We are thrilled to say that after a week from the game’s launch there are now over 100 000 players of BADLAND. We are so happy to be able to continue developing the game and bringing you more content to play in the future.

BADLAND has been developed fully independently (no publishers, no investors) by our two-man indie game studio Frogmind with the help of a part-time audio designer, Joonas Turner. BADLAND is Frogmind’s first game and its development took one year of full-time work from both of the studio’s founders, Johannes Vuorinen (code) and Juhana Myllys (art).

BADLAND review roundup part 2:
5/5 – hitphone.fr
4/4 – Padvance.com
9.75/10 – Short & Sweet Reviews
4.5/5 – TouchArcade
9/10 – Gamer.nl
4/5 – BunchofGamers
4/5 – App Chronicles
8/10 – GamesReviews
App of the week – iPhoneclub.nl
Game of the week – AppAdvice
App of the day – Pocket-lint
Best new apps – The Verge
“But the birds that star in Frogmind’s game aren’t angry. They’re terrified.” – Wired.com
“recommending it to any mobile gamer is a no-brainer.” – Inglorious Gamer
“a satisfying, challenging trip through a nightmarish landscape” – Badass Digest

“Badland for iOS might be the mobile game you’ve been waiting for” – TECHi

The last 8 days have been by far the most exciting days in the project. It has been so amazing to see you players love the game as much as we do. We are really happy that this premium game without IAPs from a new indie studio has got all the attention we dreamed of and much more. We are now super happy and eager to be able to continue developing the game further and giving you new levels to play in the future. Thank you all for the feedback, reviews and support!

We have already started working on Day II. We have big plans for it and we want to continue bringing something new in the Day II also. We will bring a new update that will begin the Day II next month, on May. Even before that, really soon we will bring a smaller update with new multiplayer levels to play with your friends.

BADLAND has received mostly 5 star reviews everywhere in the world. Thank you! Here’s a fresh screenshot taken from AppAnnie that collects reviews everywhere in the world:

Here are two different kind of user reviews from users from the App Store:
Unreal game 5/5 stars
After 5 years of playing all the best itouch/iPhone games. This game goes in my top 3 ever. This means this game is incredible. This is like an Xbox360 arcade game on an iPhone. Unreal 10/10 A must buy. Definately worth $4!

HORRIBLE!!!! 1/5 stars
I paid 4.99 to fly some stupid black thing around a tunnel??? That’s it?? Complete waste of time and money, I don’t recommend this to anyone! If some people like it, hey, that’s great, but this app certainly doesn’t work for me!

And here are some reviews from critics:

We are thrilled to say that BADLAND is finally out in App Store for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch! So far the response has been simply amazing.

Enough talking, first enjoy the official launch trailer:

And then, go and get the game from App Store:

Now it’s time for us to celebrate a little, and then continue developing more content to the game for updates. :)

BADLAND will be out next week, on Thursday April 4th! While you are waiting, here's a new video that showcases one of BADLAND's features: the Replay Mode. As you can see it has a little slider that allows you to adjust time. It's a goofy little tool to fool around with. BADLAND also features Everyplay videos so you can easily share your replays to the world.

Johannes is at GDC in San Francisco at the moment. Please contact johannes@frogmindgames.com if you want to meet him or give BADLAND a test while he is there.

We have some announcements to make! Good news and bad news really. Bad news is that BADLAND won't make it to the App Store this March but the good news is that it will be launched soon enough, April 4th to be precise! To celebrate this we give you a new gameplay trailer. This time we are showing you some really cool new gameplay elements, such as power-ups that adjusts time and, of course, portals!

GDC is also happening just a week before the launch, and Frogmind will be there. If you are interested to meet us or just want to give BADLAND a test drive, please let us know.

Also some new screens:

We are really happy to announce that BADLAND is DONE! :)

We want to thank all the testers that helped us out to catch bugs and tweak things to the perfection. We are now really, really satisfied with the result. We are very happy that we had time to implement every feature we wanted to the launch version of the game. But we are definitely not stopping to the launch. We want to bring new content and features in updates. We want to keep developing BADLAND. Thanks also to you all hundreds of beta tester applicants! We really appreciate you wanted to help us. Unfortunately we couldn't take everyone in due to very limited available slots because of technical limitations.

The release date then? The actual date is still not official but we can say the release will be in month's time. We will let you know the precise date as soon as we can.

BADLAND will support iPad, iPhone and iPod touch – and it's an universal app so you only need to buy it once and you can play it in your every iOS device. And because the game supports iCloud, your game progress will be same in every iOS device you own. There are no in-app purchases – you get the whole game with one purchase. Oldskool style.

Here are some fresh screenshots from BADLAND in Night. Enjoy:

Next week we will publish a new fresh gameplay video showing something really cool. Stay tuned! Exciting times ahead! :)

This is the month when BADLAND gets its last finalizations and tunes. Almost all levels are ready but we want to test them a lot to make them perfect before the launch. This is where we would like to get some help from you people. If you are interested in beta testing BADLAND already before its launch, drop us an email at contact@frogmindgames.com. In the email, tell us something about yourself and which iOS devices (and their operating system version) you own. We have only very limited number of slots available so we unfortunately cannot take everyone. We are going to use TestFlight (http://www.testflightapp.com) to distribute the build to the chosen testers.

Some of you have asked about the multiplayer which was shown in our last blog post whether or not its available in iPhone and iPod touch. The answer is yes – it works exactly the same way as shown in the video playing with iPad.

Also, Juhana made a nice image about all the four different sections in the game: Dawn, Noon, Dusk and Night. Enjoy! :)

We are happy to announce that BADLAND will feature local multiplayer for up to four players playing in the same device! Here's a quick video showing it in action in a noon level:

The multiplayer is all about survival of the fittest – with no rules. It's completely okay to push your opponent to a spinning circular saw in order to survive. The multiplayer shares the same easy to grasp controls and the gameplay mechanics as the single player, so it's easy to pick any friend (or foe) to play against you. However, skills matter in the end. The physical gameplay makes sure that every game is different.

BADLAND will feature 12 multiplayer levels at launch, and we will keep adding more levels in updates.

During the past few weeks, we adjusted our estimate for the launch and we confirm it is this March.

Wow, what a month! As mentioned in the last blog post, we visited Game Connection Europe in Paris on late November. BADLAND was selected there as one of the 15 finalists (out of over 100) in the Selected Projects competition. We saw awesome presentations about 15 upcoming games for various platforms from tablets to consoles and PC. We already felt lucky that we were selected as one of the finalists, but to our surprise BADLAND was selected as the winner! And not only as the main competition winner but also Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) selected BADLAND as their prize winner. As a prize, we are going to visit SCEE in London some time in near future. In addition, as a prize for the main competition win, we will receive a dev kit and developer support from Microsoft, plus three months of public relations strategic advice and support from Reverb Publishing’s parent company, Reverb Communications. Read more in the Game Connection press release.

We also showed and playtested BADLAND with numerous people in the event and got extremely positive feedback. Everyone seems to love BADLAND. (or we are in some kind of conspiracy) :)

So, now everybody keeps asking us when it is coming out. Fortunately we are now in the stage of development that we can give you a good estimate. We are happy to say that we are aiming to launch BADLAND for iPad,
iPhone and iPod touch on February/March.

Before that, as the launch gets closer, we are going to start to show you guys new stuff more frequently. Here’s a couple of new shots:

These screenshots are from the later part of the game. The sun has set and dusk has arrived to the BADLAND forest. The beautiful place starts to look like something else..

BADLAND is divided into four sections: Dawn, Noon, Dusk and Night. In our first gameplay video, we showed one of the Dawn levels. The Noon was shown with one screenshot a month ago. And now we showed the first two screenshots from the Dusk. As the day progresses in BADLAND, the forest becomes more dangerous making surviving more challenging. There will be 10 levels in each of the sections, which makes a total of 40 levels. But, that’s just in the launch – we are going to keep making more content and levels after the launch.

BADLAND also features at launch 12 different power-ups which change the gameplay in various ways. The first gameplay video showed ones which change the character’s size, making it feel heavier or lighter and ones that make the character spin leading to a new kind of gameplay. The video also showed ones which make the character fly faster and slower, and also ones that clone the character into multiple characters leading to extremely versatile gameplay (there can be tens of clones for the player to control at the same time). The screenshots above introduce a new really cool power-up which we haven’t talked about yet. Rather than telling what it does, we’ll keep you teased a while longer and show you what it does in another gameplay video early next year. It’s that cool.

But even before that video, we are going to show you something really cool straight away in the beginning of next year. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone! Next year is going to be BAD! :)

We have been really busy developing mostly BADLAND’s menus since our last blog post. We want to keep things simple and want to make sure that you players can easily continue the game from where you left it with only one or two touch interactions. Also, we have been implementing iCloud support so that you have the same game progress in every iOS device you own.

In other exciting news, TouchArcade.com listed TouchArcade App Users’ Top Ten Most Anticipated Upcoming Games – October 2012 and BADLAND is #5! This really great because the list is entirely based on users.

Also, we have been nominated as a finalist for Game Connection Europe 2012 Selected Projects! So, we are going to be at Paris in 28.-30. November. Meet us there! (we might have an iPad with us with BADLAND on it ;)

And finally, no blog post without a new screenshot: