is a native Java application that runs the level file on the Android.

Obviously, we want to make this multi-platform, so we’re in the process of changing our native Android application into a Unity application. However, we’ll still be able to have a unique level file that we can load into the game, which can give players the power to create their own levels!

The level editor currently looks like this. Unity is very powerful, but there is a lot to learn.

If we can make it to $30,000, we can make a desktop Unity application that will be a streamlined level editor for Axle. This way, you do not need any experience with Unityto use it, and it will be simple and safe for kids to use and experiment with.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments, and have a fantastic week!

Cheers,
Liz Fiacco & The Axle Team

Bonus: Here are some sneak peeks at our new levels!  (As shown in the level editor)